Testimoniando New Understandings and Possible Futures of Race-Disability Intersections in School

• In Event: Reflection, Resistance, and Resilience: Latina/o/x and Hmong Youth Expanding Possibilities Through Testimonios and Youth-Driven Designs

Abstract

Paper #3

Objective
Bilingual Latina/o/x high schoolers labeled with disabilities (LWD) face barriers to meaningful learning and participation in schools (deBrey et. al., 2019) including being positioned as “at-risk” based on their classification (Thorius & Sullivan, 2013), lacking the early academic supports needed (Samson & Lesaux, 2009), and inappropriate disability identification (Artiles, et. al., 2005). Often, these education issues are framed as problems within the students, who seldom have opportunities to engage in opportunities to make sense of the inequities they experiences (Artiles & Kozleski, 2016). The purpose of this paper is to understand the disability-race intersection experience of a bilingual Latino LWD, how testimoniando helped him make sense of his educational, and his dreams for others framed by the following questions: How does a bilingual Latino LWD use sociocritical literacies to understand his educational experience? What possible futures does a bilingual Latino LWD dream for others?

Theoretical Framework
We used cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT; Gutiérrez, Engeström, & Sannino, 2016) coupled with speculative education (Garcia & Mirra, 2021) as a framework to connect participation in activity systems across current and imagined futures. CHAT generally looks at the interconnected activity systems that individuals move across (Engeström, 2001), speculative education allowed us to rethink CHAT as systems connected across time and space, including youth-imagined systems of possibility (Garcia & Mirra, 2021).

Methods & Data Sources
We collected over 57 hours of video data from a four week program, including participant artifacts and 31 pre- and post-interviews from the youth participants and their parents. For this paper, we selected all data pertaining to one focal student, Cristian, as a critical case (Merriam, 1998). Data were analyzed using video-informed ethnographic methods (Erickson, 1986; 1992) as well as inductive and deductive methods (Erickson, 1986). As a team, we viewed the corpus of video and focal youth interview data starting analysis through writing narratives and examining data sources exhaustively to identify data that (dis)confirmed tentative research assertions (Erickson, 1986; 2004).

Results
Analysis of data pertaining to Cristian’s participation in a sociocritical literacy summer program resulting in three preliminary findings. First, was that Cristian resisted the disability label that was imposed on him in school. He described himself as a child who had difficulty and that needed supports, but never identified as an individual with a disability despite his institutional label. Second, through the process of testimoniando Cristian reframed his educational failure as an institutional failure rather than an individual failure. The final finding, through testimoniando, Cristian recognized that the race-disability intersection that shaped his education experience was both a personal experience but also an experience that impacts many. With this understanding, he laid out a vision for school change that spoke to the race-disability experiences of bilingual Latina/o/x students LWD.

Significance
This paper disrupts the truths that are normalized in educational research by advancing a counter narrative shaped by a bilingual Latino student LWD, a much needed voice in further understanding how race-disability intersections shape schooling experiences.

Authors

• Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona
  Presenting Author

• Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Kate Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Joan J. Hong, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author