Pedagogical and Organizing Principles for Ethnic Studies: Toward a Decolonial Framework

• In Event: Ethnic Studies Praxis: Forging Alternative Visions and Possibilities for Public Education

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
Rooted in a decolonial framework, this study outlines working principles that can inform the praxes of Ethnic Studies. Specifically, I use a cultural-historical framework for identifying ways that naming, counter-storytelling, and healing come together as decolonizing strategies for reinventing teacher education and literacy development.

Theoretical Framework(s)
Building from a decolonial framework and standpoint (Mignolo, 2007; Tejeda et al, 2003) that challenges the “coloniality of power” via projects that reclaim and nurture non-Western epistemologies and practices rooted in different “cultural, political, and social memories,” (Mignolo, 2012), I seek to understand the emergence of anti-colonial discourse within two distinct practices, i.e. the preparation of teachers and critical literacy work with youth. In this study, a cultural-historical lens (Cole, 1998; Engeström, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978) is used as a theoretical and methodological resource for understanding how particular cultural practices are mediated by this new emergent anti-colonial discourse.

Methods & Data Sources
While this study attempts to develop working principles for Ethnic Studies practices, my analysis is based on auto-ethnographic strategies. Specifically, I use auto-ethnography to investigate two focal sites/spaces: teacher preparation and critical literacy work with high school youth. Working as an integral participant in both spaces, I analyze the mediation of learning and how anti-colonial frames/discourses are appropriated. Data sources include fieldnote observations over the span of 6 months and interviews with key participants (n = 8 teachers and 3 students). I use analytic coding techniques (Saldaña, 2015) for interpreting interview and observational data.

Findings
The mediation of a critical, anti-colonial consciousness exhibits a particular narrative character, moving from naming to counter-storytelling to healing. The analysis of key texts/readings for both teachers and students (in the critical literacy academy) is fundamental to naming our social worlds, which intersects with new frames and positions that challenge master-narratives about who we are as people, educators, and communities (this is the process of counter-storytelling, which is used deliberately in both spaces). Healing in turn is the cumulative achievement, manifest in the community spaces created as participants work together to break down texts and begin to understand their common histories of oppression. Nevertheless, healing emerged organically and was less a deliberate part of the spaces of critical literacy for teachers and youth.

Scholarly Significance
The work is significant in understanding learning in the process of decolonizing both teacher education and critical literacy work with youth. For those immersed in the movement for Ethnic Studies, decolonization and its mediation cannot be overlooked: the process itself, of engaging in critical reflection and dialogue, if not embodied in the very lived-experiences of teachers and youth, can reinscribe colonizing discourses and frames. For teacher educators, paying careful attention to language, textual encounters, and the deliberate spaces we co-construct (albeit oriented toward healing or community) is vital for the movement to grown organically. For those of us engaged in critical literacy work, Ethnic Studies pedagogies have the most potential to decolonize (teacher and students, together) when imbued with a constellation of practices that center critical dialogue together with healing/community.

Author

• Miguel Zavala, Chapman University