Examining Latinx Teacher Resistance: From Margins to Empowerment

ABSTRACT

While research on the marginalization of Latinx teachers has increased, a paucity of research has documented the powerful ways that Latinx teachers resist, challenge, and transform. Informed by the conceptual tools of conformist and transformative resistance, this life history study chronicles the experiences of a Latina in-service science teacher who practices multiple forms of resistance against the persistent and systematic challenges she faces during her educational and professional life. Analysis of interviews and written documents leads to a deeper understanding that teachers’ resistant identities are not constructed merely because of their backgrounds, but instead evolve across multiple contexts over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Conformist resistance
• transformative resistance
• life history
• Latinx teachers
• teacher professional development
• qualitative research

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ For this study, the terms students, families, and teachers of Color are used to refer to those persons of African, Latinx, Asian, and/or Native American descent living in the United States irrespective of immigration and generation status.

² In this paper, I use García et al.’s (2008) term emergent bilingual students to refer to learners whose home language is not English and who are in a dynamic process of developing competencies to be able to function in their home language and that of school to emphasize the learners’ bilingual identity and positive characteristic of bilingualism as potential resource to be used at schools.