Co-Constructing Meaning Through Plática: Latina Preservice Testimonios, Sharings, and Experiences in a Teacher Education Program at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

• In Event: Preservice Teachers of Color Telling Truths: Engaging Multimodal Pedagogies and Methodologies to Document Educational Realities

Abstract

The education system has flawed the educational experiences for Students of Color as it has been inextricably “tied to the stratification of labor, normalization of unequal resources, assimilation, cultural genocide, cultural erasure, and White supremacy” (Phillip et al., 2019, p. 258; Kohli, 2014). Though Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) for example, acknowledge the shifting demographics of an institution they do not necessarily account for the ways in which they alter their pedagogical teaching practices (Garcia, 2019). As such, Scholars, like Kohli (2021), have noted, it is essential teacher education program “reflect on the demographics and ideological commitments of their teacher candidates” (p. 151). This paper shares the testimonio-pláticas of 4 Latina Pre-service teachers (PST) at a HSI in the Midwest. Through their testimonios, the author unveils the tensions, contradictions, and practices of their teacher education program.
Women of Color (WOC) feminisms collectively situate how race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship, nationhood, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are inextricably tied to the various experiences, histories, and lived realities of Women of Color (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Grande, 2004; Lorde, 1984). The author draws from WOC feminisms to engage in testimonio (Pérez Huber, 2009) and plática (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) to illuminate how they name their educational realities and story the contradictions of the teacher education program at a HSI. Testimonio-Platica offers ways for Latina PST to write, speak, and share their life experiences, incorporating the political, historical, social, and cultural histories, to “bring about change through consciousness-raising” and paths towards conocimiento (Anzaldúa, 2012; Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, p. 346).
This qualitative study includes the testimonio-pláticas of 4 Latina PST. Through a WOC feminist lens and methodological process, the author engages with and alongside the Latina PST, sharing their educational and teacher education experiences. Through the process of testimonio-plática, they created a space of co-theorizing which provided an opportunity to make sense of their varying experiences in the teacher education program. Upon transcribing and engaging in analysis, the author and Latina PST participated in a final plática of meaning-making, reflective of a member-check-in.
This paper centers the experiences of Latina PST as they express their contradictions and the ways in which they grapple with naming their experiences in the teacher education program at a HSI. Through their testimonio-pláticas they engage in a process of meaning-making to reveal how the program has supported them in cultivating a Latina teacher identity, while also noting implications for how the program can better support them. In doing so, this space serves as a meaning-making and healing space as the Latina PST document their educational and teacher education narratives. Testimonio offers a way to expose the tensions and complexities of Latina PST lived experiences and realities within a teacher education program, and provides space towards an understanding of collective solidarity and healing (Espino et al, 2012; Perez Huber, 2009). Thus it is imperative that teacher education programs not only shift their ideologies but make space to embrace the identities, knowledges, knowings and beings of their students.

Author

• Adrianna González Ybarra, University of Missouri
  Presenting Author