Multiculturalism, Dialectical Thought, and Social Justice Pedagogy: A Study from the Borderlands

149 Pages·2017·2.724 MB·English

by  Daniel Ian Rubin

Multiculturalism,
Dialectical Thought,
and Social Justice
Pedagogy
A Volume in
Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society
Curry Malott, Bradley Porfilio, Marc Pruyn, and Derek Ford, Series Editors

Multiculturalism,
Dialectical Thought,
and Social Justice
Pedagogy
A Study From the Borderlands
Daniel Ian Rubin
Jacksonville State University
INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.
Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov
ISBN: 978-1-68123-809-8 (Paperback)
978-1-68123-810-4 (Hardcover)
978-1-68123-811-1 (ebook)
Copyright © 2017 Information Age Publishing Inc.
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photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Foreword ........................................................................................ix
I
PART
Contextualizing the Study
1 The Need for Dialectical Thought ..................................................3
The State of U.S. Secondary Education in a Time
of Neo-Liberalism ......................................................................3
Focus of the Study .............................................................................6
Creating a Latina/Latino Literature Class .....................................8
Dialectical Thought ........................................................................10
Social Justice ...................................................................................12
Semantic Conventions ....................................................................14
Research Design ..............................................................................15
Organization of the Book ..............................................................15
Notes ................................................................................................16
2 The Latina/Latino Literature Curriculum ....................................17
School Context ................................................................................18
Student Participants .......................................................................19
Teaching Dialectical Thought .......................................................19
v
vi  Contents
Article Analysis of Marxist Themes ...............................................27
Modeling of Dialectical Thinking .................................................28
Questioning for Dialectical Understanding .................................31
Notes ................................................................................................34
II
PART
Analyzing Participant Engagement With Dialectical Thought
3 Mia .................................................................................................37
4 Catina ...........................................................................................45
5 Marco .............................................................................................53
6 Isidora ............................................................................................61
7 Alex ...............................................................................................69
III
PART
Further Analyses and Implications
8 What Does This All Mean? .............................................................81
Stereotyping in the Media ..............................................................81
Immigration ....................................................................................83
Power ................................................................................................84
Racism and Discrimination ...........................................................86
Education ........................................................................................88
Anger and Frustration ....................................................................90
Questioning .....................................................................................91
Intertextuality .................................................................................92
Collective Intertextual Group Analysis .........................................94
Emerging Theory ............................................................................96
Summary .........................................................................................99
Note ...............................................................................................100
Contents  vii
9 The Larger Picture ......................................................................101
Limitations ....................................................................................105
This Study’s Contribution to Current Literature .......................106
Where to Go From Here ..............................................................107
10 Personal Reflections ....................................................................109
Role of Researcher ........................................................................109
Methods of Soundness ..................................................................111
Subjectivity ....................................................................................112
Final Reflection .............................................................................113
IV
PART
The Additional Bits
A Latina/Latino Literature Pre-Questionnaire ..............................119
Latina/Latino Literature Post-Questionnaire.............................119
B The Latin Lover Commercial Analysis ........................................121
C Latina/Latino Literature: Commercial Analysis .........................123
D Final Culminating Project ...........................................................127
References ...................................................................................129

Foreword
Christine Sleeter
California State University, Monterey Bay
In Multiculturalism, Dialectical Thought, and Social Justice Pedagogy: A Study
From the Borderlands, Daniel Ian Rubin provides the right book for the
right time. The book’s purpose is to show Latin@ student learning in a high
school ethnic studies course using literature with social justice themes, and
taught through a critical pedagogy framework for developing dialectical
thinking. Rubin, both teacher and researcher, deftly navigates both roles
as he invites readers into his classroom, and engages us with five of his
students.
One feature that makes this the right book is Rubin’s description
and analysis of his curriculum, the framework guiding his pedagogy, and
students’ learning. He leads readers through the course’s organizational
framework, listing the readings for each unit. Then he describes the process
he used to develop students’ critical thinking about issues, against which
the curriculum had been mapped. In so doing, Rubin makes visible how
he implemented social justice and ethnic studies pedagogy (Tintiangco-
Cubales et al., 2015) to teach an ethnic studies curriculum. Case studies of
students provide windows into their growth over the semester showing how
the course expanded their conceptual vocabulary; deepened their critical
Multiculturalism, Dialectical Thought, and Social Justice Pedagogy, pages ix–xii
Copyright © 2017 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ix