Imagining Re-Existence Pedagogical Shifts in Bilingual Teacher Education: A Decolonial Option

• In Event: Decolonizing Bilingual Teacher Education: Reimagining Possibilities for Transformation

Abstract

This study shows a cohort of 22 bilingual preservice teachers performing re-existence (Albán, 2013) as a decolonial pedagogical option to contest linguistic, xenophobic, racist, and classist oppression at micro level at schools. The pedagogical shifts during the course (through the use of counterstories as legitimate texts, the centrality of the body through drama-based pedagogies, and the use of translanguaging as the language of instruction) facilitated the students' production of skits to tackle compelling issues pertaining to bilingual education. The participant-generated scripts are examples of the crafting of their tactics to engage in re-existence to subvert dominant discourses/ideologies to provide equitable education for culturally/linguistically minoritized students and families and imagine other ways of being, teaching and learning.

Author

• Blanca G. Caldas Chumbes, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities