Culture Bags and Latin@ folk culture: A Participatory Action Project in the Dual Language Immersion setting.
Class
Article
Department
School of Teacher Education and Leadership
Faculty Mentor
Steven Camicia
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract
In this presentation I discuss the development of a collaborative project between a classroom teacher and a university based researcher. The study took place in Utah in a dual language immersion classroom for four months. The primary purpose of this participatory action research was to implement classroom strategies that drew upon students' funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and aimed to the development of critical pedagogy practices. Data were gathered in form of ethnographic observations, open-ended interviews, and collection of students' artifacts. This participatory action design attempted to coordinate two interrelated activities: the culture bags assignment and the Latin@ folk culture class section. First, the students were asked to fill a brown paper bag with three cultural artifacts that represented their cultures. The students presented the content of their bags to the rest of the class, developing concepts and making generalizations. Second, the researcher provided examples of folk art forms which are relevant in Latin@ tradition. The teacher used these texts as culturally relevant materials in Language Arts classroom instruction. The main intent of this participatory action research was to attempt challenging the privilege of the Western discourse and hegemony, recognized as "commonsensical" (Kumashiro, 2009). As researcher and teacher, we endeavored to begin our life-long transformative teaching-learning journey "to name, reflect critically, and to act" (Wink, 2005) in order to deconstruct the powerful relations on which our school system has been traditionally based. As critical educator I believe that our students' reality is composed by many sides. I aimed to name the world issues in our school, trying to transform the relation between the individual and the society in our school.
Start Date
4-9-2015 2:00 PM
Culture Bags and Latin@ folk culture: A Participatory Action Project in the Dual Language Immersion setting.
In this presentation I discuss the development of a collaborative project between a classroom teacher and a university based researcher. The study took place in Utah in a dual language immersion classroom for four months. The primary purpose of this participatory action research was to implement classroom strategies that drew upon students' funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and aimed to the development of critical pedagogy practices. Data were gathered in form of ethnographic observations, open-ended interviews, and collection of students' artifacts. This participatory action design attempted to coordinate two interrelated activities: the culture bags assignment and the Latin@ folk culture class section. First, the students were asked to fill a brown paper bag with three cultural artifacts that represented their cultures. The students presented the content of their bags to the rest of the class, developing concepts and making generalizations. Second, the researcher provided examples of folk art forms which are relevant in Latin@ tradition. The teacher used these texts as culturally relevant materials in Language Arts classroom instruction. The main intent of this participatory action research was to attempt challenging the privilege of the Western discourse and hegemony, recognized as "commonsensical" (Kumashiro, 2009). As researcher and teacher, we endeavored to begin our life-long transformative teaching-learning journey "to name, reflect critically, and to act" (Wink, 2005) in order to deconstruct the powerful relations on which our school system has been traditionally based. As critical educator I believe that our students' reality is composed by many sides. I aimed to name the world issues in our school, trying to transform the relation between the individual and the society in our school.