Growing Critically Conscious Teachers for an Emerging Ethnic Studies Policy Environment

• In Event: Grow Your Own Programs and Teachers of Color: Examining Program Design, Preparation, and Retention

Abstract

As head of a national grow-your-own (GYO) teacher educator pathway for predominantly Latina/o youth with an interest in teaching careers, the National Latino Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) has developed an actionable conceptual framework or architecture premised on partnerships among community-based organizations (CBOs), school districts, and universities. In so doing, we have been intentional about recommending changes to higher education curriculum that align to the kind of preparation that doubly equips future teachers for an Ethnic Studies world. Given that the GYO research literature is scarcely linked explicitly to the current movement in Ethnic Studies, the key objective of this presentation, in line with the conference theme, is to examine the dreams, possibilities and necessity of teacher and administrator preparedness for this new policy and practice environment.

Our theoretical framework for growing critically conscious teachers grows specifically out of our work with NLERAP (Author, 2014; Author, 2016) that dovetails well with the structure and philosophy of other efforts (especially see Skinner, Garreton, & Schultz, 2011). Specifically, we advocate for specific kinds of course work that future teachers of Latin@ youth should be obligated to take. This paper utilizes a conceptual/theoretical model of cultivating teachers’ critical consciousness drawing drawing from NLERAP’s theory of action where CBOs, a crucial feature in our view of GYO pathway programs (e.g., Auhtor, 2016; Skinner et al., 2011), have a respected voice.

Case study methodology was used to explore this model and the primary data source involved one of NLERAP’s sites, namely Academia Cuauhtli, a Saturday School in Austin, Texas, that the author directs. Initial ethnographic data was gathered for this study in Spring, 2017 and will continue in Fall, 2017 to pilot the program. As we are in the design stage of developing a GYO pathway into the University of Texas at Austin (UTA), this will involve ongoing feeder-pattern conversations and possible changes to curriculum in order to grow the kind of culturally responsive teachers that our CBO seeks. Initial analysis indicates key design GYO design components, such as collegiality between UTA and the school district, as well as between these and the community. Also, as it relates to the curricular focus of the GYO model, the Ethnic Studies component, in response to our new policy environment in Texas, invites a new dynamic that may result in between-college partnerships so that area studies (Mexican-American Studies, African American Studies, etc.) can become part of the solution to a CBOs demand for culturally responsive teachers and teaching.

Zeichner (2016) is calling for “Teacher Prep 3.0,” where the teaching profession exists “in solidarity” with the communities that they ostensibly serve. With implications for policy and practice, this GYO opportunity is a case study that promises to flesh out the kind of community-anchored, sociocultural and sociopolitical knowledge for a flagship institution working in solidarity to grow community-anchored, future GYO educators in Austin, Texas. This also has implications for GYO programs committed to a curricular focus on Ethnic Studies in the preparation of their teachers.

Author

• Angela Valenzuela, The University of Texas - Austin