Lucila D. Ek

“I don't belong here”: Chicanas/Latinas at a Hispanic Serving Institution Creating Community Through Muxerista Mentoring

In order to create more diverse communities and greater social justice in academia, a group of Chicana/Latina junior faculty at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) established a research collaborative, Research for the Educational Advancement of Latin@s (REAL). Using a co-operative inquiry and dialogical epistemology, we document how REAL is an agency of transformative resistance to combat racism and sexism within academia. Also we reveal the importance of peer “muxerista mentoring” as an ideology and practice in building a supportive community in the bid for tenure. We provide implications and recommendations for the retention, tenure, and promotion of Chicana/Latina faculty.

Linguistic Violence, Insecurity, and Work: Language Ideologies of Latina/o Bilingual Teacher Candidates in Texas

Drawing from a larger qualitative study, this article examines the narratives of bilingual Latina/o teacher candidates in South Texas. The findings reveal that bilingual teacher candidates are linguistically subordinated by the marginalized status of Spanish in the United States and by deficit perspectives of Spanish of the Southwest. Their educational experiences are replete with linguistic violence that shapes and influences their own linguistic ideologies. Teacher candidates’ narratives reveal the “linguistic motherwork” that Latina mothers perform to raise the status of Spanish and to maintain their childrens heritage language. However, although our Latina/o bilingual candidates (and their mothers) may view “good,” “proper,” or “academic” Spanish in a positive light, they may have negative attitudes toward their own or others’ nonstandard Spanish dialects, including the varieties that are spoken in Texas.

Proyecto Bilingüe: Constructing a Figured World of Bilingual Education for Latina/o Bilingual Teachers

Using theories of figured worlds, we demonstrate how Proyecto Bilingüe, a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction program, constructs a figured world of bilingual education for Latina/o bilingual teachers. We drew from a larger qualitative study to conduct a thematic analysis of interviews with Latina/o bilingual teachers, their written autobiographies, and reflections. We found that Proyecto Bilingüe was a space for (re)making bilingual-bicultural identities and for self-authoring Latina/o bilingual teacher agents. Also, creating community was a key value influencing Latina/o teachers’ leadership and advocacy. In these ways, Proyecto Bilingüe serves as a model for the professional development of bilingual teachers.

Four cases of a sociocultural approach to mobile learning in La Clase Mágica, an afterschool technology club

ABSTRACT This paper presents four projects in which mobile devices are used to support authentic learning in an afterschool technology club, La Clase Mágica (LCM@UTSA), designed to motivate underrepresented elementary school children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The implementation of mobile devices into our LCM@UTSA is based on a sociocultural approach to mobile learning in which we use mobile devices to bridge school and home lives in order to make learning authentic and meaningful. This approach uses mobile devices to facilitate generative themes, and multiple contexts. This paper describes four tablet-based projects in LCM@UTSA since 2012, which follow this sociocultural approach to mobile learning.