Exploring School Counselors’ use of Community Cultural Wealth to Support Latine Students’ STEM Aspirations: An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach

Despite growing diversity across many professions, Latine individuals remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce. School counselors are uniquely positioned to help eliminate these disparities by empowering Latine students to pursue STEM career pathways. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how school counselors capitalize on Latine students’ community cultural wealth to support them in pursuing postsecondary STEM opportunities. We conducted 50-90-minute interviews with eight school counselors from South Texas to explore their lived experiences supporting Latine students with STEM aspirations. Interview transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The following themes emerged: (a) linguistically responsive practices, (b) honoring cultural and familial significance, and (c) empowering students to engage in self-advocacy and navigate post-secondary spaces. The data analysis identified the following forms of Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth: (a) linguistic capital, (b) familial capital, and (c) navigational capital. Findings highlight how school counselors support Latine students’ pursuit of STEM education by empowering them to navigate barriers and challenges in the post-secondary education system and by fostering their cultural strengths, such as their bilingualism and family networks. We provide implications for school counselors to further empower Latine students to pursue STEM aspirations by cultivating additional forms of community cultural wealth, including aspirational, social, and resistant capital.