Professor
School of Education
November 1, 2007
Professor Brings Research Interests and Experience to UCI.
Estela Zarate (Ph.D., UCLA) has joined the Department of Education as an Assistant Professor. Prior to coming to UCI, she was Director of Educational Policy Research at the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) at the University of Southern California. At TRPI her research revolved around educational issues facing Latinos in the U.S. Institute policy reports and briefs produced under her directorship included Perceptions of Financial Aid Among California Latino Youth, Equity In Offering Advance Placement (AP) Courses In California High Schools, and Latino Scorecard 2006: Road to Action.
Dr. Zarate’s most recently released report, Understanding Parental Involvement: Perspectives, Expectations and Recommendations, addresses the role that Latino parents play in their children’s education. She explained, “Parents and parental involvement are the new factors to consider in educational outcomes, but no one agrees on what that means and what parental involvement is supposed to look like.” In her study, she asked a national sample of Latino parents, teachers, and students about their perceptions of parental involvement. The study demonstrates that parents, schools, and teachers all have different definitions of parental involvement and that schools typically do not have a cohesive vision of how parents should be involved.
At UCI Dr. Zarate will continue to research educational issues that affect urban and immigrant Latino communities. Her research interests include examining longitudinal trajectories that lead to college enrollment and schooling conditions that influence college enrollment.
Currently, Dr. Zarate is studying middle school factors that contribute to high school completion and completion of college eligibility requirements for a large cohort of students from a large urban school district. This research has been partly funded by UC ACCORD and has involved a graduate student researcher and collaboration with a team of UC ACCORD scholars at UCLA.
In addition to her appointment in DOE, Dr. Zarate is affiliated with the Chicano Studies Department. Winter Quarter 2008 she will be teaching an introductory undergraduate course in multicultural education and a social/cultural foundations course for graduate students.