Educadoras de la Comunidad Negociando Conocimiento: A Latinx Critical and Testimonio Approach

This dissertation is a qualitative research case study of three Latina educadoras. The data analyzed comes from a larger research study (PROJECT) focused on teacher professional development aimed at incorporating emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge in the development of curriculum that promotes greater equitable outcomes. With data consisting of individual and focus group interviews and videotaped lessons focused on mathematics and science concepts, I use Latinx critical race (LatCrit) theory and testimonio as my theoretical and methodological approach (Bernal, Burciaga & Carmona, 2012) to explore how race, identity, and power mediate a culturally relevant and inclusive curriculum in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. Through the telling of their testimonios through the lens of their own racial, linguistic, and matemáticas learning experiences, Latina educadoras position their understanding, struggle with, and development of their notions of what it means to teach Latinx emergent bilingual (LEB) students within the space of matemáticas. I explored the following questions: 1) How do Latina educadoras use their Latinx emergent bilingual and matemáticas identity-shaping experiences to inform the way they teach matemáticas to their Latinx emergent bilingual students? 2) How do Latina educadoras’ identity-shaping experiences lead to instruction that promotes students to see themselves as learners and doers of matemáticas (Martin, 2012) over time? Through the analysis of both their testimonios and practica, I argue that all three Latina educadoras demonstrated moving beyond the idea of teaching as politically neutral to understand their teaching as a political practice (Gutierrez, 2013). Three emergent themes resulted: the centrality of community cultural wealth, identidad, and language as wealth in the teaching of the Latina educadoras. Through their self-reconstructed identidades, these educadoras better understood how to connect their curriculum to LEB students’ everyday practices outside of the classroom, as well as more fully assess their students’ comprehension of matemáticas. Implications include the need for more research on Latinx teachers who identify as teaching in communities where they are from, research on how the act of testimonio can impact teachers’ pedagogy, and research on the incorporation of students’ community funds of knowledge into the curriculum in order to support the construction of powerful mathematical identities in LEB students.