Pláticas as Feminista cultural practice and design methodology for being and becoming with mathematics

Abstract

Chicana/Latina Feminist frameworks that center the lived experiences of Chicanas/Latinas/Mexicanas have helped to reshape profoundly the ways we think about the role and centrality of culture and identity in methods and methodology. However, this rich Chicana/Latina feminist cultural methodological and analytical framework has not been leveraged in conjunction with disciplinary learning, particularly in teacher education and teacher learning. This article is concerned with understanding how a rich cultural practice, feminista pláticas, can serve both as a cultural context for learning, as well as a tool for organizing human activity in which cultural ways of learning are centered. In this paper, through an empirically-informed vignette we show how feminista pláticas help organize participation in ways that make cultural knowledge a resource for future action towards equitable and justice-oriented math teaching and learning.

Keywords:

• Feminista pláticas
• Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives
• justice
• math learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We will use feminista pláticas to refer to Chicana/Latina feminist pláticas and will use them interchangeably.

2 Throughout the paper we will move discursively from Spanish and English as we come to understand feminista pláticas as a direct challenge to deficit and dominant hierarchies about language. We also move away from italicizing Spanish language for the same reason.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation [NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Sandra Zuniga-Ruiz

Sandra Zuniga-Ruiz is an Assistant Professor in the Teacher Education Department at San José State University. Her research and teacher education work takes an emancipatory approach that seeks to cultivate dignity affirming mathematical learning communities for teacher candidates and children in the K-12 educational system.

Kris D. Gutiérrez

Kris D. Gutiérrez is Associate Dean of the School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. She is also the Carol Liu Professor of Education and brings expertise in the learning sciences, literacy, educational policy, and qualitative and design-based approaches to inquiry.