UW-Madison alumna Laura Chávez-Moreno is receiving Outstanding Dissertation Awards from two different American Educational Research Association (AERA) special interest groups (SIGs).
She is receiving this high honor from both the Bilingual Education Research SIG and the Hispanic Research Issues SIG. Both of these Outstanding Dissertation Awards were first-place honors.
Chávez-Moreno received her Ph.D. from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the summer of 2018. Her dissertation is titled, “A Critical Race Ethnography Examining Dual-Language Education in the New-Latinx Diaspora: Reinforcing and Resisting Bilingual Education’s Racial Roots.”
This critical race ethnography of a secondary dual-language (DL) program contributes four findings. Chávez-Moreno found that DL programs preserved the value of white racial identity at the expense of Latinxs, and that at times policy and discourses positioned Latinx and black student interests against each other. Chávez-Moreno adds that while the program conceptualized the idea of providing equity through language and cultural representation, the program as a whole did not also focus on developing youths’ critical racial consciousness.