Integrating Ethnic, Cultural, and Identity Studies With Translanguaging Juntos to Cultivate Critical Outlooks in Dual-Language Bilingual Education

• In Event: Exploring Successful Integration for Equitable Teaching and Learning in Two-Way Bilingual Education (TWBE) Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
Drawing from a university and state education agency Borderlands and Ethnic Studies (BEST) Summer Institute, a professional learning for K-12 social studies teachers in different contexts which brought ethnic, cultural, and identity studies together with translanguaging juntos to develop critical dispositions, ensuring that students are civic-ready. This exploratory qualitative collaborative work was to understand and explore how teachers’ implementation of the newly adopted social studies curriculum was integrated into their K-12 classrooms. This work offers an example of one teacher’s lesson from primary source documents that tell the untold story of the trailblazers of Ethnic Studies, Patsy and Nadine Cordova Sisters in Arms to grow their dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) programs at the secondary level.

Theoretical Framework
Three theoretical concepts framed the collaboration, Subaltern/Counter-Hegemonic life-world knowledges, Borderlands theory, and Translanguaging. Positioning educators to develop curricula that drew from what Author (2022) refers to as Subaltern/Counter-Hegemonic life-world knowledges which are perceived as being substantially more threatening to middle-class sensibilities and notions of what constitutes “palatable” students’ funds of knowledge. Anzaldúa’s (1990) Borderlands theory is “rewrite[ing] history using race, class, gender, [language], and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross borders, that blur boundaries” (xxv-xxvi). These boundaries can be blurred by bringing principles and methodologies that recognize the Borderlands culture, ethnic, identity, and language richness into curricula. Flores and García (2013) acknowledge and validate how bilinguals demonstrate knowledge using the cultural and linguistic diversity they bring to school by leveraging their translanguaging pedagogical practices.

Methods, Data Sources, and Analysis
The exploratory qualitative research (Yin, 2014) primary data source in this work is the Cordova Sisters' assignments and discussions from the lesson developed at the Institute. Methods used were interviews with the classroom teacher and field notes of discussions where students described the cultural and language artifacts from the Cordova Sisters primary sources. The interview transcripts and field notes were analyzed through two rounds of coding through a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to identify themes, then interpreted their meaning to generate final themes (Creswell, 2014).

Findings
Two themes were generated: Ethnic Studies transladoras are educators merging linguistic borderlands and Translanguaging juntos a perspective to refer to teacher and students' core beliefs of bringing the translanguaging corriente to the surface and recognizes their corriente to shift as needed for deeper comprehension of text, expand language development, and cultivate a bilingual and ethnic identity (García et al., 2017). Findings show how the teacher supports her students not only in learning the social studies content but also in becoming familiar with the Cordova Sisters Ethnic Studies vision and to seek how translanguaging opens a space for communicating ideas, thoughts, concepts related to the primary sources introduced in class.

Scholarly Significance
Implications suggest that critical reflection and awareness about the dynamic nature of ethnicity, culture, identity, and language within borderland communities offer rich opportunities for liberating processes among emergent bilinguals in DLBE. Such critical work is needed to develop more civic-ready students that advocate for their ethnic, cultural, and linguistic rights.

Author

• Susana Ibarra Johnson, New Mexico State University