Cinthya M. Saavedra

Chicana and Black feminisms: Testimonios of theory,identity and multiculturalism

In this article, we examine our own testimonios inspired by Chicana and Black feminisms that have not only informed our research and teaching but have also helped us to make sense of our lives. We offer our testimonios related to theory, identity negotiations, and pedagogical concerns with teaching multiculturalism as a way to recognize and acknowledge that as academics, researchers, and teachers, we must continue to learn language from, and create new language for, our theoretical spaces that help us to express and navigate the complexity and multiple locations of struggles and resistance. Collectively, testimonios facilitate crucial lessons for examining the interconnectedness between Chicana and Black feminisms through the lived experiences of those living in or on the margins. They also provide critical self-reflection that is needed to unlearn oppression that exists within each of us.

A Call for Onto-Epistemological Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Care: Centering Global South Conceptualizations of Childhood/s:

In this chapter, we call for onto-epistemological diversity in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Specifically, we discuss the need to center the brilliance of children and communities of color, which we argue, can be facilitated by foregrounding global south perspectives, such as Black and Chicana feminisms. Mainstream perspectives in ECEC, however, have been dominantly constructed from global north perspectives, producing a normalized White, male, middle-class, heterosexual version of childhood, where minoritized children are viewed as deficit. Although there have been important challenges to the discourse of a normalized, deficit child, we argue much of this work has remained grounded in global north positionings, which separate theory from the lived realities of children of color. As such, we introduce Black and Chicana feminisms as global south visions to transform approaches to research and pedagogy in ECEC and, in turn, disrupt inequities.

Understanding the Epistemological Divide in ESL Education: What We Learned from a Failed University-School District Collaboration.

In this critically reflective article, we share our perceptions of the epistemologies that shape our own understanding of successful ESL education and that of a school district that asked us to help redevelop its ESL program. Our differing epistemologies, ours critical and aimed toward social justice, theirs built on what we describe as neoliberal educational discourse and deficit constructions of ELLs and Latinas/os, inevitably led to the collapse of our collaboration. Our differences, particular points of tension, and the impact of this deep and wide chasm on policy and schooling are examined.

weaving transnational feminist(s) methodologies (re)examining early childhood linguistic diversity teacher training and research

The purpose of this article is to engender a space where a variety of critical feminist(s) lenses are interwoven to problematize current discursive practices in linguistic diversity training and to (re)imagine nueavas posibilidades for linguistic diversity research/training for pre-kindergarten teachers. Transnational feminists’ projects have the potential to illuminate and connect larger global issues with, and that pertain to, local and specific radical projects by incorporating critical reflexive methodological tools. In this article we propose to a) discuss language as a monocultural construction that limits conceptions of language and learning for younger human beings; b) examine the discursive practices of teachers of students who are English as second/third language learners; c) discuss the discourse of sharing codes of power; and finally d) scrutinize interventionist assumptions of educational research.

A New Childhood Social Studies Curriculum for a New Generation of Citizenship

Traditional concepts of civic education in the United States and the expanding horizons curriculum scope and sequence are challenged by globalization and transnationality because new understandings of citizenship are emerging. In our conceptual analysis, we reconceptualize social studies curriculum for childhood to meet these changes. First, we propose a theoretical framework synthesizing literature in the areas of multicultural, global, and democratic education. Second, we propose opening curriculum and research to the voices of students, especially transnational students. Such reconceptualizations have important implications for a social studies curriculum for childhood that is socially just and responsive to the changing sizes, types, and qualities of the communities with which students engage.

Chicana/Latina Feminist Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Meditations on Global Solidarity, Spirituality, and the Land

In this article we take a journey into using Chicana/Latina feminisms as one way to unearth new possibilities for critical qualitative inquiry (CQI). We start by offering a brief overview of Gloria Anzaldúas influence on Chicana/Latina feminism, focusing on how she has inspired researching and writing from within rather than about as a decolonial turn (Keating, 2015). We then venture into new imaginaries to pose questions that would lead us to ponder about global feminista solidarity, the spirit, and the land. Our hope is that these contemplations lead us on a path of conocimiento where we can put the broken pieces of our/selves back together again.

Rethinking global north onto-epistemologies in childhood studies

For some time, critical scholars in childhood studies have been reconceptualizing the field (Bloch, 2013). Developmentally appropriate practices and notions of terms like quality have been deconstructed to expose how they normalize childhood/s and create inequities in early education and care (Burman, 1994; Dahlberg et al., 2007). While critical scholarship has problematized dominant childhood discourses, theorizing has largely come from global north scholars (Pérez and Saavedra, in press). Although concern for social justice is at the core of global north critical research and pedagogy, as a field, we must consider how global south onto-epistemologies, especially those of women of color and Indigenous peoples, have been left out, ignored, and even appropriated within critical scholarship. We contemplate whether this is one reason why efforts to make a dramatic and critical shift in the priorities of childhood studies have not made the advances we have hoped for. As global south scholars and editors of this Special Issue, we and the contributors make an important call for rethinking our reliance on global north perspectives. By centering global south ontoepistemologies in childhood studies, we aim to open a dialogue that prompts a rethinking of global north dominance in the field.

Combining Qualitative Research Perspectives and Methods for Critical Social Purposes: The Neoliberal U.S. Childhood Public Policy Behemoth

This article discusses the broad-based use of bricolage to examine the neoliberal childhood policy discourses and forms of implementation that are currently practiced in the United States. Diverse, traditionally marginalized understandings such as Black feminist thought, Chicana feminism, and feminist analysis of capitalist patriarchy are combined with a Deleuze/Guattarian critique of capitalism and qualitative methods of situational analyses. We do this to identify childhood assemblages within the childhood public policy behemoth in the United States and compare these assemblages to capitalism more broadly, including how neoliberal practices are facilitated.

Revealing, reinterpreting, rewriting mujeres

This paper reanalyzed research previously conducted with Spanish-speaking childcare providers who participated in an educational literacy program. The women in the program were generally framed as the deficient other – illiterate, immigrant women. The authors used a critical framework and Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies, namely pláticas y encuentros (talks and encounters), to investigate, reanalyze, and reinterpret the data. Through the process, the authors not only revealed the inner flame of the participants in the study, but through the collision of their own worldviews, they also exposed more deeply the assumptions buried within their epistemologies, methodologies, and positionalities. The results speak to the importance of critical examinations of power and discourses in education that often reside unexamined, or perhaps examined but largely unpublished, in our research.

Global south approaches to bilingual and early childhood teacher education: Disrupting global north neoliberalism:

Global south onto-epistemologies are rarely part of bilingual and early childhood teacher education programs. Most university courses, even those that are critically oriented, remain embedded in global north conceptualizations of theory and practice. In this paper, we offer critical examinations of how global north colonialism and its latest reiteration, neoliberalism, have produced hegemonic discourses which have shaped the education of teachers in the fields of bilingual and early childhood education. We then share our pláticas about our global south approaches to teacher education. In doing so, we offer ways in which to make sense of our role as teacher educators in challenging and navigating dynamic, and often all-encompassing neoliberal systems of oppression within bilingual and early childhood teacher/education.