This study examines the experiences of Indigenous Mexican educators following their participation in a transborder professional development initiative aimed at strengthening Indigenous Mexican education. Using qualitative and ethnographic methodologies, this article is guided by the following research questions: How do former participants in Transformación Docente, a U.S.-based and funded professional development program, conceptualize and enact culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy in their practice? And how have their perceptions of pedagogy been impacted by their participation in Transformatión Docente? The findings challenge the hegemony of development agendas through multi-sited critique of top-down InterculturalBilingual Education policy and analyze on-the-ground enactments of Indigenous education. Findings reveal transborder professional development supported opportunities for Indigenous educators to: 1) legitimize Indigenous identities, 2) further Indigenous language agendas, and 3) rethink inclusion and relationality in teaching. This article highlights Indigenous teachers as strategic border negotiators, and narrators of counterhegemonic practices within institutional spaces. The study's implications further discussions of Indigenous survivance, and demonstrate the significance of transborder Indigenous dialogues to advance Indigenous struggles for selfdetermination.
Since the late 20th century, scholarship in science education has made considerable shifts from cognitive psychology and individual constructivism toward sociocultural theories of science education as frameworks for science teaching and learning. By and large, this scholarship has attended to the ways in which both doing and learning science are embedded within sociocultural contexts, whereby learners are enculturated into scientific practices through classroom-based or scientific learning communities, such as through an apprenticeship model. Still, science education theories and practice do not systematically take into account the experiences, interests, and concerns of marginalized student groups within science and science education. Critical sociocultural perspectives in science education take up issues and questions of how science education can better serve the interests of marginalized groups, while simultaneously creating spaces for marginalized groups to transform the sciences, and science education.
These shifts in science education scholarship have been accompanied by a similar shift in qualitative research methods. Research methods in science education are transitioning from a focus on positivistic content analysis of learners’ conceptions of core ideas in science, toward more robust qualitative methods—such as design experimentation, critical ethnography, and participatory research methods—that show how learners’ identities are constituted with the complex spaces of science classrooms, as well as within larger societal matrices of oppression. The focus of this article is to communicate these recent trends in sociocultural perspectives on science education theory, research, and practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.