Christina Convertino
Biographic Data
| ID | 649027 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christina Convertino |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christina |
| FAMILY NAME | Convertino |
| SIGNATURE | CONVERTINO C |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at El Paso |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4983-886X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Centering Student Voices: Expanding on Servingness Indicators at a Fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)
This paper contributes to the emerging scholarly conversation of context-specific servingness research that highlights the voices of students. Specifically, this paper focuses on 14 undergraduate and graduate students’ understandings and experiences concerning servingness at their local setting, a fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Our findings suggest that location plays a vital role in how undergraduate and graduate students underst…
Contextualizing the HSI: Place-based Indicators of Servingness at a Fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution
Despite the tendency to frame Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) as monolithic, HSIs situated at the U.S.-Mexico border (fronterizx HSI) are a critical site to understand how geography, communities, and language(s) intersect with what it means to serve. Conducting a qualitative case study, we explored student and faculty place-based perspectives and experiences of what it means to serve at a fronterizx HSI. Three themes emerged: borderland comm…
Echémonos Flores: A Mentoring Model for Latina Doctoral Students
In this essay, Cynthia Carolina Terán López and Christina Convertino present a new mentoring model for Latina doctoral students, the echémonos flores mentoring model (FEMM), which draws on the ideas of new tribalism and nos/otras in Gloria Anzaldúa’s post-Borderlands work and the praxis of pláticas, or conversations, and testimonios to decenter whiteness in current mentoring models supporting Latina doctoral students. The authors lay out FEMM’s f…
Compromiso, Pertenencia, and Empoderamiento: How Faculty at a Fronterizx HSI Perceive and Enact Servingness to Become Empowerment Agents for Latinx Student Success
Semi-structured interviews with 22 faculty at a fronterizx HSI located at the U.S.-Mexico border revealed the ways faculty perceive, enact, and engage with servingness practice. Findings provide critical insights into the relationship between servingness and faculty as empowerment agents through three culturally relevant themes: compromiso, pertenencia, and empoderamiento. Specifically, participants’ conceptualizations of servingness, based on pr…
Faculty Reflections on Implementing Servingness into Research and Teaching: How Professional Development Around Servingness Fosters Latinx Student Success
The Uses of Engineering Notebooks Among Pre‐Engineering Students at a Hispanic‐Serving Institution
In this article, we draw on sociocultural perspectives on literacy to explore the ways in which pre‐engineering students took up and made sense of engineering notebooks implemented as part of a robotics project in a first‐semester university study course at a large, public Hispanic‐Serving Institution. Through ethnographic methods, we uncovered two primary sets of uses for the notebooks: (1) recording and remembering and (2) problem solving and d…
Exploring Worksheets and Attendance-taking as Gatekeeping Features in a Gateway Course for Latinx STEM Majors
Gateway courses are high-enrollment, low completion introductory courses foundational to a major. Because these courses have a disproportionately negative impact on the retention and persistence of Latinx students to their desired STEM major, we refer to these understudied, high-stakes courses as gatekeeping courses. Framing our exploratory study with an ethnographic lens to focus on social practices that structure and organize participation and …
The right to the school: Urban schooling, place-based education, and youth agency at the intersection of gentrification
The ways in which urban schooling intersects with gentrification in US cities is an understudied yet growing reality. Within this wider reality, even less is known about how youth resist gentrifying agendas that seek to displace them from learning in rebranded cities. Drawing from an ethnographic study on urban place-based education at a high school situated amid efforts to rebrand the downtown of a southwestern city, the author proposes the righ…
Storylines in figured worlds: Understanding diverse college students’ decision to major in computer science
Nuancing the discourse of underrepresentation: A feminist post-structural analysis of gender inequality in computer science education in the US
Drawing on feminist post-structural perspectives, this article shows how the dominant discourses of underrepresentation and gender difference that characterize gender inequality in computer science (CS) create subject positions, which simultaneously mark women as highly invisible and visible. Narrative accounts from qualitative interviews and focus groups with women students of color enrolled in CS at a university located in the southwestern regi…
Latinx students’ transition to college: When readiness meets barriers
Considering the particular and situated relationship between college readiness and college barriers in the context of college transitions amongst Latinx students, this article uses an academic literacies framework to analyze the transition stories of two Latinx, first-generation freshmen enrolled in a four-year university. The findings suggest that institutionally mediated digital learning tools can limit students’ progress as they start college,…
College Readiness Versus College Worthiness: Examining the Role of Principal Beliefs on College Readiness Initiatives in an Urban U.S. High School
La Migra” in the Classroom: Transfronterizx Students Exploring Mobility in Transnational Higher Education on the US-Mexico Border
Based on an ethnographic study of a pre-engineering freshman course at a large university on the US-Mexico border, I explore how 4 Latinx undergraduate students, 2 of whom crossed the border on a daily basis to pursue higher education (HE), built a Lego robot that they named La Migra (a colloquial term for US Border Patrol). In particular, I demonstrate that the students drew from local authorized border crossing activities to design the robot to…
Bridgework: Diversity and Collaboration in an Undergraduate Preengineering Course
In this article, we draw on ethnographic findings to examine the meaning of “diversity” and “collaboration” within the context of an undergraduate preengineering course at a large Hispanic-serving institution located on the U.S.–Mexico border. Using bridgework, a new theoretical concept, we analyze interactions and interactivity that occurred within and among jigsaw groups attempting to solve mathematical problems as part of a precalculus review.…
State disinvestment, technologies of choice and ‘fitting in’: Neoliberal transformations in US public education
Given state cuts to US public education, overcrowding and underfunding in urban district schools continue to grow. Yet, how parents understand the role of state disinvestment on underfunded and overcrowded public schools remains relatively unexamined. Drawing from an ethnographic study of school choice in Arizona, I explore how a group of white parents from diverse income and educational levels, who exited their child from a district school to en…
Beyond Ethnic Tidbits: Toward a Critical and Dialogical Model in Multicultural Social Justice Teacher Preparation
This praxis article outlines the value of using a critical and dialogical model (CDM) to teach multicultural social justice education to pre-service teachers. Based on practitioner research, the article draws on the author's own teaching experiences to highlight how key features of CDM can be used to help pre-service teachers move beyond thinking about multicultural education as ethnic tidbits. Illustrative examples of CDM-in-use demonstrate that…
Misfits and the Imagined American High School: A Spatial Analysis of Student Identities and Schooling
This article provides a socio-spatial analysis of youth identities within the context of school choice reforms. Unable to conform to cultural ideals inscribed in the American school, a diverse group of youth forced out of traditional schools mediate the local production of school choice initiatives through the formation of youth identities as misfits. Findings suggest that the cultural ideals inscribed in traditional schools produce socio-spatial…
Nuancing the discourse of underrepresentation: A feminist post-structural analysis of gender inequality in computer science education in the US
Drawing on feminist post-structural perspectives, this article shows how the dominant discourses of underrepresentation and gender difference that characterize gender inequality in computer science (CS) create subject positions, which simultaneously mark women as highly invisible and visible. Narrative accounts from qualitative interviews and focus groups with women students of color enrolled in CS at a university located in the southwestern regi…
Beyond Ethnic Tidbits: Toward a Critical and Dialogical Model in Multicultural Social Justice Teacher Preparation
This praxis article outlines the value of using a critical and dialogical model (CDM) to teach multicultural social justice education to pre-service teachers. Based on practitioner research, the article draws on the author's own teaching experiences to highlight how key features of CDM can be used to help pre-service teachers move beyond thinking about multicultural education as ethnic tidbits. Illustrative examples of CDM-in-use demonstrate that…
Compromiso, Pertenencia, and Empoderamiento: How Faculty at a Fronterizx HSI Perceive and Enact Servingness to Become Empowerment Agents for Latinx Student Success
Semi-structured interviews with 22 faculty at a fronterizx HSI located at the U.S.-Mexico border revealed the ways faculty perceive, enact, and engage with servingness practice. Findings provide critical insights into the relationship between servingness and faculty as empowerment agents through three culturally relevant themes: compromiso, pertenencia, and empoderamiento. Specifically, participants’ conceptualizations of servingness, based on pr…
College Readiness Versus College Worthiness: Examining the Role of Principal Beliefs on College Readiness Initiatives in an Urban U.S. High School
La Migra” in the Classroom: Transfronterizx Students Exploring Mobility in Transnational Higher Education on the US-Mexico Border
Based on an ethnographic study of a pre-engineering freshman course at a large university on the US-Mexico border, I explore how 4 Latinx undergraduate students, 2 of whom crossed the border on a daily basis to pursue higher education (HE), built a Lego robot that they named La Migra (a colloquial term for US Border Patrol). In particular, I demonstrate that the students drew from local authorized border crossing activities to design the robot to…
Misfits and the Imagined American High School: A Spatial Analysis of Student Identities and Schooling
This article provides a socio-spatial analysis of youth identities within the context of school choice reforms. Unable to conform to cultural ideals inscribed in the American school, a diverse group of youth forced out of traditional schools mediate the local production of school choice initiatives through the formation of youth identities as misfits. Findings suggest that the cultural ideals inscribed in traditional schools produce socio-spatial…
Contextualizing the HSI: Place-based Indicators of Servingness at a Fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution
Despite the tendency to frame Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) as monolithic, HSIs situated at the U.S.-Mexico border (fronterizx HSI) are a critical site to understand how geography, communities, and language(s) intersect with what it means to serve. Conducting a qualitative case study, we explored student and faculty place-based perspectives and experiences of what it means to serve at a fronterizx HSI. Three themes emerged: borderland comm…
The right to the school: Urban schooling, place-based education, and youth agency at the intersection of gentrification
The ways in which urban schooling intersects with gentrification in US cities is an understudied yet growing reality. Within this wider reality, even less is known about how youth resist gentrifying agendas that seek to displace them from learning in rebranded cities. Drawing from an ethnographic study on urban place-based education at a high school situated amid efforts to rebrand the downtown of a southwestern city, the author proposes the righ…
State disinvestment, technologies of choice and ‘fitting in’: Neoliberal transformations in US public education
Given state cuts to US public education, overcrowding and underfunding in urban district schools continue to grow. Yet, how parents understand the role of state disinvestment on underfunded and overcrowded public schools remains relatively unexamined. Drawing from an ethnographic study of school choice in Arizona, I explore how a group of white parents from diverse income and educational levels, who exited their child from a district school to en…
Misfits and the Imagined American High School: A Spatial Analysis of Student Identities and Schooling
This article provides a socio-spatial analysis of youth identities within the context of school choice reforms. Unable to conform to cultural ideals inscribed in the American school, a diverse group of youth forced out of traditional schools mediate the local production of school choice initiatives through the formation of youth identities as misfits. Findings suggest that the cultural ideals inscribed in traditional schools produce socio-spatial…
Beyond Ethnic Tidbits: Toward a Critical and Dialogical Model in Multicultural Social Justice Teacher Preparation
This praxis article outlines the value of using a critical and dialogical model (CDM) to teach multicultural social justice education to pre-service teachers. Based on practitioner research, the article draws on the author's own teaching experiences to highlight how key features of CDM can be used to help pre-service teachers move beyond thinking about multicultural education as ethnic tidbits. Illustrative examples of CDM-in-use demonstrate that…
Bridgework: Diversity and Collaboration in an Undergraduate Preengineering Course
In this article, we draw on ethnographic findings to examine the meaning of “diversity” and “collaboration” within the context of an undergraduate preengineering course at a large Hispanic-serving institution located on the U.S.–Mexico border. Using bridgework, a new theoretical concept, we analyze interactions and interactivity that occurred within and among jigsaw groups attempting to solve mathematical problems as part of a precalculus review.…
State disinvestment, technologies of choice and ‘fitting in’: Neoliberal transformations in US public education
Given state cuts to US public education, overcrowding and underfunding in urban district schools continue to grow. Yet, how parents understand the role of state disinvestment on underfunded and overcrowded public schools remains relatively unexamined. Drawing from an ethnographic study of school choice in Arizona, I explore how a group of white parents from diverse income and educational levels, who exited their child from a district school to en…
Latinx students’ transition to college: When readiness meets barriers
Considering the particular and situated relationship between college readiness and college barriers in the context of college transitions amongst Latinx students, this article uses an academic literacies framework to analyze the transition stories of two Latinx, first-generation freshmen enrolled in a four-year university. The findings suggest that institutionally mediated digital learning tools can limit students’ progress as they start college,…
College Readiness Versus College Worthiness: Examining the Role of Principal Beliefs on College Readiness Initiatives in an Urban U.S. High School
La Migra” in the Classroom: Transfronterizx Students Exploring Mobility in Transnational Higher Education on the US-Mexico Border
Based on an ethnographic study of a pre-engineering freshman course at a large university on the US-Mexico border, I explore how 4 Latinx undergraduate students, 2 of whom crossed the border on a daily basis to pursue higher education (HE), built a Lego robot that they named La Migra (a colloquial term for US Border Patrol). In particular, I demonstrate that the students drew from local authorized border crossing activities to design the robot to…
Nuancing the discourse of underrepresentation: A feminist post-structural analysis of gender inequality in computer science education in the US
Drawing on feminist post-structural perspectives, this article shows how the dominant discourses of underrepresentation and gender difference that characterize gender inequality in computer science (CS) create subject positions, which simultaneously mark women as highly invisible and visible. Narrative accounts from qualitative interviews and focus groups with women students of color enrolled in CS at a university located in the southwestern regi…
Storylines in figured worlds: Understanding diverse college students’ decision to major in computer science
The Uses of Engineering Notebooks Among Pre‐Engineering Students at a Hispanic‐Serving Institution
In this article, we draw on sociocultural perspectives on literacy to explore the ways in which pre‐engineering students took up and made sense of engineering notebooks implemented as part of a robotics project in a first‐semester university study course at a large, public Hispanic‐Serving Institution. Through ethnographic methods, we uncovered two primary sets of uses for the notebooks: (1) recording and remembering and (2) problem solving and d…
Exploring Worksheets and Attendance-taking as Gatekeeping Features in a Gateway Course for Latinx STEM Majors
Gateway courses are high-enrollment, low completion introductory courses foundational to a major. Because these courses have a disproportionately negative impact on the retention and persistence of Latinx students to their desired STEM major, we refer to these understudied, high-stakes courses as gatekeeping courses. Framing our exploratory study with an ethnographic lens to focus on social practices that structure and organize participation and …
The right to the school: Urban schooling, place-based education, and youth agency at the intersection of gentrification
The ways in which urban schooling intersects with gentrification in US cities is an understudied yet growing reality. Within this wider reality, even less is known about how youth resist gentrifying agendas that seek to displace them from learning in rebranded cities. Drawing from an ethnographic study on urban place-based education at a high school situated amid efforts to rebrand the downtown of a southwestern city, the author proposes the righ…
Echémonos Flores: A Mentoring Model for Latina Doctoral Students
In this essay, Cynthia Carolina Terán López and Christina Convertino present a new mentoring model for Latina doctoral students, the echémonos flores mentoring model (FEMM), which draws on the ideas of new tribalism and nos/otras in Gloria Anzaldúa’s post-Borderlands work and the praxis of pláticas, or conversations, and testimonios to decenter whiteness in current mentoring models supporting Latina doctoral students. The authors lay out FEMM’s f…
Compromiso, Pertenencia, and Empoderamiento: How Faculty at a Fronterizx HSI Perceive and Enact Servingness to Become Empowerment Agents for Latinx Student Success
Semi-structured interviews with 22 faculty at a fronterizx HSI located at the U.S.-Mexico border revealed the ways faculty perceive, enact, and engage with servingness practice. Findings provide critical insights into the relationship between servingness and faculty as empowerment agents through three culturally relevant themes: compromiso, pertenencia, and empoderamiento. Specifically, participants’ conceptualizations of servingness, based on pr…
Faculty Reflections on Implementing Servingness into Research and Teaching: How Professional Development Around Servingness Fosters Latinx Student Success
Contextualizing the HSI: Place-based Indicators of Servingness at a Fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution
Despite the tendency to frame Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) as monolithic, HSIs situated at the U.S.-Mexico border (fronterizx HSI) are a critical site to understand how geography, communities, and language(s) intersect with what it means to serve. Conducting a qualitative case study, we explored student and faculty place-based perspectives and experiences of what it means to serve at a fronterizx HSI. Three themes emerged: borderland comm…
Centering Student Voices: Expanding on Servingness Indicators at a Fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)
This paper contributes to the emerging scholarly conversation of context-specific servingness research that highlights the voices of students. Specifically, this paper focuses on 14 undergraduate and graduate students’ understandings and experiences concerning servingness at their local setting, a fronterizx Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Our findings suggest that location plays a vital role in how undergraduate and graduate students underst…
Sociology (15 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Pedagogy (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Mathematics education (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Higher education (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (5 works)