Gifted, bilingual, Mexican/Mexican-American students : using community cultural wealth as a strategy for negotiating paradoxes

This qualitative dissertation study examined the ways that nine gifted, bilingual Mexican/Mexican-American students negotiated paradoxes in their academic, linguistic, and cultural identities in a public high school in a large, south central Texas city. One theoretical lens, Critical Race Theory/Latino Critical Race Theory (CRT/LatCrit) was combined with phenomenological research methods to privilege the students' perspectives during the data collection process. An additional theoretical lens, the concept of Figured Worlds, was used to contextualize the setting, Chase High School. Both CRT/LatCrit and Figured Worlds were used to analyze interview, classroom and field observation, participant, school, and district artifacts, federal, state and local data collected over ten months of study. The investigation revealed that the participants braided the domains of community cultural wealth -- aspirational, navigational, linguistic, social, resistance, and familial capital -- into practices that grounded them in their bilingual, bicultural Mexican/Mexican-American identities as successful students.