Insights from Native American, Hispanic, and Mestizo College Students

From the Marshall Memo #446

In this illuminating American Educational Research Journal article, Alicia Fedelina Chavez (University of New Mexico), Fengfeng Ke (Florida State University), and Felisha Herrera (UCLA) describe what they found interviewing 50 Native American, Hispanic, and Mestizo (culturally blended Spanish and Native American) students at the University of New Mexico. The students were highly articulate about how they learn best, and the authors (while stressing that there were individual differences within cultures) were able to tease out eight types of learning experiences that maximized college success for students from these traditions:

• Purpose – “Gaining larger wisdoms and serving home communities were characterized by student participants as critical to learning and often sustained them from dropping out of college when things became difficult,” say Chavez, Ke, and Herrera. “Students discussed their need to go beyond the acquisition of knowledge toward larger truths, understanding the world based on more than discrete facts.” As one Zuni student said, “I can’t give up. My people, all those who come after me, are counting on me to finish this degree and come home to assist. So I work hard every day to make connections between what I am learning and the needs and realities of my people.” 

• Ways of taking in and processing knowledge – Students stressed their desire for hands-on learning experiences, having an emotional as well as an intellectual component, and being given time to reflect. “I really wish my instructors would take time in classes to let me think,” said one Native American student, “especially before they ask us to respond to them or to discuss with peers. I feel foolish because I’ve always had that at home and when I attended our tribal school. I know that my professors think I’m not very smart because my hand doesn’t shoot up in the air immediately when they ask a question. At home, those who talk a lot are usually considered less wise, but college is all about who gets in the first word.” Native American students in the study stressed the importance of having archival information and knowledge from lectures accessible throughout the course – being able to go back through PowerPoints and other lecture materials when they need them. Several students likened this to oral history and storytelling activities within their tribes. 

• Interconnected learning with contexts – Native American students often spoke of the benefits of learning through connectedness to the earth. A Diné student reveled in being able to work outside with a laptop: “The other day I spent hours under the fall leaves by a mountain creek responding to e-mails, reading course materials, and working on my assignment. Because I grew up deeply connected to the natural world, rather than being distracted, I got so much done and felt like I offered greater insights to my peers because I felt centered.” Hispanic and Mestizo students spoke of the need to connect to home, family, culture, and place. One student said, “My learning is helped when teachers start with stories of how an idea or theory matters to them and then ask us to do the same.” 

• Responsibility for learning – The students interviewed for this study appreciated online discussions and after-class chats with classmates and felt responsible for contributing material and ideas and helping their peers. Learning through discussion and collaboration is second nature to those from collective cultures and extended families, say the authors. 

• Conceptions of time – “Many Native and Hispano students in this study discussed the incongruence between time orientations in traditional classes and their own sense of time as relational, seasonal, reflective, and unbounded,” say the authors. A Zuni student spoke of the importance of sleep in learning: “It is as though I need to be in a different state of consciousness before I really grasp things. I go to sleep after studying complex concepts and when I wake up, I get them. I have learned to trust in this process and I actually avoid courses where this kind of processing is not possible. I look for seminar classes that have take-home essay exams and assignments instead of timed tests and essays. I never stay up all night studying before an exam because I know that my mind needs that sleep time after I study to let things simmer and settle in so I can do well on a test.”

• Faculty care – Students said they appreciated professors who shared personal experiences, asked for and listened to student input, provided tutorial support, were responsive in e-mails and Web conferences, designed courses that met the needs of different kinds of learners, and informed students of campus support services. “‘Being there’ seems to be the top quality of a good instructor,” say the authors, “as students often feel they are ‘learning alone together’ in face-to-face courses and ‘all alone out there in cyberspace’ in online classes… Storytelling traditions are a deep aspect of teaching and learning within these cultural communities.”

• Peer interaction – There were different styles of discourse among the students in this study. “I really struggle when I don’t have the immediate back and forth aspect of interaction with my peers,” said a Hispanic student. Others preferred time to reflect. “You know in my tribe, we spend large amounts of time together in silence,” said a Native American student. “We apply the reflective power of processing together in silence. I like learning online in part because there is room for silence. I can read on my own, go for a run for reflection time, then return to share my insights about readings, theory, and compare to another student’s insights.” 

• Sequence of learning – “I need to see things as a whole first,” said a Zuni student, “how it all connects, and how it might play out in real life. Then I am ready to learn about the theory of it all because I understand it in a bigger, more real way first. I’ve had professors who always start with an example, a story from their own work or even a metaphor and this helps me understand something in a bigger way first. Then when they discuss a more abstract, focused theory it makes sense to me.” Students from all three cultures expressed a preference for starting with stories, examples, metaphors, case studies, lab work, or simulations.

“Clan, Sage, and Sky: Indigenous, Hispano, and Mestizo Narratives of Learning in New Mexico Context” by Alicia Fedelina Chavez, Fengfeng Ke, and Felisha Herrera in American Educational Research Journal, August 2012 (Vol. 49, #4, p. 775-806), http://bit.ly/OZzAL6; Chavez can be reached at afchavez@unm.edu.