Book Review: From Theory to Practice: A Guide to Critical and Culturally Relevant Practices and Dispositions for Latina/o Youth Education

The Need for Research on Latina/o Education

Growing Critically Conscious Teacher is described and structured as a “handbook” and a toolkit as it embraces a practitioner approach. This edited book embodies the philosophy, generational knowledge, and collective efforts of NLERAP (the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project), founded by Valenzuela and Sonia Nieto. NLERAP is a non-profit “brain trust” of community activists, scholars, and educational stakeholders. NLERAP’s guiding metaphor, El Árbol (The Tree), symbolizes the identity of the collective, the nature of its work, and their goals in education. Through El Árbol’s roots and branches, El Árbol represents generational consciousness, historic interconnectedness, the accumulation of wisdom and experience, and the shared knowledge and commitments that guide NLERAP’s initiatives.

NLERAP recognizes the embedded presence of sociopolitical processes in educational policies and practices (e.g., experiences of colonization, assimilation, Americanization, and neoliberal forces) currently affecting teachers and Latina/o children and youth. El Árbol also serves as a clear frame for the kind of work and dispositions needed for Latina/o youth and future teachers’ transformative experiences, which are NLERAP’s main goals. NLERAP’s goals are to cultivate the Grow Your Own Teacher Education Initiative (GYO-TEI), a community-based and university connected initiative, and to facilitate the flow of research activities and knowledge, create opportunities for community dialogues and policy debates, and promote smart policymaking with stakeholders locally and nationally (p. 15). The GYO-TEI aims to (1) to “provide opportunities for students [potential future teachers] to acquire a combination of academic and real-world preparation that facilitate their successful entry into teaching careers” (p. 20), (2) to create a critical mass of stakeholders (administrative, policymakers, community members) who will later challenge harmful practices and policies (e.g., tracking, disciplinary actions) (Nieto et al., 2012). In short, GYO-TEI’s goal is to promote systemic change through the “the continuing potential of public education in concert with community to serve democratic, social justice ends” (p. 16), “one teacher at a time” (p.23).

Responding to U.S. School Context for Latina/o Students

Between 2000 and 2017, Latina/o students’ enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools increased from a 16 to 27 percent (NCES, 2020). Despite this rapid and increasingly diverse linguistic, cultural, racial, and ethnic landscape in public schools, the composition of the teaching force remains highly homogeneous and monolingual. In Growing Critically Conscious Teachers, Valenzuela and other contributors bring to our attention Latina/o and English Learners’ persistent negative experiences in schools. In one of the chapters, for example, Julio Cammarota recounts his work in the Social Justice Education Project in Tucson, Arizona. He tells the story of Zury, a project participant:

In her freshman year, Zury was incapable of communicating or writing in English and would often rely on Spanish to communicate with peers to understand course materials. . .She writes that she was not a special case and that many of her fellow English language learner (ELLs) students received detention for speaking Spanish (p. 96)

Like Zury’s experience, researchers have long documented subtractive schooling practices (Valenzuela’s 1999 theorization that continues to heavily influence the field) and policies that directly influence Latina/o and English learners’ experiences in education (e.g., Alfaro et al., 2009; Figueroa, 2014; Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Valenzuela, 1999). Such historical homogenization efforts include anti-bilingual and English-only policies (e.g., Arizona’s Proposition 203, California’s Proposition 227, Massachusetts’ Question 2) (Lopez & Santibañez, 2018; Mavrogordato, 2012).

Authors in Growing Critically Conscious Teachers aim to contribute the diversification of teachers in public schools and also to generate a paradigm shift in teachers’ pedagogy and dispositions. Echoing what scholars in multicultural and urban education argue (e.g., Dunn et al., 2014; Kohli, 2009; Matias, 2013; Matias & Zembylas, 2014; Sleeter, 2001, 2008),Valenzuela’s Growing Critically Conscious Teachers also underscores the imperative of a diverse, and specifically, quality Latina/o body of teachers in education and communities in order to establish balance between students’ cultures and identities and schools’ contexts. However, rather than assuming that Latina/o teachers are “automatically predisposed by virtue of race and ethnicity” (p. 18), authors in this book provide frameworks to nurture and cultivate critically conscious and quality Latina/o teachers and contribute to a paradigm shift.

The Book: A Timely and Strongly Needed Resource

Growing Critically Conscious Teachers’ contribution resides in its inquiry approach designed to facilitate a paradigm shift, foster socio-culturally and socio-politically responsive critical pedagogies, and encourage community-based and family-engaged teaching. In short, in practical and resourceful ways, scholars in this book bring to bear some of the fundamental purposes and values in education present in Freire’s (1970) emancipatory approach to education, and more recently, Love’s (2019) abolitionist teaching. Although focused on the experiences of Latina/o and other minoritized communities, this book should be included in any curricula for teacher preparation. It is, however, important to attend to authors’ cautionary advice regarding the adoption and adaptation of ideas according to the context of community partnerships: that it is done in a responsive manner grounded in children and youth, their communities, and their contexts. Considering the realities that children and youth of color continue to experience in classrooms and schools (Baker-Bell, 2020; Brockenbrough, 2016; Love, 2019), Growing Critically Conscious Teachers is thus a much-needed resource for teachers and teacher educators. It is timely in the sense that promotes critical awareness of historical and structural systems of marginalization that shape the lives of minoritized students and communities today (e.g., the current U.S. border and refugee crisis, continuous xenophobia, and persistent police brutality against people of color) (Bajaj et al., 2017; Swanson, 2019), while advancing possibilities for self-determination and social change through education at the local and national level.

From the outset, the book lays down the foundations of a community-centered approach to teacher preparation. In Chapter 2, author Mercado argues that teacher quality is context specific, so she attends to dispositions, understandings, and competencies required to create quality teacher-student relationships, attend to Latina/o communities’ experiences, and respond to local expectations in relevant and sustainable ways (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017).

Continuing the efforts to nurture quality and critically conscious teachers for students in marginalized communities, in Chapter 3, Arellano, Cintrón, Flores, and Berta-Ávila focus on a paradigm shift and foundational content for teachings entering culturally and diverse settings. In chapter 3 of the book, through various topics that follow a critical framework, authors guide teacher candidates to interrogate deficit assumptions about their students and their parents, alongside their beliefs about teaching and learning. Some topics are social justice paradigm, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy, sociocultural theory, among others. In practical ways, authors provide resources such as discussion questions, cornerstone readings, sample activities and project examples for each topic. A social justice paradigm, for instance, guide teacher candidates to the awareness of sociopolitical conditions that shape teaching practices and policies that further marginalize students, and the awareness of their roles as teachers in working against oppressive systems.

The wedding of theory and practice in Growing Critically Conscious Teachers perseveres in the last two chapters, alongside possibilities for change of oppressive systems. In Chapters 4 and 5, Cammarota, Berta-Ávila, Ayala, Rivera, and Rodríguez interweave teaching and learning, research, social action and change, and guide educators and students in implementing participatory action research (PAR). Authors provide practical guidelines for PAR and reflect on the possibility of enacting research committed to social change under a community-based and analytical approach. Some activities include supporting students to collect data (e.g., experiences as ELs and Spanish speakers), differentiate between symptoms and the root of problems, historicize issues, theorize possibilities and solutions, and foster community dialogues. These situated examples ground the reader in participants’ experiences, commitments, and possibilities for change.

Finally, if anything about this book can be critiqued, it is that there are too few opportunities for the reader to revisit and reexamine complex concepts and theories (e.g., sociocultural theories, critical race theory, language ideologies) to facilitate a true paradigm shift. This is partly because the nature and focus of this book is to provide practical and curricula guidelines under a critical framework. Although each chapter is supported by foundational and ground-breaking scholarship, some concepts and framework presented require deeper examination in order to give the reader extended opportunities to understand and identify complex concepts (e.g., neoliberalism vs capitalism, intersectionality, coloniality) and their subtle presence in their contexts. Still, this book covers a wide range of content for education rooted in its students and communities. And from the beginning, the reader is cautioned that chapters are not a generalizable recipe for how-to create transformational spaces and community collaboration. In the same vein, I would offer an additional caveat. As researchers have pointed out (e.g., Sleeter, 2008), a paradigm shift is a lifetime work, beyond one unit, a set of readings, or practices. Like Sleeter describes in her afterword, rather than changed, quality and effective educators work towards change, in continuous examination of assumptions and practices. In summary, at a smaller or larger scale, the resources presented in Growing Critically Conscious Teachers can further support community organizations, policymakers, curriculum development, and teacher preparation programs across the country to make long awaited changes for socio-politically and culturally conscious teachers and a more responsive education. Without doubt, this book moves education closer to promote systemic change in teacher growth and preparation by “reveal[ing] the continuing potential of public education in concert with community to serve democratic, social justice ends” (p. 16). It is, however, both exciting and enthralling to see how teachers, community-based education programs, and more traditional institutions will continue to further this work.