"American-Mexican" Students in Mexican Schools: Challenges and Opportunities to Rethink Curricularization of Spanish in Mexico

• In Event: Turning Languages Into Curriculum: Studies of Curricularization Across Contexts

Abstract

It is estimated that in the last few years more than half a million children and youth of Mexican descent have arrived from the United States to Mexico. Bilingual in English and Spanish, these American-Mexican youth (Jensen and Jabobo-Suárez 2019) are becoming part of Mexico’s plurilingual and multicultural society. Along with Mexican indigenous children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, American-Mexican students struggle linguistically and academically when taught only in Spanish through a monocultural mainstream curriculum, that states Spanish as the only vehicle for national unity and identity (Barriga Villanueva 2011). In this paper, I claim that the increasing presence of American-Mexican children and youth in Mexican classrooms present a unique opportunity to rethink, problematize and improve the complex system and set of mechanisms that have underlined the curricularization (Valdés 2015; Valdés and Parra 2018) of Spanish in Mexican schools up to today. I will argue that by widening the dialogue to include multiple perspectives, this rethinking will enable Mexican researchers, policy makers and educators to shape new possibilities for incorporating the most current theoretical developments around the conceptualizations of languages and theories of dynamic bilingualism into the design of educational agendas that take into account and benefit all children. Such developments include: a) the reconceptualization of students’ linguistic practices from a perspective of multicompetency (Cook 1992) and translanguaging (García and Wei 2014), b) moving beyond theories of deficit, c) grasping the opportunity to reflect critically on the role that ideologies of language and race have played into the curricularization of Spanish in Mexico.

Objectives

1. To understand the general linguistic challenges that American-Mexican students face in Mexican public schools.
2. To problematize underlying principles of the current Mexican Spanish programs that are incompatible with linguistic and cultural characteristics of American-Mexican students and students from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
3. To identify specific areas within Spanish programs in 6th grade and junior high where new theoretical principles could be incorporated to become more inclusive and to provide better opportunities for bilingual students to expand on their Spanish linguistic resources.

Theoretical Framework

I will draw from current theoretical proposals on curricularization of language (Valdés 2015; Valdés and Parra 2018); translanguaging (García and Wei 2014); Dynamic bilingualism (Flores and Schissel 2014) and raciolinguistics (Flores and Rosa, 2015).

Methods and Data Sources

I will conduct a literature review of:
• History of language policy in Mexico.
• History of bilingual education in Mexico.
• History of Spanish textbooks in Mexico.
• Spanish programs for 6th grade.
• Migration of Mexican youth in the U.S to Mexico and circular Mexico-U.S. migration.
• Review of transcripts of focus groups conducted with American-Mexican youth.

Findings and Implications

This paper aims to contribute to the current educational discussion in Mexico around the challenges that American-Mexican students are bringing into the classroom. By providing a theoretical alternative to current frames in Spanish programs, we aim to contribute to the design of educational and language policies that support minority and immigrant children in Mexico in social, academic and linguistic ways.

Author

• Maria Luisa Parra, Harvard University