Curriculum Theorist: Tara J. Yosso Research Papers Examples

Tara J. Yosso was born on 3rd August 1973 in Alameda, California, United States. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.  To understand how racial background, social class, gender, accent, language, physical characteristics, and immigrant status determine access to educational equity, she employs three models. These are critical race theory, critical media literacy, and sociology of education (Yosso, 2006).

Education

For her undergraduate education, Tara J Yosso attended University of California, Los Angeles where she studied Bachelor of Arts (Social Psychology of Education) with specialization in Chicana/o Studies. She graduated in 1995. Thereafter, she enrolled at the same university for her graduate studies and graduated in 2000 with doctor of Philosophy Education: Urban Schooling where she specialized in Chicana/o Studies and Visual Sociology.

Career

Tara Yosso has been teaching in University of California, Santa Barbara since 2001. In her teaching career she has progressed from an associate professor to adjunct associate professor and at the present an associate professor. She is teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses. Her teaching and research centers on Chican/o studies. Chicac/o studies main goal is to promote social justice in education.

Research interests

Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory critically looks at how society and culture is organized in terms of race, power, and law. It further tries to eliminate existence of white supremacy despite legal and constitutional frameworks guaranteeing equal rights. Using the theory, Tara Yosso challenges us attain social justice in the education system by eliminating racism and empowering the subordinated population. To work towards achieving social justice education system among the African Americans and Latinos, the theory suggests that we should listen to, read about, and center the experiences of these groups (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).

Educational Access and Equity

Tara Yossi is an advocate of social justice in education setting. She has researched on factors that contribute to poor access, equity, and academic performance among Chican/o groups. Her main goal is to widen access as well as equity in education among the Chican/o population.

Campus Racial and Gender Climate

Campus racial climate refers to general racial atmosphere of the university that could have an impact on academic achievements and graduation rates. In most of her studies, Tara Yosso found racial and gender climate to be associated with poor academic achievements and incased drop outs.

Critical Media Literacy

Tara Yosso utilizes a model termed critical media literacy to address racism in the mainstream media. Specifically, she challenges how entertainment media industries have ‘racialized’ social as well as educational success. Moreover, she is concerned on how films portray African Americans and Chicana/os as academically inferior compared to their white counterparts. Thus her main focus in this model is to address racial injustice as depicted in the media.

Racial and Gender Microaggressions

Microaggresions refer to indirect degradations which are either verbal or kinetic. Of interest to Tara Yossi is how racial microaggressions directed at Chican/os affect their lives. Some of putdowns that she has explored in this population include interpersonal insults, racial jokes, and institutional microaggressions. In her studies he found out that microaggressions were correlated with poor performance in standardized tests, self-doubts, and frustrations (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).

Community Cultural Wealth

Community cultural wealth is a collection of knowledge, skills, capabilities and connections possessed and employed by Chican/o population to survive and fight any form of oppression. Critical race theory identifies the forms of capital found in Chican/o communities as aspirations, navigations, intellectual and social skills, familial, and oppositional behaviors (Yosso, 2005).

References

Solorzano, C.D., Ceja, M. & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students. Journal of Negro Education, 69 (1), 60-73
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8 (1), 69–91
Yosso, T.J. (2006). Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline. New York: Routledge