Testimonio as a Speculative Tool for Disability-Language-Race-Informed (Inclusive) Education

• In Event: Reconfigurations of Bilingual Special/Inclusive Education Through Speculative Design Experiments

Abstract

Purpose
Bilingual Latina/o/x high schoolers labeled with disabilities (LWD) face ample barriers to meaningful learning and participation in schools (deBrey et. Al., 2019) with seldom opportunities to make sense of their educational inequities (Authors et al., 2016). The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine testimonio as a speculative tool for a bilingual Latino LWD, Diego , to engage in future-making work by rewriting his own educational experience through his disability-language-race intersection in a 4-week virtual summer program for bilingual Hmong and Latina/o/x high schoolers (some LWD) framed by the following questions: (a) What educational inequities does a bilingual Latino LWD identify through testimonio writing? (b) What disability-language-race informed speculative futures are identified in the testimonio process?

Theoretical Framework
This study used critical disability raciolinguistics (CDR; Cioè-Peña, 2021) along with cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT; Gutiérrez et al., 2016) and speculative education (Garcia & Mirra, 2021) as a tripartite framework to connect participation in the GANAS program to historicized systems and youth-imagined futures (as imagined systems).

Methods & Data Sources
Case study design was appropriate for the purpose of this study since we were able to delve deeply into Diego’s experience (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 1995). We also see case study as a complimentary design to testimonio as a product and process. We collected over 57 hours of video data from the program, including artifacts and 31 pre- and post-interviews from the youth and parents. We collectively analyzed all video data using video-informed methods (Erickson, 1986) with additional cycles of analysis for all data pertaining to Diego. This included coding, memoing, and writing and testing key assertions by examining data sources that (dis)confirmed our assertions through collaborative work (Erickson, 1986).

Results
Our analysis resulted in two overarching findings. The first were the types of “dis-belonging” Diego experienced in schools purported to be inclusive (Baglieri et al., 2011). We found that disability, language, and race worked together to compound inequities. Consequently, Diego attempted to ameliorate these negative experiences by distancing himself from these aspects of his identity as a form of protection resisting the disability label and losing his connections to bilingualism while valuing the perceived power of English for Latina/o/xs.
Tracing the “dis-belonging” Diego experienced in inclusive schools led to our second finding, which was a disability-language-race informed speculative inclusive education. Diego’s future-dreaming included a system where multilingualism, disability, and race are affirmed and centered rather than treated as deviant or deficient. Diego also called for humanizing and disability-centered pedagogies that saw him as someone worth investing time, care, and alternative instructional approaches.

Scholarly Significance
Diego’s testimonio creates a sense of urgency for re-designed educational systems that disrupt normative centers and attend to the intersectional complexity of bilingual Latina/o/x youth LWD by looking to the margins, or borderlands, as critical starting points for designing for equity in educational spaces (Anzaldúa, 1987; Gutierrez & Jurrow, 2016).

Authors

• Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona

• Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Joan J. Hong, University of Maryland

• Kate Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Na Lor, Teachers College, Columbia University