The Futures project was created as a collaboration between UCLA faculty, graduate students and educators at a Los Angeles county high school to examine the trajectories students follow from the beginning of high school into their futures as citizens, community members, and workers. The project worked with a group of 30 students from underrepresented backgrounds beginning in 1998 to promote their success in high school and beyond. Futures sought to illuminate existing student trajectories and demonstrate how comprehensive high schools can forge successful pathways by infusing future-oriented study into the curriculum. Toward this end, researchers built an intervention/study around a class at a Los Angeles County high school composed of students enrolled in the school’s AVID program. This class was made up entirely of under-represented students, mostly Latino and African American, as well as two students from the Pacific Islands. Researchers examined the pathways students of color take through high school to various post-secondary options and the impact of an experimental program on that process, as well as, on student learning generally. The work of the project focused on: 1) A college access research and intervention project aimed at promoting the college-going rates of the school’s students of color; 2) A collaborative research project aimed at engaging underrepresented high school students in educational research; and 3) An experiment in pedagogy aimed at shedding light on the possibilities for synthesizing the insights of socio-cultural learning theory, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy. The project experimented with various curricula and strategies, including student research on recent graduates; summer seminars conducted at the UCLA campus; the study of oral history and the sociology of education; intensive writing coaching; peer tutoring; college fieldtrips; and monthly parent meetings.
The Futures study can inform the higher education community about a number
of critical issues:
a) What role does GPA and test scores play in determining success at the university
level?;
b) What factors contribute to students not attending college?;
c) What factors contribute to students remaining in college through graduation?;
d) How do the experiences of students who attend four-year colleges differ
from junior college goers and those who enter the labor market directly?
e) What role does a college access program that engages students in college
by providing them with a critique of the educational system plays in students’
post-high school experiences?
For more information about Futures, contact Tony Collatos or Irene Serna.