"Theories From Below: Imagining Policy Making and Policy Analysis Beyond 'Achievement' Paradigms"

First year Ph.D. in Education student Socorro Cambero is lead author of Chapter 13 in the new publication The Complex Web of Inequality in North American Schools. 

Chapter 13 - "Theories From Below: Imagining Policy Making and Policy Analysis Beyond 'Achievement' Paradigms" - opens with a testimonio from Cambero's childhood where her parents and she led a community effort to convince the city administration of the need for a stoplight on a major thoroughfare by the neighborhood park. Cambero's testimonio is employed to illustrate the importance in policy formation of using lived experiences to inform how sexism, capitalism, and racism operate not only as abstract concepts but also as lived realities.

From this introduction, the authors (Cambero, Miguel Abad, Briana Hinga, and Gilberto Conchas) explore testing and achievement regimes in education policy as educational enclosures and Chicana feminism as a lens for recognizing the manifestations of gender in shaping racial domination and economic exploitation.

Cambero is pursuing her doctoral studies specializing in Teaching, Learning, and Educational Improvement (TLEI). Her research interests include critical race theory, Latinx students in higher education, social and cultural capital, and Chicana feminist epistemology.  She is advised by Professor Gilberto Conchas.