Interweaving prisoners’ voices and citizens’ perceptions: A social justice and community-based pedagogy project

Abstract

Engaging learners' social contexts while exploring the community in the English class do not only enhance language skills but also other abilities that promote a social change. In fact, this paper indicates how citizens’ perceptions about convicts were enriched after the publication of some reflections based on the interaction between a group of eleventh graders and people in jail. To do so, the participants carried out a project during 3 sessions in which they mapped the community, noticed different assets, chose a place and problematic to be focused on (the jail), collected some people’s conceptions about captives, interacted with them (convicts), reflected about the encounter, shared the acquaintance through English and Spanish posters with the community, and listened to their reactions. By the same token, for achieving this study purposes, it was required to follow the essence of three approaches: Community-Based Pedagogies (CBPs), Funds of Knowledge (FoK), and Social Justice (SJ). Therefore, this pedagogical innovation revamped and fostered some competences, such as: language skills, critical thinking, enrichment of perceptions, local awareness, autonomy, and values.