The Co-Design of a U.S.-Mexico Binational-Bilingual Teacher Education Curriculum

• In Event: 21.032 - How Immigration and Education Policy Collide in a "Post-Truth" Era

Abstract

Objectives
There are 600,000 U.S.-born children trying to find their way in Mexican schools (Hamann, Wortham, & Murillo, 2015; Jacobo-Suarez, 2017), and 700,000 Mexican children facing similar struggles in the U.S. The needs of these binational students often go unmet because of poor communication, bureaucratic challenges, language barriers, and unequal opportunities on both sides of the border (Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Mordachi & Orfield, 2017). Especially in the current context, in which more US children are entering Mexican schools in a pattern of “return migration” (Jacobo-Suarez, 2017), it is critical to develop binational partnerships to address these issues. This paper examines the work of a group of teacher educators from four institutes of higher education who are collaborating across the U.S.- Mexico border to develop a curriculum that prepares teachers to work with binational, bilingual students.

Framework
Prior research indicates the need to understand how binational partnerships are developed around trusting relationships that afford equal status to educators on both sides of the border (Hamann, 2003). Employing a phenomenological approach to “describe the common meaning of several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or phenomenon” (Creswell, 2013, p. 76), we examined how relationships evolved as teacher educators undertook curriculum development, the factors that shaped the nature of these relationships, and how ideological consensus was garnered in the midst of policy change in both countries.

Methods
We draw on observations, artifacts, and interviews collected in 2018 over eight months as 16 binational teacher educators developed a curriculum for use in the border region. Observations took place during visits to public schools in the U.S. and Mexico and during bi-monthly meetings and workshops, and we collected meeting agendas and artifacts. We conducted semi-structured interviews related to each teacher educator’s involvement in the curriculum development process, the interactions and activities that informed their understandings of the binational context, and the challenges or moments of disequilibrium experienced as they learned about policy and practice on both sides of the border.

Results
We found that institutional and individual factors shaped the curriculum development process. Given different political contexts, and in approaches to teacher education in those contexts, the team wrestled with developing mutual understandings of the sociopolitical, sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and socioemotional elements of teaching and learning across borders. Further, policies related to immigration and teacher education simultaneously fostered and hindered the development of equal partnerships. At the individual level, it was necessary for teacher educators to analyze their beliefs and actions, many of which had been normalized in everyday transnational experiences (Alfaro & Bartolome, 2017; Gay & Kirkland, 2003), and to return to the theoretical underpinnings of their pedagogy, which were grounded in sociology, anthropology, and psychology.

Significance
This paper examines the affordances and constraints involved in developing curricula across systems shaped by distinct immigration and education policies. It highlights the need for capacity building across levels of the system, both within institutes of higher education and among faculty, to increase awareness of the realities binational students face.

Authors

• Cristina Alfaro, San Diego State University

• Sera Jean Hernandez, San Diego State University

• Megan Hopkins, University of California - San Diego

• Patricia C. Gándara, University of California - Los Angeles