Adelante y Pa’lante: College-Educated Chicana/o and Puerto Rican Family Educational Oral Histories

A significant amount of research argues that once an individual completes a bachelor’s degree it will increase their likelihood of securing a well-paying occupation, not only for the college graduate, but also for their children. However, it is unclear how this may or may not be different for racial and ethnic populations. This study examines college-educated Chicana/o and Puerto Rican families’ undergraduate and graduate college experiences. Critical race theory, Chicana feminisms, and pedagogies of the home inform the transformative convergent mixed-methods design of the study. A transformative convergent design has two distinct processes of methods and data collection, both qualitative and quantitative, with the integration of the two occurring in the findings. In particular in studying Chicana/o and Puerto Rican college-educated families, quantitatively, I conduct a secondary analysis of a national higher education survey, and qualitatively, I document 16 educational oral histories. These findings expose how household knowledge from one succeeding generation is passed to the next generation, and how it can enhance academic success and college participation for Chicana/o and Puerto Rican families