From Pipelines to Tasting Lemonade: Reconceptualizing College Access

Abstract

Pipeline metaphors are ubiquitous in theorizing and interpreting college access processes. In this conceptual article, we explore how a lemonade metaphor can open new possibilities to reimagining higher education access and going processes. We argue that using food metaphors, particularly the processes of mixing, tasting, and digesting lemonade, may help constitute new meanings of college going. Rather than focus on production, mechanization, and ignoring social justice, a lemonade metaphor emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of college-going processes, foregrounds power relations within these processes, and humanizes educational purposes and journeys. We encourage educational researchers to take up taste as a heuristic device to reveal something different about educational phenomena that will, in turn, have material consequences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Ivey Ken for reviewing our work, three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, and our peers who provided informal feedback that helped to clarify our thinking.

Notes

1. We use college access to refer to the processes of college selection, going, and access.

2. Here we use P–20 instead of K–16 or P–16 to signify the shifts in scholarship about pipelines and college access (Chamberlin & Plucker, 2008; Núñez & Oliva, 2009).

3. We use trans and trans^* interchangeably to signify gender identities that move away from societal expectations of gender identity and expression. The use of the asterisk serves as a wildcard to open up trans^* (Tompkins, 2014) and this usage is highly contested, but beyond the scope of this paper to address.

4. Latinx is a gender inclusive term used “to challenge gender binaries, and to queer myths about a unified homogenous Latinidad and challenge conventional identity politics” (Alvarado, 2014, p. 4).