Enacting an Intergenerational Critical Participatory Epistemology via a Latinidad Upper Division Elective Course and Curriculum Resources

• In Event: Enacting an Intergenerational Critical Participatory Epistemology via a Latinidad Upper Division Elective Course and Curriculum Resources

Abstract

Purposes.
This paper explores the development of a dual enrollment high school Latinidad studies elective in our curriculum initiative, documenting the process and implementation of working alongside youth researchers in partnership with educators and community members. We explore how the conceptual framework for the Latinidad blueprint, comprised of four main pillars (each with three associated design principles): Belonging, Critical Skills Across Contexts, Dynamic & Inquiry-Based Learning, and Multiple Ways of Knowing (see Figure 1), is enacted in the course of this collaborative process and what literacy practices facilitate the development of intergenerational solidarity, as well as how intergenerational tensions can be leveraged to broaden the scope of what we envision as possible in educational contexts (Yeom et al., 2020). Working against the foundational legacies of racism, colonialism, and white supremacy in schooling, we have ample evidence of the need for a conceptualization of Latinidad and a curriculum vision designed to enact alternative futures--even alternative worlds (New London Group, 1995).


Perspectives.
Our paper attends to the enactment of cypher as pedagogy (Lyiscott et al., 2020) toward transformative and participatory curriculum-making informed by youth participatory action research as method and praxis to interrogate the multiple ways in which knowledge is produced in classrooms and beyond (Caraballo et al., 2017). In this intergenerational multi-partner collaboration, the design and development of a dual enrollment course on Latinidad was part of a large-scale curriculum initiative grounded in a conceptual framework that seeks to expand students and educators’ understanding of Latinidad, where dual enrollment and early college programs have been conceptualized as bridges to success in higher education for first generation college students and underrepresented students overall (Denecker, 2013).


Modes of Inquiry and Data.
Drawing on meeting notes, transcripts, and artifacts; draft syllabi versions; sample curricular materials; and reflections from youth collaborators during the 2025-26 planning year, we document and analyze the dynamics of this collaboration as well as the challenges and opportunities that emerged in our work together as part of a broader curriculum initiative. The analysis reported here reflects an iterative process of collaborative practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2009), where a YPAR approach challenges both youth and adult allies to rethink curriculum and pedagogy as collaborative and democratic endeavors (Cook-Sather & Agu, 2013).

Warrants and Significance.
Dedicated to expanding what counts as knowledge through youth-driven collaboration in curriculum development, the dual enrollment Latinidad studies course engages critical, multimodal, and participatory literacies to facilitate healing and build collective power between young people and adults, highlighting some of the possibilities afforded in enacting the critical epistemological vision of the conceptual framework for the Latinidad initiative. Given the inequitable histories that continue to shape education, “working in solidarity is not a given. It’s an achievement, the product of humanizing relationships that honor the specificity of each person’s history, story, and interests” (Ghiso et al., 2020, p. 197). This paper explores the emergent tensions and possibilities for alternative educational futures where youth and adults learn with and from one another in the service of curricular transformation.

Authors

• Limarys Caraballo, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Gisely Colon Lopez, City University of New York Graduate Center