Cinthia Salinas

Disrupting the Official Curriculum: Cultural Biography and the Curriculum Decision Making of Latino Preservice Teachers

This multiple case study traces the influence of cultural biographies on the curriculum decision making of two Latino preservice teachers who student taught in standards-based schools. These participants drew on their personal and cultural experiences to disrupt the “official” curriculum, which they believed failed to address fundamental issues of race and inequity. Findings suggest that personal encounters with discrimination and economic injustice informed the curricular decisions of participants. In addition, participants held a constructivist view of the social studies, allowing them to teach using multiple perspectives that challenged dominant narratives in the social studies.

Introducing Historical Thinking to Second Language Learners: Exploring What Students Know and What They Want to Know

o explore the nature of historical thinking with her English language learners (ELLs), a bilingual student teacher presented historical and contemporary photographs related to the annual Día de los Muertos celebration held in Mexico and the United States and asked her students questions. Typically, people commemorate Día de los Muertos—an ancient observance of remembering those individuals who have died but left an imprint on the present—by marching in procession to cemeteries. Families sweep and decorate gravesites of loved ones with candles, food, and armloads of cempasuchíl (marigolds). They also carefully place ofrendas (offerings) of pictures, flowers, incense, candles, and worldly items favored by the dearly departed on homemade altars. Children and adults eat sugar skulls or a special round bread called pan de muertos. The student teacher began by asking questions about two photos:

Critical Historical Thinking: When Official Narratives Collide With Other Narratives

In this article the authors examine The Student as Historian project in highlighting how critical historical thinking can provide other and more complex renditions of history. The authors note that teachers’ understandings of educational ends, purposes, values, and critical content knowledge are entwined and inextricable from ideological stances and historical positionality.

The Tejano History Curriculum Project: Creating a Space for Authoring Tejanas/os into the Social Studies Curriculum

Utilizing a figured worlds and critical historical inquiry framework, this qualitative study examined how the Tejano History Curriculum Project provided opportunities for prospective and practicing bilingual educators to challenge long-standing and problematic depictions of Tejana/o histories in Texas. This study examined how these teachers produced spaces for authoring new identities for inclusion in the social studies curriculum. The engagement of prospective teachers at Central University and practicing teachers of elementary students in activities and practices that centered on creating meaningful cultural artifacts is highlighted. These cultural artifacts drew on the lives and experiences of teachers and their students as Tejanas/os, centering their productions as valuable contributors to Texas history.

Advancing Border Pedagogies: Understandings of Citizenship Through Comparisons of Home to School Contexts

Abstract: Border pedagogies recognize citizenship as a contentious privilege afforded to some but not others. In reconciling the multiple and often conflicting renditions of citizen/citizenship, this qualitative single case study found that preservice teachers benefit from examining the great civic divide between home and school and in confronting spaces that value citizens/citizenship differently. In doing so, we argue that dislodging a teacher education candidate’s previously held assumptions works to broaden understandings of a community of wealth and the importance of linguistically and culturally diverse experiences as preservice teachers embody opportunities for participation in a democracy.

The Evolution of Luz: A Case Study of Gendered Tensions of Romance and Domesticity in the Life of a Former Migrant, Chicana College Student.

This paper is a case study of a Chicana former migrant in her first year of college through CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program), and how she negotiated the challenges of family, romance, and the desire to reach her goals. Through narrative analysis, the authors examine the thoughts, words, and experiences of Luz’s life to provide insight to the complex world of vacillating identities across cultural borders and gender role expectations of community, school, and society. Este manuscrito es el estudio de un caso de una emigrante Chicana en su primer año de universidad a través del CAMP (Programa de Asistencia Universitaria para Emigrantes) y como ella negoció los retos de familia, romance, y el deseo de alcanzar sus metas. A través de análisis narrativo los autores examinan los pensamientos, palabras, y experiencias de la vida de Luz para proporcionar una visión interior al complejo mundo de identidades vacilantes que cruzan fronteras culturales y expectativas comunitarias, escolares y de la sociedad en cuanto a las funciones de género.

Advocating for language rights: Critical Latina bilingual teachers creating bilingual space in Arizona

ABSTRACT This qualitative research study documented the way in which two Latina bilingual teachers advocated for the language rights of emergent bilinguals who attended and resided in two particular school districts in Arizona. Drawing from qualitative and ethnographic approaches, we collected data from teacher interviews, classroom/school observations, district meetings, and community convivios to examine the ways in which two teachers championed language rights in various contexts. We employed Ruiz’s (1984) language planning framework to document the way in which bilingual teachers advocated for the language rights of emergent bilingual students. This study demonstrates how Latina bilingual teachers utilized their cultural knowledge to successfully educate, advocate for, and uplift their bilingual students and cultural community within multiple, and oftentimes hostile, spaces. Findings from this study suggest that Latina teachers enact their own agency to create bilingual space for their students in linguistically constraining environments.

The primacy of relation: Social studies teachers and the praxis of critical pedagogy

ABSTRACT In this critical qualitative case study, we examined the ways three critically identifying social studies teachers understood and adopted critical pedagogy. We argue that the praxis of these teachers unfolded based on their understanding of and willingness to attend to the many dialectical relations associated with teaching. We understand the praxiological unfolding to be teachers’ critical ontological social studies posture, which we argue reflects those ways teachers see and understand dialectical relation and then approach the world by authentically living their critical epistemology, ontology, and ideology. We conclude that the ways critical social studies teachers situate themselves within the many instances of relational power will uniquely inform the approach they take in their work with students.