Research has Theoretical, Policy, and Practical Implications
Associate Professor
Irvine, Calif., April 1, 2009
Associate Professor Gilberto Q. Conchas obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 1999, and subsequently joined Harvard Graduate School of Education as a school-wide Assistant Professor. In 2004, he came to Irvine as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education. He currently is an Associate Professor and Chancellor's Fellow in the Department of Education, with joint appointments in Chicano/Latino Studies and Sociology.
Throughout his scholarly journey, Dr. Conchas has pursued three broad areas of research: social policy and educational reform; comparative race and ethnicity; and urban education. His academic work focuses on how urban educational systems and school design shape the engagement and achievement of low-income student populations. His research specifically examines those students who manage to succeed despite adversity; his goal is to unearth the complex processes in the school setting that lead to student engagement, motivation, and success. By capturing student perspectives as a way to make meaning of their daily experiences in and out of the school setting, Dr. Conchas seeks to understand the nuance associated with the challenges that face urban youth as they navigate school, community, and family contexts.
Dr. Conchas’ research has theoretical, policy, and practical implications. Theoretically, he links cultural ecological explanations about immigrant and native-born student failure and success with institutional factors and thus extends the work of cultural ecologist John Ogbu in searching for answers from institutional structures rather than by examining exclusively minority groups’ cultural beliefs. By showing how institutional processes, in relationship with school culture, mediate distinct forms of student agency, Dr. Conchas unravels the sociocultural processes within schools, such as class size, teacher expectations, and peer relationships, which construct success instead of failure among Vietnamese, African American, and Latino low-income students.
In 2006, Dr. Conchas, with support from the Spencer Foundation, authored The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving Urban Youth (Teachers College, Columbia University). His publication presented a three-year mix-method case study that provided a comparative race and ethnic analysis of high-achieving African American, Latino, and Vietnamese students’ engagement in an impoverished urban high school.
Dr. Conchas’ second, co-authored, publication, Small Schools and Urban Youth: Using the Power of Culture to Engage Students (Corwin Press, 2008), examines how schools can construct success among a rapidly changing demographic population that includes a large growth of limited English proficient immigrant students. In this work, Dr. Conchas argues that school size is not synonymous with success: “While school size matters, a school culture that embraces personalization is a proxy for student engagement and positive social disposition.”
Dr. Conchas’ teaching philosophy is consistent with his research focus on promoting school success. He combines epistemological issues about distinct modes of inquiry with substantive interest in addressing the achievement gap among low-income students of color. In his courses, he aims to build a diverse classroom that respects distinct perspectives and ideologies: “I strongly believe that it is our responsibility as scholars of education to train a new generation of researchers, teachers, and educational leaders that embrace and understand the changing face of distinct urban communities and schools.”
In 2007, Dr. Conchas took leave from the Department to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as Senior Program Officer, U.S. Special Initiatives. In this role, he advanced research and knowledge sharing among the different investments in the United States Special Initiatives program, including a four-year $500 million post-secondary education learning strategy. His specific portfolio supported efforts to surface, frame, define and explore critical research issues and questions associated with low-income young adults, institutional systems, and efforts to promote economic success and upward mobility for low-income young adults of color, including enrolling, persisting, and completing post-secondary education.
Spring of 2009 Dr. Conchas returned to UC Irvine and resumed his role as Associate Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow. In addition to teaching Education 256: Critical Case Studies in the doctoral program and advising doctoral students, he is engaged in his current research project, a four-year mix-method study to analyze the factors that shape the secondary and post-secondary enrollment, completion, and labor market mobility of low-income young adults at two high-performing high schools and two high-performing community colleges that target low-income African American and Latino young adults. As part of his research agenda, special emphasis will be placed on the relationship between race, gender, class, and the achievement gap.
