CPEP doctoral candidate Andy Pinedo awarded the Sarri Family Fellowship for Research on Educational Attainment of Children in Low Income Families

The Sarri Family Fellowship, administered by the Institute for Social Research, supports a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow at U-M to conduct research related to improving the educational attainment of students from low income families. The fellowship is primarily intended for social science research on improving the chances for low-income students to attend and succeed in postsecondary educational institutions. 

Pinedo’s project is titled “Cultivating Latinx Students’ Critical Consciousness and Ethnic-Racial Identity: Ethnic Studies and Educational Achievement.” Ethnic Studies enrollment has been linked with positive academic outcomes such as increased attendance, improved GPAs, and greater odds of graduation. Yet, while these outcomes have been documented in previous research, little work has examined the intermediary processes (i.e. mediators) that connect ethnic studies enrollment to desired academic outcomes. That is, what changes within students that explains these gains? Previous research suggests that, ethnic studies improves outcomes by connecting students’ education to important issues in their communities which leads to greater school engagement and relevance. Additionally, many educators who implement ethnic studies argue that a major goal of this type of curriculum is to foster students’ critical consciousness–the critical understanding of, drive to challenge, and action against inequality– and this may also link ethnic studies enrollment to desired outcomes because critical consciousness has been linked to desired academic outcomes in previous research. Thus, in our study, we will examine the impact of ethnic studies on academic outcomes to see if previous links replicate in this sample, and to extend previous scholarship, we will assess whether school engagement and critical consciousness mediate these links. This research will help teachers and administrators understand the efficacy of ethnic studies for improving students’ outcomes and hopefully help ethnic studies be more widely adopted across the state and country.