STEM "Sin Fronteras" in the Cali-Baja Region

• In Event: Innovative Educational Partnerships and Projects at the Mexico-U.S. Border: Centering Equity During Uncertain Times

Abstract

Objectives
Drawing from pre-existing longitudinal binational collaborations across four institutions from México and the United States, specifically from San Diego, Mexicali, Ensenada, and Tijuana, this paper reports on a binational project that brought teacher educators together to plan for learning opportunities for their pre-service teachers to develop critical consciousness (Freire, 2000; Valenzuela, 2016) in STEM education in a binational context. Faculty from both sides of the México-U.S. border collaborate to prepare teachers to be aware of injustices that appear in the fields of math and science education as they continue to perpetuate systematic oppression. While the overall project will focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, this presentation will focus on phase one of the project by presenting our findings around critical math education in the borderlands.

Theoretical Framework
This paper draws on Alfaro and Hernández’s (2016) four tenets of critical consciousness in dual language education, a framework with U.S. schools in mind. We examine how binational teacher educators on both sides of the border create learning opportunities for the pre-service teachers they prepare to develop critical consciousness that will inform their transborder pedagogies in working with binational preK-12 students. The four tenets: (1) ideological clarity, (2) pedagogical perspective and clarity, (3) access for all and (4) equitable spaces, assist with developing a lens for binational education that goes beyond the U.S.-centric nature of the framework.

Methods
We use an autoethnographic approach (Hughes, Pennington, & Makris, 2012; Ngunjiri, Hernandez, & Chang, 2010) that views the researcher as a critically reflexive participant. This method supports a critical examination of the act of conducting research of the self in relation to one's community. Specifically, we explore how five binational faculty collaborate across borders to prepare critical learning opportunities in math and science for pre-service teachers to develop as critically conscious bilingual and binational educators. Given current times related to the pandemic, we also explore the affordances and constraints that binational teacher educators face during a global pandemic. Data include recordings of binational teacher educator dialogues over zoom, individual and group reflections, and analytic memoing.

Findings and Scholarly Significance
In addition to considering the sociohistorical and sociopolitical nature of the collaboration, the team leveraged the realities that the global pandemic brought forth (e.g., closed border; reliance on virtual learning opportunities) which led to the piloting of an online approach to international programming. Together with the in-person transborder exchanges, the online approach proved to be an effective approach to teaching and learning in a matter that develops and considers intercultural competencies in virtual environments. It also helped foster stronger collaborations with the binational faculty members on both sides of the border and ultimately, the pre-service binational educators they collectively supported.

Authors

• Melissa Arabel Navarro, San Diego State University

• Priscila Azeneth Alvarez-Clark, Benemérita Escuela Normal Educadora Rosaura Zapata

• Sarina Ayala-Cortez, Escuela Normal Fronteriza Tijuana

• Karen Gastelum, Escuela Normal Fronteriza Tijuana