Writing Our Futures: Indigenous Teachers' Trajectories and Expectations (Poster 42)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Across the Americas, Indigenous teachers are key actors in efforts to provide relevant and high-quality education to Indigenous students and contribute to cultural preservation, language revitalization, and the transformation of current unjust social conditions. However, the ways in which Indigenous teachers develop teacher agency, particularly in bilingual contexts, has not been sufficiently researched. Thus, centering the voice of Indigenous teacher educators, drawing from the continua of biliteracy framework, and building on an on-going research partnership, this study presents findings of a design-based research (DBR) project implemented to reflect on the teaching of biliteracy competencies in Spanish, Qom, and Wichí courses at two teaching institutions in Northern Argentina. Data collection was conducted during the second semester of 2022 by a team of Indigenous local researchers and consists of 15 interviews with teacher educators, 2 focus groups with Indigenous pre-service teachers, and weekly classroom observations. Employing Indigenous storytelling (Iseke, 2013) as an interview and data analysis approach four emergent themes were identified: resignification of personal and community stories, constructive and resilient responses to injustice, the tension between cultural maintenance and transformation, and Indigenous futurities.

Author

• Zaynab Amelia Gates, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author