Generating Transworld Pedagogy: Reimagining La Clase Mágica

by Belinda Bustos Flores University of Texas at San Antonio (Editor), Olga A. Vásquez (Editor), Ellen Riojas Clark (Editor), Kris D. Gutiérrez (Contribution by), Mayra Martínez Avidad (Contribution by)

Overview

Generating Transworld Pedagogy: Reimagining La Clase Mágica lays the foundation for addressing one of the greatest challenges in the 21st century: meeting the educational needs of a diverse society living in a complex, technology-driven world. It extends bilingual and bicultural transformative critical pedagogy by appropriating the use of mobile devices and digital tools within an after-school setting. Four theoretical concepts anchor this collection: the dialectic method, concepts of culture, a bilingual/bicultural critical pedagogy, and the notion of the sacred sciences.
Generating Transworld Pedagogy showcases the intersection of learners’ linguistic, cultural, and historical knowledge as critical tools for learning and for navigating the broader society. The volume serves as an ideal framework for preparing teacher educators and teacher candidates for a world in motion. It provides a deeper understanding of the conditions needed to create the ideal learning and teaching opportunities for bilingual learners. Special highlights include a comprehensive resource for integrating linguistic and cultural diversity within a technological and global perspective for 21st century teachers and learners; a resource for launching the model in new sociocultural contexts; an exemplar of the innovative uses of mobile technology and digital literacies within the learning setting; and a model for engaging in socially-designed community-based research that can extend to an international scale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739186831
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	02/19/2014
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Belinda Bustos Flores is professor and chair in the Department of Bicultural/Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 2011, Dr. Flores was lead editor for Teacher Preparation for Bilingual Student Populations: Educar para Transformar.

Olga A. Vásquez is associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of La Clase Mágica: Imagining Optimal Possibilities in a Bilingual Community of Learners, published in 2002.

Ellen Riojas Clark is professor emeritus in the Department of Bicultural/Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She serves as the Research Coordinator for the UTSA Academy for Teacher Excellence.

Table of Contents

Foreword: La Clase Mágica: An enduring prototype for the new Latin Diaspora
Kris D. Gutiérrez

Part I. Embracing a Transview World
Chapter 1: ¡Adelante! El mundo nuevo: Educating the New Generation of the 21st Century
Belinda Bustos Flores, Olga A. Vásquez, and Ellen Riojas Clark
Chapter 2: Una Pedagogía Transmundial/A Transworld Pedagogy: Anchoring Theory to the Sacred Sciences
Olga A. Vásquez, Ellen Riojas Clark, and Belinda Bustos Flores
Chapter 3: La Clase Mágica: Creating Opportunities for Transformative Learning
Mayra Martínez Avidad

Part II. Transcending Borders as Transworld Citizens
Chapter 4: Resisting Epistemological Exclusion and Inserting La Clase Mágica into State-level Policy Discourses
Patricia López and Angela Valenzuela
Chapter 5: Unearthing the Sacred Knowledge: Connecting with the Community
Lorena Claeys & Henri Muñoz
Chapter 6: Digitizing El Laberinto: Integrating Technology,Playing withLanguage and Culture for the 21st Century
Patricia Sánchez, Timothy T. Yuen, Macneil Shonle, Theresa Lara DeHoyos, Lisa Santillán, & Adriana García

Part III. Enacting Transworld Pedagogy
Chapter 7: Preparing Aspirantes: Synchronizing Culture and Digital Media
Iliana Alan's
Chapter 8: Aspirantes’ Consejos on El Maga and the Role of Technology
Maria Arreguín-Anderson & Kimberley Kennedy
Chapter 9: Latino Children: Constructing Identities, Voices, Linguistic, and Cultural Understandings
Lucila Ek, Adriana García, & Armando Garza
Chapter 10: Digital Literacies and Latino Literature Supporting Children’s Inquires
Carmen Martínez Roldán
Chapter 11: Chanzas: The ‘Probability’ of Changing the Ecology of Mathematical Activity
Craig Willey, Carlos Leiva López, Zayoni Torres, and Lena Licón Khisty
Chapter 12: El Mundo en la Palma de la Mano [The World in the Palm of the Hand]:Bridging Families’ Multigenerational Technology Gaps
Margarita Machado-Casas

Part IV. Evolving through Innovation
Chapter 13: La Clase Mágica International: Adapting to New Sociocultural Contexts
Beatriz Macías Gómez-Estern and Olga A. Vásquez
Chapter 14: Iluminadas a través de Cosmovisión: A New Age of Enlightenment for Pedagogía Transmundial
Ellen Riojas Clark, Belinda Bustos Flores, and Olga A. Vásquez

Editorial Reviews

Rarely has a volume brought together as rich a set of studies and intellectual arguments that capture the generative nature of the complex worlds, cultural histories, knowledge sources, and transformative learning opportunities created by participants in an educational program. Readers of this volume will engage in a journey that transcends the linear process of most texts as they interact with the differing conceptual perspectives guiding each chapter.

Judith Green

Generating Transworld Pedagogy offers a fresh look at how one can theorize a dynamic system of thinking, being, and acting that is necessary for children who are, or are aspiring to be, bi/multilingual. The authors of this volume urge teachers to consider not just what the children bring with them, nor what the teacher can provide them, but what can spark the social imagination of what could be rather than what is.

Maria Torres-Guzman

This critically important volume on the international array of La Cláse Magica programs is both theoretically and pragmatically integrative in its scope. It links local knowledge and culture with informal pedagogical activities, and elucidates the program’s innovative use of new digital media to engage young people in transformative explorations that enable them to find their place and their voice in the world around them.

Charles Underwood

Generating Transworld Pedagogy challenges fundamental assumptions about the preparation of teacher candidates as well as the intersections between STEM and bilingual learners. This book will appeal widely to all educators and teacher educators, as well as those who are passionate about the importance of transformative pedagogy.

Norma Gonzalez

The challenging of entrenched practices and historical perspectives that reinforce hegemonic constructions of teaching effectiveness and student learning are deconstructed through the reimagining of 'La Clase Mágica' as proposed in Generating Transworld Pedagogy. Deeply entrenched institutional discourses that perpetuate and privilege dominant constructions of how learning occurs are examined. Specific attention is given to the social construction of processes that reduce learning to linear, Western-imbued representations, and limitations that have been imposed on bilingual learners. Contributors to this book advocate for re-envisioning educational practices by shifting current boundaries, integrating new technologies, embracing indigenous 'funds of knowledge' as valued and legitimate forms of cultural capital, recognizing and realigning communal experiences as inclusive critical reflections of knowledge from diverse communities, and embracing opportunities for student voices to powerfully contribute to the enterprise of their own learning. The historical contributions of ancestors, along with the diversity of context and content emerging through formal and informal productions of knowledge define the space for various stakeholders to contribute to expanding current repertoires of practice that can inform and eventually transform learning, thus 'generating transworld pedagogy.' Summing Up: Recommended. Research and professional collections.

CHOICE

This book offers an exciting synthesis of cultural-historical theory, digitally sophisticated education programs, and “sacred sciences”—a worldview based on native cultures. The editors and contributors represent an outstanding group of social scientists and educators whose experience with bilingual-bicultural students is extensive and highly influential.

Vera John-Steiner

The challenging of entrenched practices and historical perspectives that reinforce hegemonic constructions of teaching effectiveness and student learning are deconstructed through the reimagining of 'La Clase Mágica' as proposed in Generating Transworld Pedagogy. Deeply entrenched institutional discourses that perpetuate and privilege dominant constructions of how learning occurs are examined.Specific attention is given to the social construction of processes that reduce learning to linear, Western-imbued representations, and limitations that have been imposed on bilingual learners.Contributors to this book advocate for re-envisioning educational practices by shifting current boundaries, integrating new technologies, embracing indigenous 'funds of knowledge' as valued and legitimate forms of cultural capital, recognizing and realigning communal experiences as inclusive critical reflections of knowledge from diverse communities, and embracing opportunities for student voices to powerfully contribute to the enterprise of their own learning.The historical contributions of ancestors, along with the diversity of context and content emerging through formal and informal productions of knowledge define the space for various stakeholders to contribute to expanding current repertoires of practice that can inform and eventually transform learning, thus 'generating transworld pedagogy.' Summing Up: Recommended. Research and professional collections.

Choice

The challenging of entrenched practices and historical perspectives that reinforce hegemonic constructions of teaching effectiveness and student learning are deconstructed through the reimagining of 'La Clase Mágica' as proposed in Generating Transworld Pedagogy. Deeply entrenched institutional discourses that perpetuate and privilege dominant constructions of how learning occurs are examined. Specific attention is given to the social construction of processes that reduce learning to linear, Western-imbued representations, and limitations that have been imposed on bilingual learners. Contributors to this book advocate for re-envisioning educational practices by shifting current boundaries, integrating new technologies, embracing indigenous 'funds of knowledge' as valued and legitimate forms of cultural capital, recognizing and realigning communal experiences as inclusive critical reflections of knowledge from diverse communities, and embracing opportunities for student voices to powerfully contribute to the enterprise of their own learning. The historical contributions of ancestors, along with the diversity of context and content emerging through formal and informal productions of knowledge define the space for various stakeholders to contribute to expanding current repertoires of practice that can inform and eventually transform learning, thus 'generating transworld pedagogy.' Summing Up: Recommended. Research and professional collections.

Choice Reviews