Transborder Indigenous Education: Survivance and Border Thinking in the Professional Development and Practice of Maestros Indigenas

Abstract

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.

Young children’s negotiation of language policies and multilingual curriculum at an ethnic minority elementary school in rural China

“…To place the children’s responses to learning the Hoche language in the larger community context, I also interviewed child participants’ guardians and teachers. Observing and collaborating with these informants not only allowed me to glimpse how local people responded to the policies of revitalizing Hoche language in the school and the broader community in real-time (Anthony-Stevevns and Grino, 2018), but also helped me to make meaning of how the polices and social and economic changes impacted children’s negotiations of the curriculum. In other words, discussions with teachers, families, and community members shed light on the interpretations of children’s perspectives and further cultivate an understanding of multicultural education in the local Hoche community.…”

Indigenous Mexican Teachers and Decolonial Thinking: Enacting Pedagogies of Reclamation

“…In states with high populations of Indigenous communities, such as Oaxaca and Chiapas, Indigenous teacher organizations and communities are highly active in transforming themes of assimilation, language shift, and lack of recognition for Indigenous rights through collective organizing for autonomy in education, including articulation of curricular and pedagogical practices that elevate local histories and axiologies and strengthen Indigenous epistemologies (Baronett 2013; Maldonado Alvarado 2010). Yet research indicates the application of IBE remains contradictory and inconsistent across the country (Anthony‐Stevens and Griño 2018; Recendiz 2008; Treviño 2013) and Indigenous student achievement remains disproportionately low in comparison to non‐Indigenous students (Santibañez 2016).…”