Becoming Maestros/as: Exploring Latina/o Identities in Figured Worlds of Bilingual Preservice Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Communities of Praxis and Social Justice in Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

In my paper, I investigate the racial and cultural identity productions of a group of Latina/o preservice in a bilingual teacher preparation program. To understand the identity productions of the Latina/o preservice teachers, I rely on the Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, and Cain’s (1998) concept of “figured worlds” with they define as “socially produced, culturally constituted activities where people come to perform new self-understandings” (p. 40-41). I argue that the bilingual program inverted the dominant social capital relationships of schooling by creating a figured world that emphasized fluency in Spanish and Latina/o cultural knowledge. This figured world was maintained through incorporating linguistic artifacts like nombres, dichos, and canciones and through cultural artifacts like counter-narratives of historically marginalized groups and individuals.

Author

• Eric Ruiz Bybee, Brigham Young University