Documenting the Contextualized Preparation and Professional Development of Critically Conscious Latina Teachers Through Critical Inquiry and the Healing Practices of Community

• In Event: 43.035 - What Is to Be Done With Curriculum and Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers

Abstract

Objectives
This paper documents the study of seven Latina teachers’ process-oriented engagement and conscientization over a 10-year period as they completed a grow-your-own-teacher program, became licensed teachers, and established themselves in Latinx, minority-majority public schools within the rural Midwest. It explored the ways Latinas interpret, interrogate, and navigate various social, cultural, and political contexts within/across educational institutions as impactful teachers for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students.

Theoreitical frameworks
I utilized LatCrit (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Solórzano, & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Yosso, 2006) and Chicana Feminist Epistemologies (CFE) (Delgado Bernal, 1998) to conceptualize, design, and implement this study. LatCrit was used to frame understandings of social realities shaping Latinas’ lived experiences and to problematize historic/contemporary structures within education (PK-16) that perpetuate silencing and marginalization of Latinx and linguistic minorities. I used CFE both, theoretically—to validate and hone my own cultural intuition and theoretical sensitivity as a Latina researcher, and methodologically—to center/elevate Latinas’ experiential and intuitive ways of knowing during data collection and analysis.

Methods
Given my prolonged engagement and positionality as a cultural insider, I utilized contextualized and dialectic methods of data collection and analysis (Goodson & Sikes, 2010; Van Manen, 1990). Through the use of life and professional story methodologies, I sought to uncover the mechanisms that proved most impactful for development and sustainment as Latina teachers within white normative educational spaces.

Data sources ,evidence
Careful thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2013) of coded interview and group session transcripts, field notes, and digital and virtual communications, followed by member checking and peer debriefing, led to the development of rich interpretations of their individual and collective stories (Kim, 2015).

Findings
Study findings indicated Latina teachers were impacted by individual and collective experiences that developed and/or drew on their: (a) contextualized identity backgrounds, (b) cultural wealth and experience as means for caring, (c) transformative resistance to whiteness, (d) sustainment of/for Latina community. Extending on to a growing body of research on development and induction of teachers of color, these findings illustrate an emergence of racialized, identitarian resources among Latinas and implicate a nuanced, culturally-contextualized, pedagogical approach to pre-/in-service CLD teacher professional development that engages participants in reflective storying, critical inquiry, and restorative community building.

Significance
Taken together, this research articulates critical, yet often overlooked, contextualized processes and informed pedagogies (that incorporate CFE) effective for CLD teacher preparation and professional development. Furthermore, it supports the argument that CLD professionals are not “ready-made” – merely because of their backgrounds—but instead require differently-focused pedagogical interactions and conscientization.

Author

• Amanda Morales, University of Nebraska - Lincoln