“More meaningful to do it than just reading it:” rehearsing praxis among Mexican-American/Latinx pre-service teachers

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the potential use of drama-based pedagogical tools to prepare future bilingual teachers to respond to the need for advocacy inside and outside the classroom. Using their lived experiences and class material, 20 Mexican-American/Latinx bilingual pre-service teachers performed real-life narratives of conflict experienced by local seasoned bilingual teachers during a foundational class in a preparation program in the Southwest. Using Boal’s Forum Theater, these reenactments provided bilingual pre-service teachers with a context to develop assertiveness and positionality as a means to co-construct emergent bilingual advocate-teacher identities. This paper uses critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis of video-recorded reenactments of bilingual pre-service teachers, as well as interviews and reflections.

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-service teacher education
• critical pedagogy
• advocacy
• Latinx
• bilingual
• identity
• performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blanca Caldas

Blanca Caldas is an assistant professor in Second LanguageEducation and Elementary Education—College of Education andHuman Development at The University of Minnesota Twin Cities.She completed her Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin inthe Bilingual/Bicultural Program in the Department of Curriculumand Instruction and a graduate portfolio in Mexican American andLatina/o Studies. Dr. Caldas is part of the 2016-2018 cohort ofNational Council of Teachers of English Research FoundationCultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Fellowship.She has presented in local, regional, national and internationalconferences and published work in both English and Spanish. Herresearch interests include bilingual education, minoritized languagepractices and pedagogies, and teacher education.