Transiciones: Pathways of Latinas and Latinos writing in high school and college by Todd Ruecker (review)

It might be easy to read this title and think that its sole audience is high school and college writing instructors, but in his book, Todd Ruecker speaks to issues affecting Latina/o students that will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and practitioners. More specifically, Ruecker analyzes the transitions to postsecondary education made by seven students following their graduating from the same high school, Samson High School, in El Paso, Texas. Four students enrolled at Borderlands University (BU), a public 4-year institution in the city, while three students attended the same branch campus of Borderlands Community College (BCC), also in El Paso.

As a scholar in rhetoric and composition, Ruecker focuses on writing as a crucial skill for students to transition to college-level coursework, not only in Freshman Composition classes but history, psychology, first-year college success seminars, political science, and even mathematics courses. Ruecker also includes the push and pull factors that positively or negatively affected students in their first year of college. Some of these factors are common in the research on Latina/o students and include how students built a strong support network around themselves, how they juggled their studies with their family responsibilities, and how they felt their high school writing experiences prepared or failed to prepare them for college. Since he also focuses on writing development and experiences between high school and college, the author also takes into account students’ enrollment in ESL programs in K-12 schools, their home language practices, and their confidence with academic writing conventions.

In Chapter 1, Ruecker explains to the reader the El Paso context and why it made for a fruitful place for conducting his research. He situates his study among several scholarly fields: the growing body of research on Latina/o students, a focus on students’ first year experiences, and how strong writing skills figure into students’ successes in college. In the next chapter, “College Decisions and Institutional Disparities,” Ruecker describes the three institutions students attended in this study with greater detail, as well as providing background on the factors that led to the students’ choices about where to attend college. As is common with Latina/o students, the participants in this study were concerned with the costs of college attendance and chose to remain local for a variety of factors, including their intention to live at home or starting at BCC to save money with the intention to transfer later.

It is also in this chapter that Ruecker draws comparisons across the institutions on writing. For example, he notes a disconnect between the type of writing students practiced at SHS, like narrative essays, which typically focused on preparing students for the state standardized test, and the writing students were asked to do at BCC and BU. Ruecker also points out that the type of writing students engaged in at BCC and BU differed, which could ultimately impact BCC students who transfer to BU.

The next four chapters present the bulk of the data Ruecker collected over a period of about 18 months as he followed students through their transitions from high school to college. Ruecker structures each chapter in the same way by introducing a participant’s background characteristics, an overview of their high school writing experiences, and a narrative describing their first and second semesters in college with a particular focus on the coursework they enrolled in and the writing they completed over the course of the semester. In addition to quotes from each participant about their experiences, Ruecker also includes testimonies from their high school and college writing teachers and short writing samples. After each narrative, Ruecker ties back to his discussion of academic capital, providing a lens to describe the factors that positively and negatively impacted students’ transitions.

Each of these chapters features at least one student, with some students grouped together for having relatively...