“My Children Will Have a Future”: The Transformative Praxis of Two Latina Community Teachers

• In Event: Community-Based Teaching and Teacher Education as Transformative Praxis for Educational Equity

Abstract

Objectives
As demonstrated in the first two papers, a small but rising number of teacher education programs have implemented community-based approaches to prepare future teachers to teach marginalized students and have successfully changed some prospective teachers’ attitudes toward marginalized communities (Fickel et al., 2018; Guillen & Zeichner, 2018; Zeichner et al., 2016; Zygmunt et al., 2018). However, research on inservice community teachers’ practice and its impact is sparse (Hong, 2019). This longitudinal qualitative study explored the daily practices of two community teachers as examples of transformative agents for marginalized students, guided by the question “What transformative actions do community teachers implement to support marginalized students?”

Theoretical Framework
This study proceeds from Murrell’s (2000) notion of a community teacher as one who lives and works in the same community where their students come from and “develops the contextualized knowledge of culture, community, and identity of children and their families as the core of their teaching practice” (p. 340). Murrell (2000) described four key features of community teachers: practice, situated perspectives on learning, cultural learning, and co-participation in a community of practice, highlighting a co-participation and co-learning with students, peers, and community members. The result is a transformative praxis (Authors, 2019) that enables community teachers to bridge school and community in service to educational equity.

Method and Data Sources
In order to explicate the details of specific community teachers’ praxis and impact, we pursued a five-year, longitudinal qualitative case study (Stake, 1995) to analyze community teachers’ transformative actions. Our cases were two Latina teachers, one in a rural Midwestern middle school (“Liviana”) and one in an urban Southwestern elementary school (“Sofia”). Data came from ethnographic interviews and classroom observations with each teacher, supplemented with interviews and observations in the community. Data analysis employed a priori codes (Saldaña, 2015) driven by Murrell’s (2000) community teacher framework supplemented with emergent codes from the participants’ own language.

Results
Grounded on their life experiences and knowledge gained from students and community members, both teachers built a transformative praxis with the community they shared with their students. They actively operated in Spanish while communicating with students and families, constantly conducted homes visits, and invited community members to teach in their classrooms. Both Liviana and Sofia not only acted as a bridge for their students and families with the schools, but supported them sustain their cultures and practices in pursuit of educational success. As one of the mothers commented,

If not for [Liviana], we would not know anything about what our children do at school and how they are treated. We feel secure to send our children to school because of her. We also know our children will have a future. (Parent Interview)

Significance
This study demonstrates that community teachers can be transformative intellectuals (Giroux, 1988) building praxis combining knowledge generated (Authors, 2009) from their lived experiences with resources from their communities. It points to the importance of recruiting, supporting, and retaining community teachers and presents examples of transformative community teachers of value to teacher education programs.

Authors

• Katrina Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Richard C. Miller, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Arnetha F. Ball, Stanford University