Developing Culturally and Historically Sensitive Teacher Education - (Reinventing Teacher Education) (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the UK Literacy Association's Academic Book Award 2021

This volume explores the literacy education master's degree program developed at Universidad de Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, with the aim of addressing the nation's emerging social, economic, technological, and political needs. Developing the program required taking into account the cultural diversity, historical economic disparities, indigenous and colonial cultures, and power inequities of the Mexican nation. These conditions have produced economic structures that maintain the status quo that concentrates wealth and opportunity in the hands of the very few, creating challenges for the education and economic life for the majority of the population. The program advocates providing tools for youth to critique and change their surroundings, while also learning the codes of power that provide them a repertoire of navigational means for producing satisfying lives.

Rather than arguing that the program can be replicated or taken to scale in different contexts, the editors focus on how their process of looking inward to consider Mexican cultures enabled them to develop an appropriate educational program to address Mexico's historically low literacy rates. They show that if all teaching and learning is context-dependent, then focusing on the process of program development, rather than on the outcomes that may or may not be easily applied to other settings, is appropriate for global educators seeking to provide literacy teacher education grounded in national concerns and challenges. The volume provides a process model for developing an organic program designed to address needs in a national context, especially one grounded in both colonial and heritage cultures and one in which literacy is understood as a tool for social critique, redress, advancement, and equity.

Review Quotes

In this collection, we are introduced to how a master's program in Literacy Education renews literacy knowledge and practices, by prioritizing the population descending from its original peoples, with a view to achieving the dream of a "New Mexico", free from injustice. It is an inspiration for the Global South countries.
Guilherme V. Rios, previously Professor at the University of Brasilia, Brazil and researcher at the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research of the Brazilian Government

This book reveals literacy education as grounded in individual psychological development and simultaneously in the history, cultures, languages, economics, technologies, and politics of society-with the potential of transforming both individuals and societies. The expansive, visionary program Letras para Volar sets an inspiring model for educational reform everywhere.
Charles Bazerman, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

This soaring vision of literacy education is a sober reminder of the destructive effects of coloniality, inequality, and oppressive relations of power. Alongside reclaiming the languages and multi-semiotic literacies of original peoples, it also stresses access to dominant literacies and technologies such that communities can harness them for their own purposes.
Hilary Janks, Professor Emerita, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

About the Author

Yolanda Gayol Ramírez is a Fellow at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, USA, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.
Patricia Rosas Chávez is Professor and Director of Innovation and Undergraduate Studies at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.
Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the College of Education at the University of Georgia, USA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.