Alberto Esquinca, María Teresa de la Piedra, Lidia Herrera-Rocha
{"title":"Hegemonic Language Practices in Engineering Design and Dual Language Education","authors":"Alberto Esquinca, María Teresa de la Piedra, Lidia Herrera-Rocha","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.394","url":null,"abstract":"With the goal of achieving bilingualism and biculturalism, dual language education (DL) has a social justice orientation. As the program option with the best track record of closing the achievement gap between Latinx and White students, DL programs can potentially create environments in which learners can develop knowledge of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in two languages. In this article, we present findings from a two-year ethnographic study of engineering design curriculum in a K-5 DL program on the U.S.-Mexico border. Our team researched the implementation of a hands-on, highly interactive, inquiry-based STEM curriculum because immigrant emergent bilinguals from border communities are sometimes excluded from these learning opportunities. During the first year of implementation, the STEM curriculum was not taught following DL goals. Essential principles of DL education, including the use of two languages for instruction and equal status for both languages, were not followed. Lack of familiarity with the STEM curriculum and emerging expertise of engineering design explained this decision partially. Due to a dearth of resources, training, and expertise in engineering and in inquiry-based learning, the implementation failed to meet its counterhegemonic potential. In fact, it may have reproduced hegemonic practices that marginalized emergent bilingual Latinx students.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123330290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transborder Indigenous Education: Survivance and Border Thinking in the Professional Development and Practice of Maestros Indigenas","authors":"Vanessa Anthony‐Stevens, Paulina Griño","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.396","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the experiences of Indigenous Mexican educators following their participation in a transborder professional development initiative aimed at strengthening Indigenous Mexican education. Using qualitative and ethnographic methodologies, this article is guided by the following research questions: How do former participants in Transformacion Docente, a U.S.-based and funded professional development program, conceptualize and enact culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy in their practice? And how have their perceptions of pedagogy been impacted by their participation in Transformation Docente? The findings challenge the hegemony of development agendas through multi-sited critique of top-down Intercultural-Bilingual Education policy and analyze on-the-ground enactments of Indigenous education. Findings reveal transborder professional development supported opportunities for Indigenous educators to: 1) legitimize Indigenous identities, 2) further Indigenous language agendas, and 3) rethink inclusion and relationality in teaching. This article highlights Indigenous teachers as strategic border negotiators, and narrators of counterhegemonic practices within institutional spaces. The study’s implications further discussions of Indigenous survivance, and demonstrate the significance of transborder Indigenous dialogues to advance Indigenous struggles for self-determination.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"412 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132342238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Hegemony of Language Separation: Discontents en Programas de Lenguaje Dual en Paraguay and El Paso","authors":"Katherine S. Mortimer","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.397","url":null,"abstract":"While language hegemonies often take the form of one language imposed upon speakers of another, this article focuses on the hegemony of language boundaries themselves imposed upon everyday language practices, and in particular, upon those of teachers and students in bilingual classrooms. This examination of two different borderland contexts—El Paso, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border and a central Paraguayan community on an urban-rural Spanish-Guarani speaking border—illustrates how similar dominant ideologies and discourses worked in both places to make it seem as if what participants saw as “language separation” was pedagogically and socially superior to what they saw as people’s everyday “mixed” language use. While teachers’ languaging in practice refused these boundaries, it remained unaffirmed by any explicitly positive discourse. With others, I argue that discourses that explicitly affirm and valorize translanguaging practices must become more available to teachers as ways to name, understand, and evaluate their own (and students’) language use. And specifically, here I highlight the embracing of translanguaging in formal, public events beyond the classroom as key to this process, illustrating this proposal with two such moments in the El Paso and Paraguayan borderland contexts.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130838009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spatiotemporal, Geographic, and Linguistic Fixity: (Counter)hegemonies in the Pueblo Borderlands","authors":"Erin Debenport","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.395","url":null,"abstract":"Discussions about migration, geography, and Indigenous language use are key ways that community members perform, negotiate, and contest identities and politics in multilingual Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a federally-recognized Native nation located within the city of El Paso, Texas. This linguistic anthropological piece illustrates how tribal members creatively use local ways of speaking and the indexing of language ideologies to critique hegemonic discourses that constrain tribal members’ Native identities and call into question the tribe’s status as an Indigenous community. Through “indexing”—or pointing to—dominant and emergent narratives about place and language, Ysletans are able to enhance their visibility as a nation and their political and social influence in the region and beyond. Speech genres focusing on the 17th century Pueblo revolt, the seizure of lands near the U.S.-Mexico border, and the loss of the tribe’s Indigenous language allow community members to assert sovereignty, belonging, and indigeneity in the face of these criticisms by Indian and non-Indian audiences.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115595386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Too Much Cream on the Tacos”: Narrative and Moral Personhood in Transfronterizo Experience","authors":"B. O’Connor","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.398","url":null,"abstract":"Building on prior analyses of storytelling in migrant and transnational contexts (e.g. Baynham, 2014; De Fina, 2003; Haviland, 2005; Warriner, 2013), this article draws on research with transfronterizo (border-crossing) university students in South Texas to explore how transnational speakers use narrative to craft moral arguments in trying times. The article focuses on a single, lengthy narrative from a transfronteriza undergraduate named Araís in order to demonstrate how her narrative practice contributes to her “ideological becoming” (Bakhtin, 1981). That is, the analysis shows that the structural, textual, and dialogic features of Araís’s narrative are connected both to her emergent, dialogic understanding of her self and to value projects, or efforts to (re)shape the social world, implied in her narrative (Agha, 2015). The analysis illuminates the ethical affordances of transfronterizo narrative—i.e., the opportunities that storytelling offered transfronterizo students to evaluate their own and others’ actions in moral terms. Based on this analysis, I suggest implications for our understanding of narrative and moral personhood among transfronterizo students and other migrant and transnational subjects.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130106713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language Hegemonies and their Discontents: History, Theory, Bilingualism, and Funds of Knowledge","authors":"Carlos G. Vélez-ibáñez","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.2.393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.2.393","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews hegemonic impositions of language and culture over the history of the Southwest North American Region, beginning with Spanish imperial attempts to erase the existing linguistic and cultural practices of Indigenous communities. It goes on to consider the educational processes by which English language and American culture were imposed on Mexican American children and communities following the American Mexican War. Along with hegemonic attempts to subdue and dominate populations, the article also explores the myriad ways subjugated populations have expressed their discontent, from violent revolt to the creation of alternative educational programs. With reference to the latter, given the well-attested benefits of bilingualism, it is argued that one way to capitalize on the cultural and linguistic capacities of transborder populations is to integrate dual-language education and a funds of knowledge approach. Engagement in Mexican-origin children’s social networks will help educators to counter the process of cultural erasure and to ensure that bilingual programs benefit language-minority students, and not just middle-class, English-dominant students. Without support for Mexican-origin and other Latino/a students to emerge fully as complex cultural beings, we will continue to perpetuate a situation of linguistic and cultural hegemony where populations are restricted from their full human potential.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"360 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114014723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Grass is Greener on This Side","authors":"Beatriz T Valencia","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.1.381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.1.381","url":null,"abstract":"The pathway to education is two sided. The institutional side, and the side of the student. Often, these sides are not in sync. In this essay, I present my personal experience as a student. The process of attainment was both chaotic and filled with personal doubt. Using Anzaldua's autohistoria as the foundation, I share memories and story to situate the reader in the collective experience of many students of color. The self-awareness gained from the unfolding of pain, healing, and self-reflection throughout this process, is the empowerment of this framework (Anzaldua & Keaton, 2009). As a consequence of using this method, a new voice emerged. A voice of resistance and persistence. The essay takes the reader on a journey of hope. A journey of choices and adaptations from an immigrant’s point of view. A journey of self-discovery. This story, although not unique, traces the history and its relation to my academic struggles and barriers of assimilation, racism, and exclusion. As an immigrant student, the external forces that distract and fill one with self-doubt were in constant motion. It was the acquisition of knowledge and methorship of kind people that carried me to where I am today, and the realization of my oppression has freed me to share this memoir. This is my story.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129180624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Garcia, Maritza Arciga, E. Sanchez, Robert Arredondo
{"title":"A Medical Archaeopedagogy of the Human Body as a Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategy for Indigenous Mexican-American Students","authors":"S. Garcia, Maritza Arciga, E. Sanchez, Robert Arredondo","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.1.388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.1.388","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, three co-authors share their narratives and clay figurines sculpted during the Mesoamerican Figurine Project of Rio Hondo College (Garcia, in press-a). Through reflective writing exercises and the sculpting of small-scale clay figurines, Los Angeles-based Mexican-American students unearthed parts of their Mesoamerican ancestry and materialized their stories of displacement and violence to assist in meeting student learning outcomes (SLOs). After interpreting these data alongside the medical tools observed on the four Tezcatlipocas of Mesoamerica (Acosta, 2007), the supposition is that Indigenous Mesoamerican students benefit when engaged through the following topics: 1) land and cosmology, 2) trauma and medicine, 3) resiliency and self-determination, and 4) community and family. To support all students’ educational and mental health goals, and to prevent further trauma accumulation, the Mesoamerican figurine is modeled as a pedagogical tool with a wide range of therapeutic values. By employing a critical autoethnographic approach (Ohito, 2017), Instructor Garcia’s ancestral knowledge—combined with his students’ insights—enabled his conceptualization of a medical archaeopedagogy of the human body as a trauma-informed teaching strategy (Cole, Eisner, Gregory, & Ristuccia, 2013) to begin to address the mental health challenges prevalent in the Mexican-American community related to the cultural genocide of Native Americans.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125106733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"AB 540: Tuition Waiver Policy in California: How Student Services Professionals Influence College Access for Undocumented Students","authors":"Lynn Wang","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.1.378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.1.378","url":null,"abstract":"This was an exploratory qualitative study utilizing tenets of phenomenology to examine the lived experiences of front-line student services professionals in Admissions and Financial Aid and their dilemmas in interpreting and implementing California Assembly Bill 540 (2001) in their interactions with undocumented students. Front-line student services professionals are often the make-it or break-it persons for undocumented students to realize their dreams of attaining a postsecondary education because they determine whether students can pay in-state tuition and receive financial aid. California law AB 540 (2001) was created with the intention of providing a fair tuition policy for all California high school graduates entering college in California. AB 540’s (2001) purpose is to allow all California high school graduates, including undocumented immigrant students who meet the requirements, to be exempt from paying nonresident tuition at California public postsecondary institutions. An undocumented student is classified as someone who entered the U.S. without proper immigration documents or someone who entered the country legally as a nonimmigrant but later never exited the country (Internal Revenue Service, 2014). Twelve student service professionals, both part-time and full-time, at public two-year and four-year higher education institutions shared their experiences regarding management of difficult and sensitive conversations with undocumented students, as they attempted to translate state legislation through institutional polices. Many times, these front-line professionals in Admissions and Financial Aid were the first and only people to interact with incoming undocumented students before they set foot in the classroom. These professionals utilized their knowledge, resources, and networks to help students navigate the college-going process. However, unclear and/or non-existent campus policies, departmental silos, along with a lack of professional development, adequate resources, and appropriate guidance, often limited their capacity to help.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131291204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"College for All: Chicana/o and Latina/o Empowerment Agents Working to Increase Latina/o Students’ College-Going Opportunities","authors":"Leticia Rojas","doi":"10.24974/AMAE.12.1.376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24974/AMAE.12.1.376","url":null,"abstract":"This one-year qualitative study examined the ways in which five Chicana/o and Latina/o teachers committed to social justice perceived their roles in their college-going work with Latina/o students, as well as the challenges threatening their efforts with students. Building on Stanton-Salazar’s (2011) concept of empowerment social capital , the findings showed that these teachers perceived college access as an equity issue, challenging dominant narratives of tracking and deficit-thinking in their college-going practices. Despite their ongoing and persistent commitments, the findings also revealed various challenges to these teachers’ work with students, such as the lack of schooling funding and college-going resources and a struggle to maintain a work-life balance. The results of this study have implications for school leadership and the reconceptualization of the teacher role in Latina/o students’ college-going processes.","PeriodicalId":414867,"journal":{"name":"Association of Mexican American Educators Journal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115140111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}