Validation theory into practice: asset-based academic advising with first-generation Latina engineering college students

To meet the increasing demands for more STEM graduates, United States (U.S.) higher education institutions need to support the retention of minoritized populations, such as first-generation Latinas studying engineering. The theories influencing this study included critical race theory, the theory of validation, and community cultural wealth. Current advising practices, when viewed through a critical race theory lens, reinforce deficit viewpoints about students and reinforce color-blind ideologies. As such, current practices will fail to support first-generation Latina student persistence in engineering. A 10-week long study was conducted on validating advising practices. The advisors for the study were purposefully selected while the students were selected via a stratified sampling approach. Validating advising practices were designed to elicit student stories and explored the ways in which advisors validated or invalidated the students. Qualitative data were collected from interviews and reflections. Thematic analysis was conducted to study the influence of the validating advising practices. Results indicate each advisor acted as a different type of validating “agent” executing her practices described along a continuum of validating to invalidating practices. The students described their advisors’ practices along a continuum of prescriptive to developmental to transformational advising. While advisors began the study expressing deficit viewpoints of first-generation Latinas, the students shared multiple forms of navigational, social, aspirational, and informational capital. Those advisors who employed developmental and transformational practices recognized and drew upon those assets during their deployment of validating advising practices, thus leading to validation within the advising interactions.