Mapping Memory, Making Meaning: Journey Mapping, Testimonios, and Pláticas as Decolonial Arts-Based Research with Latine Students

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Arts based educational research and empowerment in/through the arts

Abstract

This paper explores how blending journey mapping, testimonios, and pláticas creates a decolonial, arts-based methodology that centers Latine students' lived experiences in higher education. These interwoven methods activate cultural memory, visual storytelling, and embodied knowledge to resist extractive research norms. Participants became co-theorists and artists of their own narratives, engaging in a process that was healing. By visualizing structural violence and imagining liberatory futures, the study affirms that art is not illustrative but generative. This work advances Latino Critical Race theory aligned, participatory research that enacts methodological justice through story, art, and community-rooted practice.

Author

• Estefania Toledo, Humber Polytechnic