Actualizing (im)possible selves amidst policy (non)events: A feminist critical case study of Puerto Rican and Dominican youth mothers.

摘要

Despite the dramatic increase in the Latina/o population in US schools and the ways teen pregnancy is disparate across racial/ethnic groupings, Puerto Rican and Dominican youth mothers have remained peripheral to investigations of educational policies. This dissertation critically examines the ways Puerto Rican and Dominican youth mothers negotiate macrolevel policies surrounding teen pregnancy and sexuality education across localized school structures. This is done through focusing on how these policies are manifested as (non)events across institutional and interpersonal school structures. Here (non)events are the ways macrolevel policies are implemented and interpreted across local school structures through positive and/or negative perceptions of Latina youth mothers held between, among, and by youth mothers and school officials.; This dissertation utilizes feminist critical policy analysis and Latina feminisms to frame a qualitative case study employing interviews, focus groups, observations, and written documentation to collect data on how Latina youth mothers' are constructing and acting on their (im)possible selves across the structures of schooling. (Im)possible selves include the ways youth mothers construct their multiple identities around future aspirations amidst competing perceptions operating across school structures. The data presented were collected from three Puerto Rican and one Dominican youth mother(s) enrolled in an urban comprehensive school and the on-site childcare center sponsored by the LYFE program. The researcher reveals how structures of academic guidance and counseling and the LYFE program do (not) support youth mothers as they seek to actualize their (im)possible selves as mother, student, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Catholic, girlfriend, wife, girl, poor, daughter, G.E.D. student, and/or Spanish and English speaking.; Youth's negotiations of academic and guidance counseling structures and the LYFE program highlight how drawing on la facultad, a critical oppositional consciousness enacted to change inequitable structures, and home(land) pedagogies, the lessons people learn and are taught as a result of connections they have to their current homeland and/or one of birth, language, and family, enable them to critique these structures and also become inscribed within them. Through their negotiations implications emerge surrounding policy initiatives for youth, improving school practices and programs, reconceptualizing curriculum surrounding teen pregnancy and sexuality education, and fostering culturally responsive teaching.