Keeping the Higher Education “Promise” in Nevada: Latina/o Legislators Policy Ways of Knowing

Abstract

In this case study, I draw attention to key Nevada Latina/o legislators’ policy ways of knowing and their higher education policy priorities. A focus on the policy actors uncovered structural, racial, and cultural assumptions in policy-making often absent in the exclusive analysis of policy interventions. Their policy ways of knowing were shaped in at least three ways: acknowledging and naming the sources of structural inequities, embracing political humility, and challenging policy knowledge-generating practices.

Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Examining the Influence of Changing Voices and Bodies on Legislative Spaces

“…My research confirms that while policy activities are a collective process, how legislators come to prioritize an issue and make decisions are grounded in their localized knowledge and experiences that shape how they construct and understand the world, policy problems, and solutions or policy ways of knowing. State legislative agenda-setting, in my research, served as an opening for historically minorized legislators to exercise individual and aggregate influence on pivotal education policies, for instance, policies related to English language learners (Martinez, 2020b) and community college need-based funding (Martinez, 2021a).…”

“…Using qualitative methodologies, education policy researchers illustrate how mainstream policy discourse is used to maintain status quo power and further disadvantage communities of color and children (Apple, 2013;Gillborn, 2005;Martinez, 2021aMartinez, , 2022aMartinez, , 2022b. These policy forces of conservative modernization threaten to further dismantle public education across the globe (Apple, 2013).…”

“…In my critical policymaking research, I have employed intersectionality, Black feminist theory (Martinez, 2022b), Chicana feminism (Martinez, 2022a), feminist borderland theory (Martinez, 2022a), and critical race theory (Martinez, 2020a(Martinez, , 2020b, which have expanded our epistemological knowledge on how new policy entrants exercise their agency to transform politics and shape agendas that advance both their communities and policy priorities. Notably, using critical qualitative methodologies, I illustrate the ways that new policy entrants create spaces of praxis in historically excluded policymaking governing bodies and spaces, navigate insider/outsider spaces, and embody their policy ways of knowing.…”

“…Once elected, their understanding of how race, gender, and politics played out in the classroom and on their campuses prominently informed their legislative priorities. In another study (Martinez, 2021a), Latina/o legislators straddled multiple policy and political worlds to challenge, resist, and succeed in policymaking spaces and higher education policy. Specifically, I used Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit) to examine how legislators drew from their multiple identities, including their families' immigration histories, faith, and Latina/o community narratives to illuminate the social, economic, and political structural inequalities.…”