Critical Pedagogical Teachers: Intentional Actions for Achievement and Empowerment of Latino English Learners

• In Event: Educational Agency and Transformation: Enacting Pathways for Empowerment With Latino Educators and Youth

Abstract

Classroom teachers instructing majority Latino English learners (ELs) are in a vulnerable position due impart to high stakes student assessment, driven by an era of standardized education (Duncan- Andrade, 2005; Orfield & Kim, 2005). The current educational environment has resulted in public classroom teachers becoming technicians (Apple, 2005). Teachers working with ELs are disenfranchised by pervasive deficit based schooling practices, specifically a narrowing of the curriculum (Bartolomé; 2007; Duncan-Andrade, 2007; Garcia, 2005) Additionally, the lack of professional development for teachers working with ELs has severely impacted student academic achievement (Gandara & Rumberger, 2009; Valencia, 2002). This study contends that critical pedagogical teachers (CPTs) have the capacity to integrate critical pedagogy into classroom settings, which strengthen Latino EL academic skills thus empowering them to become critical conscious intellectuals.

Critical Pedagogy, Democratic Schooling, and Constructivist Theory are the theoretical frameworks guiding this study. Critical Pedagogy encompasses an unwavering commitment to empower the powerless and transform existing social inequalities and injustices (Freire, 1974) Six guiding principles of critical pedagogy informed the research: Knowledge, Culture, Dialectical Theory, Power, Economic System and Praxis (Darder & Torres, 2003). Democratic Schooling is a process by which teachers and students work in communion on student driven academic projects, resulting in an emancipatory education (Darder, 1991; Giroux, 2005; Pearl & Pryor, 2005) and is a lens to document transformative pedagogical practices enacted by critical pedagogical teachers (CPT) in the area of student- teacher interaction, student voice and classroom environment. Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experience and ideas (Vygotsky, 1986). Within this context, classroom teachers provide a meaningful learning environment where teachers’ mediate instruction within zones of proximal development for each student (Vygotsky, 1986).

This study employed interpretive research to examine the pedagogical practices of five elementary critical pedagogical bilingual teachers of Latino ELs. Utilizing a multiple case study approach I chronicled the instructional practices of these teachers. Data was collected via teacher autobiographies, interviews and observations to narrate and analyze teacher practices. The guiding research questions addressed were:

• What identifies a CPT?

• How do CPTs meet the academic needs of English Learners?

• How do CPTs negotiate their practice in the educational system?

This paper will report on the struggles and hopes of two of the five critical pedagogical teachers whom were passionate about providing effective and critical instructional practices to empower and encourage Latino EL students. The paper will report on the transformative practices each teacher enacted that fostered students’ academic skills and provided critical conscious learners.

This study is significant because it presents a pathway for enhanced teaching of ELs academic skills within the constraints of the public school system. Through this research and further work, the goal is for to provide a process for teachers to document and name effective pedagogical practices that foster academic mobility of Latino youth and provide new and experienced teachers with critical instructional approaches needed to combat social reproduction practices in the education system.

Author

• Pablo Cortes Ramirez, Arizona State University