"More Meaningful to Do It Than Reading It": Rehearsing Praxis Among Mexican American/Latinx Preservice Teachers

• In Event: 43.035 - What Is to Be Done With Curriculum and Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores the potential use of drama-based pedagogical tools to prepare future bilingual teachers to respond to the need for advocacy inside and outside the classroom. Twenty-two pre-service Mexican-American/Latinx bilingual teachers performed real-life narratives of conflict experienced by local bilingual teachers in a teacher preparation class in the Southwest. Using Boal’s (2006) Forum Theater, these reenactments provided pre-service bilingual teachers with a context to develop assertiveness, positionality, and a means to co-construct emergent bilingual advocate-teacher identities. The improvisational nature of the performances allowed the participants to explore critical issues, develop their stance towards issues of immigration and racism, and rehearse their identities as advocates.

Theoretical framework
A critical stance is relevant to future teachers in the field of bilingual education for “the development and expression of the bicultural voice” (Darder, 2011, p. 203) of the bilingual preservice teacher. However, a strong sense of cultural identity and critical understanding about these issues is not a given within the Mexican-American/Latinx bilingual/bicultural community. Pre-service teachers from this community are not immune to cultural alienation and are in need of an anti-racist/oppressive preparation program (Zeichner, in Sleeter, 2008). Darder (2012) adds that even for bilingual/bicultural future teachers who developed and express the bicultural voice, it is a necessary examination and rejection of technocratic and instrumental pedagogies that hinder the development of critical awareness in order to examine alternatives that foster conscientization (Freire, 1993).

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry and data sources
In this study, I utilized critical ethnography (Madison, 2011) and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001). Critical ethnography provides a lens centered in the body as a source of knowledge and cultural production. Critical discourse analysis incorporates connections between language, power relations, and hegemony. This relationship is an important aspect of the performance of the narratives of local bilingual teachers since the body and the thought processes articulated by language should not create a binary (Conquergood, 1991). I collected data through the videotaping of the reenactment as counterstorytelling (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), participants’ reflections, 2-hour long semi-structured conversations (Alim, 2004) to examine the participants’ attitude towards social justice issues and perceptions of themselves as advocates.

Results
The reenactments afforded the participants the opportunity to become teacher advocates on the stage and rehearse their positions in scenarios that may occur in their future schools. The participants had the reins to control the outcomes of each scenario and, to rehearse responses on a trial and error basis. However, the main accomplishment of the performances was locating their rehearsed advocacy into the real world. Most participants reported they found themselves advocating for language rights and bilingual education among their peers, relatives, and community parents.

Scholarly significance
This study contributes to the scholarship of pedagogical practices for the preparation of future bilingual teachers to respond to the need for concrete examples of pedagogical models that have the potential to empower them to think critically about the issues surrounding Bilingual education and to encourage emergent advocacy inside and outside the classroom.

Author

• Blanca Caldas, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities