Learning for Dis/abled Bilingual Latina/o/x Youth: Expanding to the Consequential for Transformative Futures

• In Event: Disability Justice in (Special) Education Futures: Exploring Critical, Intersectional, and Social and Emotional Dimensions

Abstract

This study explores the expansive learning that occurred for two dis/abled1 bilingual Latina/o/x/s youth in an innovative summer program we called GANAS2. GANAS was a re-mediated learning ecology (Gutiérrez, 2023; Pacheco et al., 2025) designed to facilitate expansive forms of learning beyond narrow framings that do not account for the complexities of students’ ethno-racial, linguistic, and dis/ability identities, lives, and contexts. Using testimonios as a primary artifact for exploring conditions of oppression and/or marginalization youth individually and collectively experience (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012), dis/abled bilingual youth engaged in learning that recognized (a) the limits of narrowing learning to discrete academic skills and (b) broadened learning to better account for repertoires of practices that youth could use to better understand and navigate the social conditions and contexts that they traverse. The purpose of this secondary analysis is to shift attention toward the forms of learning that are consequential to the lives of two dis/abled bilingual Latina/o/x youth through the GANAS program framed by the following question: What do the cases of two dis/abled bilingual Latina/o/x youth tell us about the types of learning consequential to their lives?
This study draws on sociocultural and cultural historical theories of learning (Cole, 1996; Lave, 1996; Nasir & Hand, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978) and, in particular, the concept of consequential learning to better understand how learning situated in sociopolitical contexts and histories makes certain learning outcomes especially consequential for bilingual Latina/o/x youth labeled with disabilities. Consequential learning has been theorized as learning that youth render valuable and that is “forged within sociopolitical histories where issues of power, privilege, and location deeply shape opportunities to learn and become… in pursuit of transformative outcomes at the individual and social levels” (Birmingham et al., 2017, p. 820).
We used multi-case study design to understand the learning experiences of two dis/abled Latino/a/x bilingual learners (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 1995) that participated in two separate iterations of GANAS, a four-week virtual summer program designed for dis/abled and non-dis/abled bilingual Latina/o/x and Hmong youth held in the summers of 2021 and 2022. In each summer, we collected over 57 hours of video data, artifacts, and 31 pre- and post-interviews from the youth and parents. We collectively analyzed all video data using video-informed methods (Erickson, 1986) with additional analysis cycles for all data pertaining to the two focal students. This included coding, memoing, and writing and testing key assertions specific to consequential learning by examining data sources that (dis)confirmed our assertions through collaborative work (Erickson, 1986).
Preliminary findings suggest that consequential learning unfolds by engaging youth in learning that does not happen devoid of context but rather connected to social issues shaping their educational experiences. Diego’s consequential learning was through his exploration of an educational system that rendered him a problem, and Adela's consequential learning was through examination of the role economic scarcity, housing insecurity, and anxiety played in her educational experience. Through their lived experiences as curricula, they learned that though framed as pathology, their bodies carry important knowledges. They also learned that literacy can be an agentive means for authoring their own versions of their experiences by filling in silences and rewriting themselves. Lastly, they learned that relational work strongly mediated their ability to thrive and how they are positioned as dis/abled as learners. We argue that Diego and Adela gained skills and knowledge that will transfer over to what is traditionally framed as learning in schools, but they also engaged in types of learning that are far more consequential and potentially transformative to their lives and futures as youth trying to access a quality education while experiencing systemic multiple oppressions simultaneously.

Authors

• Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona

• Joan J. Hong, University of Maryland

• Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kate Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Na Lor, Teachers College, Columbia University