Embracing Change: Reflection on Practice in Immigrant Communities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v3i7.182359Keywords:
Critical Pedagogy, Social Justice, Reflective Practice, Power, Immigrants, Narrative, Dialogue, Community, Curriculum, PoststructuralismAbstract
The authors address disconnects that developed within Sin frontera, a program originally designed as an educational program for Mexican and Honduran women. The program gradually moved away from its grassroots origins and culture circles as institutionalized practices gradually informed our curriculum, causing us to implement institutionalized concepts of education, whether through overt or invisible discourses (Foucault, 1980). Initially based on Freirean concepts of conscientization, collegiality, and consensual governance (Freire, 1970), the program gradually shifted to a hierarchical institutionalized model in which we as facilitators subsumed the principal decision-making function that had once been the women’s domain. Poststructuralist analysis of narrative evaluations, emails, and fieldnotes revealed that families living in immigrant communities face sociocultural issues that affect program expectations. Analysis also revealed the importance of constant dialogue with participants to minimize asymmetrical power dynamics. We offer this paper as a contribution to the ongoing conversation about adult educational experiences in immigrant communities.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with Critical Education agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).