“Whoa. You Speak Mexican?”: Latina/o High School Students’ Sense of Belonging in Advanced Placement and Honors Classes

Abstract

This qualitative study explored Latina/o students’ sense of belonging in majority White and Asian Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes in a diverse suburban high school. Using self-determination theory as a framework, I focused on three aspects of sense of belonging: social belonging, teacher–student relationships, and academic belonging. Ten Latina/o tenth- and eleventh-grade students participated in classroom observations, guided journaling sessions, and interviews to capture their sense of belonging in AP and honors classes. Although all of the participants expressed a lack of sense of belonging, they reported that they leveraged their experiences to motivate themselves, increase their engagement, and build resilience.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Sara Garcia, Dr. Marco Bravo, and Dr. Amanda Datnow for their feedback, support, and guidance on this manuscript.

Author note

Peter Bjorklund Jr., Department of Education Studies, University of California, San Diego

Notes

1 In this paper “the term Latinas/os refers to a non-homogenous group of persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American, and South American heritage. It should be mentioned that while most studies use the term Latina/o as a homogenous category, there are differences among and within the various Latina/o subgroups” (Huber, Huidor, Malagón, Sánchez, & Solorzano, 2006, p. 12n1).

2 The names of the school, the cities, participants, and teachers are pseudonyms.

3 Eight of the 10 participants were my former students; none were my students at the time of the study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Bjorklund

Peter Bjorklund Jr. is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests are centered on educational change, the analysis of trust, social networks, pre-service teachers, teacher identity, teacher-student relationships, sense of belonging, and education in emergencies, specifically refugee education.