Learning from and with Children: Classroom- and-Research-Based Stories
Mario E. López Gopar (Professor)
Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca
Currently, language education of Indigenous and low-income children in Mexico and in North America at large is considered to be in a problematic state, since their school achievement is much lower than that of mainstream children. Often, the blame for this “problem” falls on the children, their parents, or their cultures, which are seen as primitive and colonial (López-Gopar, 2016). Within this panorama, and based on my own experience as a kindergarten and elementary-school teacher and as a teacher-educator of pre-service “English” language teachers in Mexico and USA, and following from my own research studies involving English-language education, multilingualism, applied linguistics and decolonial theories, I narrate and analyze different classroom and research stories (Bruner, 2004) that challenge colonial views with respect to teaching English and other languages to young learners in diverse settings. Specifically, I address issues related to (multi)literacies, social constructs, linguistic identity and research on and with children.