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This article presents the institutional and historical context, methods, findings, and action-consequences of 'Our HMoob American College Paj Ntaub,' a qualitative, student-led Participatory Action Research (PAR) project documenting the sociocultural and institutional factors that influence HMoob American college students' experiences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Drawing on concepts from Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit), we identify sociocultural and institutional processes that misrepresent and erase HMoob American experiences, producing a profound and troubling experience of institutional invisibility which has serious consequences for students' wellbeing and educational attainment. However, we also document that student-led PAR research can be an effective means of enacting what we term 'counter-invisibility work,' by producing compelling counter-narratives that expand social networks for activism, outreach, and policy enactment.

In the field of network administration and programming, mastery of technical skills as well as non-technical or soft skills, such as teamwork, problem-solving, self-regulated learning, and communication, are increasingly emphasized both in practice and research. While little research exists concerning the instructional practices of such skills within community colleges, even less is known about community college instructors' conceptions of these crucial 21st century skills. This paper reports a qualitative, exploratory study examining how community college instructors defined and taught communication and teamwork competencies in their computer technology classrooms. The data was collected from multiple data sources -- instructor interviews, observations of classroom teaching, and student focus group discussions about their learning. Main findings include the influence of instructor backgrounds on their teaching practices, the situational nature of how instructors defined and conceptualized communication and teamwork skills, and the prominent use of teacher-centered practices in the teaching of communication and teamwork skills. We conclude that while faculty participants in this study considered teamwork and communication skills to be important, their classroom teaching was insufficiently student-centered to truly cultivate these skills. Thus, we argue that more training, resources, and support structures are needed for community college instructors in order to better cultivate the communication and teamwork skills of their students. This paper adds empirical evidence to the national conversations on the critical issues of skills, student employment, and pedagogy, and also utilizes a triangulating approach to better document faculty teaching practices.

Over the past 35 years, a range of 'new' policy actors and networks has emerged from the private sector under the rationale of efficient, free-market alternatives to traditional public policymakers. Under a critical policy studies framework, this paper uses discourse analysis and interviews with key stakeholders to examine how one regional workforce development initiative -- the UpSkill Houston initiative -- promotes a business-driven vision of education reform. We find that their programmatic narratives promote this vision through a focus on closing the 'skills gap' and tailoring education to best meet the labor needs of regional industries. We further note that UpSkill Houston espouses a skills-based vision of a worker pipeline directly from the education sector into high-growth regional industries. We situate UpSkill Houston's programmatic narrative within an expanding number of private regional workforce development initiatives that seek to leverage postsecondary public education resources to support regional business interests. We argue that initiatives such as UpSkill Houston are important to investigate, as they are among an increasing trend of new education policy actors and networks that exert control over education policy.

This article uses ethnographic data to examine the schooling experiences of Latinx emergent bilinguals and the educators who worked with them at a mid-size high school in a small Wisconsin city. Using Critical Race Theory, I argue that as tensions have increased in recent years from school funding cuts, deindustrialization, and demographic shifts, the community's white residents have repeated long-standing patterns of white supremacy to assert economic and cultural dominance over Communities of Color. I examine the manifestation of these dynamics in the schooling experiences of my participants through a racially hostile schooling environment and a general lack of investment in their education. This work offers important insights on the sociohistorical intersections of race and class within predominantly white, rural and suburban 'new destination' communities and problematizes the very notion of 'new' in such locals by questioning assumptions about who is 'native' and who is 'new' to a particular community

One of the problematic features of the "skills discourse" is the view that skills are decontextualized bits of knowledge and disposition. Instead, how skills such as communication are defined and used are shaped by cultural, political, and situational factors. In this article, we integrate theory from communication studies, critical discourse analysis, and cognitive anthropology to examine how 96 students, educators, and employers in nursing and engineering define and describe communication skills. Thematic and social network analyses revealed multiple "genres" of communication, their association with specific situations, variation in the structure of situated notions of communication by role group, and cultural models underlying their use. Results suggest new approaches for research and practice regarding teaching and cultural diversity in higher education.

This interview-based study explores the nature of reflective practice among postsecondary faculty by examining the types of teaching-related data faculty use during their reflection, their reflective practice process, and the contextual factors that influence that process. Our findings indicate faculty drew on both numeric and non-numeric data forms to engage in reflective practice which complicates the current imagination of "data" within the Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM) movement. Our findings also showed three distinct types of faculty reflection - instrumental, structural-critical, and social-critical - which demonstrate the varied functions and forms reflection can take. Finally, we demonstrate that although faculty consistently engaged in reflective practice, the outcomes of this reflection were severely limited by both individual bias and institutional constraints. Thus, while we recognize the current budgetary struggles many universities are facing, we argue that in order to better serve postsecondary students, particularly those from historically underrepresented groups, more institutional support is needed. Specifically, we argue postsecondary institutions play a significant role in facilitating critical examination by providing faculty the necessary space, time, and guidance to engage in critical reflection as well as the appropriate institutional mechanisms to voice concerns and enact change.

Graduate employability has increasingly become the key measure of a college and university's value. The focus on the economic returns to education is much more than an American trend, as postsecondary leaders all over the world are increasingly preoccupied with proving to skeptical legislators that their students are getting jobs after they graduate. One particular set of skills are at the very heart of debates about employability: the so-called "soft skills." These are the social, attitudinal, and self-regulatory competencies or traits that allow effective communication, working well with others, and persistence in the face of adversity. Based on the notion that the purpose of a college education is primarily (if not solely) to instill in students workplace-ready abilities and that competencies such as teamwork, critical thinking, and communication are especially desired by employers, the "Soft Skills Paradigm," is shaping public perception and education policy around the world. No longer a point of much contention; it has become common sense. The authors however believe that the influential logic of the "Soft Skills Paradigm," is detrimental to the long-term interests of the students who trust colleges and universities with their futures. They posit that the "Soft Skills Paradigm" is also damaging to those in the professions who seek skilled young people proficient in their disciplinary cultures and practices. In this era of growing racial and cultural intolerance, the authors contend that the "Soft Skills Paradigm" also reinforces the deficit model of achievement in higher education, effectively blaming students for their lack of employability and soft skills while ignoring the structural, cultural, and socio-economic forces that thwart mobility and access. The authors' critique in this article focuses on how the paradigm reflects a decontextualized and inaccurate vision of human competence as well as the role of learned skill in society and the workplace. By comparison, the "Soft Skills Paradigm" views skills as generic, context-independent, and simple to teach and learn. It overlooks how normative views of skills are constructed by those in positions of power, often marginalizing notions of skill from minoritized groups. In contrast, the authors turned to another way to consider the issues implicated in the debates about skills, college, and jobs. The "Cultural Capital Paradigm," views human competency as complex, grounded in professional norms, difficult to teach and learn, and differentially valued depending on the profession and situation. As proponents of the Cultural Capital Paradigm, the authors stress the notion that human competencies are: (1) varied, complex and interconnected; (2) assigned value in specific social, professional, political, and cultural contexts, and (3) are often used as gatekeeping mechanisms to include or exclude certain individuals from obtaining prestige and position. The article calls for a new approach to thinking about college students' skills and employability, and a paradigm shift from the "Soft Skills Paradigm," to the more nuanced realistic and humanistitic perspective -- the "Cultural Capital Paradigm." The article outlines the authors' perspective in detail, and argues for a change in current conversations about students' employability and skills. A table provides a side by side comparison of the differences between the two paradigms.