data on students
“In the absence of complete information, teachers must rely on students’ self-representations-including changes in their public identities-for signals about their deeper emotional and intellectual states. At the same time, it is important to remember that in some contexts meaning may be severed from representation. What may come across as youthful rebelliousness may be nothing more than youth exploring and finding ways to negotiate their lived experience as ethnic, bicultural human beings. In an ironic twist of fate, this group’s whole-hearted embrace of American urban youth culture-their grandly successful ‘assimilation’-is what assures their teachers’ propensity to negatively label them” (Valenzuela, p. 84): through their clothing, attitude and music choices.