Seguimos en La Brega: How the concept of “La Brega/Bregando” can be used as an analytic tool in analyzing (social studies) teacher practice

• In Event: Theorizing Social Studies Education from Below: Civic Knowledge, Praxis, and Possibility from Los de Abajo

Abstract

Objective
In this paper, I share how I applied La Brega to better understand how teachers resist and reimagine insufficient, racist, and monolingual state standards in their everyday praxis.

Perspectives and Methods of Inquiry
La brega which translates to “the struggle or making do” is a colloquial term in Puerto Rican culture. In scholarship, Arcadio Díaz Quiñones (2000) defines the verb ‘bregar’ as an indicator of “una acción estratégica y de negociación” (a negotiated strategic action). He explores the concept of “la brega” as a lens to understand Puerto Rican history, politics, and identity stemming from the colonization of the Island by the United States. He writes, “It is a specific way of knowing how to deal with something, of understanding its subtle mechanisms. Those who deal with it skillfully handle something with wisdom, whether it is a world of things, a world of people, or language itself.” Dealing with perfection is certainly an art (Díaz Quiñones, 2000). Like Rasquachismo, La Brega embodies an aesthetic and analytic which extends into a perspective of resilience where adaptability, resistance and problem-solving collide. Gelpi-Acosta (2023) extends on this by saying “The first and second moments or movements of “la brega” (the aesthetic and the ethical) also have an underlying element that sustains their realization: art as the product of this struggle.”
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
In conversation with the panel theme, this paper highlights how bilingual Spanish-English elementary teachers find ingenious ways (a bregando praxis) to flip deleterious standards towards away from a monolingual stance.

Author

• Claribel González, University at Buffalo - SUNY