The promise of language planning in indigenous early childhood education in Mexico

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Language Policy

Proposal

My dissertation provides an account of how different stakeholders in one Indigenous community in the Yucatan Peninsula respond to language policies and early childhood education (ECE) initiatives that cloud the promises of quality education under the guise of social justice, inclusive education, and economic returns. When these promises are debated, they often follow a human capital narrative, in which ECE adheres to the values of accountability and developmentally appropriate practices, rather than promoting learning experiences from a development-in-context perspective (Yoshikawa & Nieto, 2013). Unlike the majority of studies that frame language policy, ECE, and children as a trifecta that will disrupt the transmission of poverty and inequality (e.g., Vegas & Santibáñez, 2010), my 16-month ethnographic research in Huaytsik, the site of my study, seeks to understand how schools and families embody and interpret these policies as they bear on their own lives. Pursuant to this goal, my dissertation is guided by three research questions:

(1) How do local discourses about early childhood education circulate amongst parents, teachers, and community members?
(2) How do national and global discourses about early childhood and language education intersect with and influence schooling practices, in particular, in Indigenous language education?
(3) How are socio-economic processes, such as migration and mass tourism, transforming the conditions under which parents make educational choices?

Between May 2017 and August 2018, I engaged in ethnographic and participatory research in a single-teacher multigrade Indigenous preschool (ages 2 to 6) attended by 27 children, as well as in informal early childhood educational activities that took place in the community. In August 2018 I came back to the University of Pennsylvania to start to analyze my data with my dissertation advisor, Professor Nancy Hornberger. My collected data includes: fieldnotes from participant observations in the preschool and community events; audio and video recordings of classroom and school activities; archival data focused on ECE and language policies impacting the educational landscape in Mexico; and semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in both Spanish and Maya with parents, teachers, students, and community stakeholders. After I complete my data analyses during Fall 2018, I will start writing my dissertation chapters by January/February 2019.

Using a framework that combines comparative education methods and theories (e.g., Bartlett & Vavrus, 2009; Sabatier, 2007) with ethnographic, discourse, and intertextual analyses from language policy and planning studies (e.g., May & Hornberger, 2008), I investigate the ways through which local actors (including children) appropriate, negotiate, and even contest top-down policies and programs in education, as reflected through their communicative practices . This unique approach allows me to reveal the institutional discourses about ECE that have become embodied by individuals as they grapple with the promise of ECE as a broker of inequality.

My research draws upon literature that frames quality education in the early years as an intersectional process, moving away from an emphasis on standards, economic outcomes, and best practices, and towards a focus on context and language as reflections of practices, identities, and sociopolitical circumstances experienced by children, families, and communities (e.g., Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018). My dissertation also draws upon the literature of language planning studies, particularly ethnographic studies that explore connections between the processes of education, language use, and agency, as they relate to broader economic, political, and sociological formations (e.g., Valdiviezo, 2009). Moreover, my research responds to gaps in literature on ECE initiatives in low and middle-income countries. Literature grounded in a human capital perspective has shown that early childhood education interventions in the United States have important long-term economic benefits; however, there is little evidence of this for low and middle-income countries (Gertler et al., 2014), and even less from ethnographic research in early childhood settings in Indigenous communities (Adair, 2011). Thus, my study fills critical gaps in literature on multilingual education in middle-income countries through an investigation of how ECE stakeholders participate in the negotiations of language policies and ECE initiatives in marginalized contexts. Finally, my study connects the literatures on multilingual education and ECE as they converge around internal migratory processes. While scholars in the fields of language planning and comparative education have explored the role of transnationalism in bilingual education, specifically, in the context of migration from low and middle-income to high-income countries (e.g., García & Kleifgen, 2010), the impact of regional migration remains largely unexamined. This study will not only deepen our understanding of the ways in which language policies are implemented in ECE settings, but even more crucially, will contribute to the design of programs that consider the complexities of ECE in Indigenous contexts.

Author

• Aldo Anzures Tapia, University of Pennsylvania