Pedagogical and Leadership Practices. Critical Pedagogy in a GYO Program: Identity, Sociopolitical Development, and Transformational Resistance in Latinx Students’ Aspirations to Teach

• In Event: AERA Teachers of Color Handbook Session 2

Abstract

This chapter examines curricular and pedagogical practices developed in a Grow Your Own program known as Pathways2Teaching, which served Latinx students in two high schools. It considers how the program fostered critical consciousness and nurtured aspirations to teach. Drawing on interviews, observations, and analysis of student work, the chapter illustrates how the program leveraged critical theories of education to cultivate critical understandings of schooling, and to analyze educational experiences on the part of students. The chapter also demonstrates how social justice education, and educators of color with this framework, can serve as conduits for transformative resistance. Discussion includes the program’s impact on student aspirations to teach, and differences that emerge due to varying school contexts where GYO programs operate.

Authors

• Brian A. Lightfoot, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Terrenda Corisa White, University of Colorado-Boulder