“Like what Guadalupe Valdés says: we aren’t experts, parents are!”: Ethnography, PBL and Teacher Education

• In Event: Preparing Educators to Work with Culturally Diverse and Multilingual Families

Abstract

This paper delineates how pre-service teachers’ developed dispositions to working with ethnically and linguistically diverse families through study of ethnography coupled with project-based-learning. Students’ study of Con Respeto: Bridging the Distance Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools (Valdés 1996) facilitated epistemological shifts about family-school relationships while putting theory into practice by designing and implementing family outreach. Despite shifting students’ ideology, critical questions emerged about who pre-service teachers’ learning serves and power structures in teacher education.

Author

• Jen Stacy, University of New Mexico