The Inquiry Oasis: A UArizona College of Education Podcast
Ep 14 Dr. Taucia González: Voices of Change: Testimonios and Transformative Education
Mar 20, 2024Season 1Episode 14
UArizona College of Education
In this episode of Inquiry Oasis, we welcome Dr. Taucia González, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Arizona College of Education. Dr. González sheds light on her groundbreaking GANAS project, where high school students use testimonios as a narrative tool to critically reflect on systemic barriers in education. We explore how these narratives from bilingual, Latina/Latino/Latinx, and Hmong youths, with and without disabilities, challenge traditional pedagogies and contribute to a more inclusive educational landscape. Dr. González's insights underscore the importance of integrating cultural and linguistic diversity into educational systems to empower marginalized communities.
Topics Discussed:
The GANAS Project: Empowering Bilingual Youths Through Testimonios
Educational Inequities: Insights from Bilingual and Disabled Students
The Intersection of Race, Language, and Disability in Education
Testimonios: A Tool for Critical Reflection and Social Change
Case Study Highlight: Diego's Educational Journey
Envisioning a Future of Inclusive and Affirming Educational Spaces
Mentioned Scholars: Mariana Pacheco (UW Madison), Na Lor (Teachers College, Columbia), Joan Hong (University of Maryland, College Park), Kate Roberts (Doctoral candidate, UW Madison)
In this episode of Inquiry Oasis, we welcome Dr. Taucia González, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Arizona College of Education. Dr. González sheds light on her groundbreaking GANAS project, where high school students use testimonios as a narrative tool to critically reflect on systemic barriers in education. We explore how these narratives from bilingual, Latina/Latino/Latinx, and Hmong youths, with and without disabilities, challenge traditional pedagogies and contribute to a more inclusive educational landscape. Dr. González's insights underscore the importance of integrating cultural and linguistic diversity into educational systems to empower marginalized communities.
Topics Discussed:
The GANAS Project: Empowering Bilingual Youths Through Testimonios
Educational Inequities: Insights from Bilingual and Disabled Students
The Intersection of Race, Language, and Disability in Education
Testimonios: A Tool for Critical Reflection and Social Change
Case Study Highlight: Diego's Educational Journey
Envisioning a Future of Inclusive and Affirming Educational Spaces
Mentioned Scholars: Mariana Pacheco (UW Madison), Na Lor (Teachers College, Columbia), Joan Hong (University of Maryland, College Park), Kate Roberts (Doctoral candidate, UW Madison)
Jeffrey Anthony:
Welcome to the Inquiry Oasis, the University of Arizona College of Education's podcast, here in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We bring you conversations with our esteemed faculty members and staff, whose research impacts lives from southern Arizona to the far reaches of the globe. We explore the transformative power of education in this border town, where diverse cultures and ideas converge, weaving a tapestry of innovation with compassion and a sense of wonder. So join us as we journey through the sands of curiosity, unearthing insights that enrich and inspire. Sit back and relax as we invite you to dive into the Inquiry Oasis. Thank you for tuning in to the Inquiry Oasis. I'm your host, Jeffrey Anthony, and today we're honored to welcome Dr. Taucia Gonzalez, an assistant professor of special education here at the University of Arizona College of Education. Dr. Gonzalez's interdisciplinary scholarship bridges general and special education, focusing on equity and inclusion for emergent bilinguals with and without learning disabilities. In her latest project titled GANUS, which is an acronym for Gira Academica Para Nuestros Aluminos Sociocriticos, Dr. Gonzales collaborates with high school students and fellow researchers to explore the transformative power of testimonios. These narrative tools serve not just as an expression of personal experiences, but as critical reflections on the systemic barriers and educational inequities faced by bilingual students. So, without further ado, let's embark on this journey of exploration and discovery with Dr. Gonzales here in the Inquiry Oasis, Dr. Gonzalez, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.
Dr. Taucia González:
Thanks for the invitation. I'm happy to be here.
Jeffrey Anthony:
Fantastic. So before we delve into your research, could you share a bit about your journey and what's driven you to focus on emergent bilinguals and educational equity?
Dr. Taucia González:
Yes, so, I guess my journey, I could say I started in my own childhood, but I'll start later than that. My research interests in particular are very much rooted in problems of practice that I experienced as a former public school teacher. My last couple of years teaching youth were when Arizona's Proposition 203 went into effect and it was enacted in the form of the English Language Development Classrooms, which we know are also a form of ethnic and linguistic segregation. So I found myself working in a, in one of the ELD classrooms with middle school students. And that first year, I also realized that in my classroom of all bilingual young people, a quarter of them were also classified as having learning disabilities. So for me, that brought up a lot of questions about educational opportunities for young people who are already being segregated for language differences, and then also being pulled out of the classrooms for special education services. So it was interesting to me because in policy, these students were receiving services that they were entitled to, but the services were very remedial and exclusionary, and to me, this was an injustice. So I did end up pursuing a doctorate in special education. And that's a little ironic, because that's a field that sometimes focuses on deficits and remediations for students, but I decided I could enter that field while really holding true to what I believed and focusing on what bilingual young people with and without disabilities. can do when pedagogies, practices, and policies recognize, integrate, and sustain their cultures and their voices.
Jeffrey Anthony:
so your project, GANAS, highlights powerful testimonios written by high school students. I watched them on the website and they're incredibly powerful. through this work, what key insights have you gained about the educational experiences and challenges faced by Hmong, and Latino, O and X students.
Dr. Taucia González:
Yeah. well, first I just want to acknowledge, that the GANAS program and team is more than me. GANAS is a youth program I codeveloped with my friend and colleague, Mariana Pacheco. She's a professor at UW Madison. And we also have other research team members that include Na Lor from Teachers College at Columbia, Joan Hong from University of Maryland College Park, and Kate Roberts, who's a doctoral candidate at UW Madison. And we've actually been working on this project together for, I think, around four years now. Um, And just to provide a little context, GANAS is a four week youth program that we developed specifically for bilingual Latina, Latino, Latinx, and Hmong youth with and without disabilities. Mariana and I originally developed it as an in person institute we were going to hold. But due to the pandemic, and multiple postponements, we eventually did continue with the project, but we had to change it into a virtual format. So we held it in the summers of 2021 and 2022, and in this four week program, youth, bilingual instructors, and either myself or Mariana would come together for three hours a day over the four weeks to engage in testimonio writing. and we have, and we're still learning a lot through the work that we engaged in with these young people. One thing that we learned is that though each of them, each of the youth brought their own unique experiences with educational inequities or societal inequities that came out in their testimonios, their experience are personal, but they're also very much reflections of larger societal and educational issues. To us, these young people also bring important knowledge to our understandings of educational inequities. as the research team, as the adults in the program, we were both insiders and outsiders. All of us are bilingual, some of us were Latina or Chicana, White, Hmong, Korean even, and by outsider this has to do with, Differences sometimes with race, ethnicity, language, disability, age, of course, and more, but we have also seen that the process of engaging in testimonio writing opened up a lot of opportunities for the young people to rewrite their experiences, and oftentimes this included disrupting dominant understandings of, educational inequities or disability or other differences that are very oftentimes conflated as to deficits, for example, disability as one.
Jeffrey Anthony:
That's interesting. while listening to you explain how this works, it reminds me of John Dewey's idea of looking at, kind of like an intelligence applying, like you're hearing from the students how they're experiencing the educational process. And when you hear that. You can then reflect upon those testimonios to change and to be better effective, maybe more effective, more, inclusive of their worldviews and the outcome of that is a better, more, more rich society.
Dr. Taucia González:
Exactly. in a lot of ways, testimonio as a method, testimonio, Is a process, right? It involves this opportunity for a youth to tell their stories, like you said, but it's more than like what an autobiography would be. These are stories and a genre of writing and a method that are very much rooted in, communities that have experienced historical oppression. So they're coming out of communities that have a lot of resilience and have a lot to teach us about, historical oppressions and the way they're experiencing things such as educational systems. and to us as a method, It is very much knowledge generation. I mean, these are young people generating important knowledges. So aside from them just telling their story, it's also a process for them to rewrite their stories. because sometimes they're internalizing narratives that come from these dominant systems, like school systems that place failure on them, right? Mm-Hmm.. So, it's an opportunity for them to develop a critical consciousness of their understanding and rewriting, Their experiences in new ways.
Jeffrey Anthony:
so this leads into the next question. testimonios serve as both a process and a product for marginalized voices. Could you elaborate on why this approach is crucial for understanding and addressing educational inequities.
Dr. Taucia González:
Yeah, testimonios like a lot of youth driven work, previously I've used methods such as youth participatory action research, YPAR, you know, very much in the same, umbrella of methods that really engage youth in critical ways. Testimonio for us, we drew on the work of like, Dolores Delgado Bernal, and she theorizes testimonios as a process of analysis that leads to new knowledges and ways of understanding issues. She describes this as theorizing from the brown female body. So. Very much, this is a method rooted in the lives and experiences of historically marginalized and oppressed people. For us through this methodology, we were able to coconstruct knowledges with bilingual Hmong and Latinx youth with and without disabilities. So for us, the testimonio process created and not only was it a process and a methodology, but it results in a product. So there's a written piece at the end of it that can be performed or spoken or shared in a variety of ways. But really, there's this in political intent and testimonios to, create social change or educational change. And as a methodology, this helps, the youth, not only were they going through the testimonio process, but they were developing that critical consciousness about their own experience. And they were contributing important forms of insider knowledges that really, resist and push back on Eurocentric and Western understandings of their communities and experiences.
Jeffrey Anthony:
So, in the course of this research, has there been any discoveries or outcomes that have particularly surprised you or challenged your initial expectations?
Dr. Taucia González:
yes, definitely, I'm, we're still in the process of writing up, various articles coming out of this data, but there's one, right now we're working on a case study write up of one of the youth participants in particular that I'll call, we call Diego. He's a bilingual, Latino labeled with a disability. And I use that term 'labeled with a disability,' not because, I think disability is a negative thing, but because, Diego, his educational experience wasn't very affirming of disability or his native language, Spanish. So he very much resisted the notion of having a disability, even though he was classified with a disability in the school. So in this case study, we refer to him as a bilingual Latino labeled with a disability. And through his testimonio as both a process and a product, we're learning a lot about disability, language, race, intersectional experiences. and for Diego in particular, he experienced a lot of linguisticism and ableism in schools, largely in the form of things like exclusionary discipline, and exclusionary academic practices. When I say exclusionary discipline, um, these aren't the formal things like getting sent to the office, things that are tracked by schools, these are really things that seem mundane that happen all the time, like when you go into schools, kids sitting out in the hallway who are maybe sent out of the classroom, like, go wait outside for me, things like that. So he was one of those kids that spent a lot of time sitting outside the classroom in the hallway, But for Diego, like one thing that we really recognized in his testimonio, I mean, this started happening for him at a very young age, and he showed us that even though this seems benign, it's really, it really was consequential in his educational experience because there's a cumulative effect of lost opportunities to learn for him. and when we talk about, exclusionary, academic practices or instructional practices again, these are small things that happen. This is like in the form of like teachers teaching to the middle. So for a student like Diego, who learns in different ways and thinks in different ways, this was very exclusionary to him. And it really wasn't like he had a narrative in his head that he developed at school, that he just was incapable at math. He wasn't good at math. He didn't understand math and there was a pivotal moment for him when he was in sixth grade, he had a teacher that didn't teach to the middle and, actually showed him that he was very capable at math and that this wasn't an issue with Diego. This is actually an issue with teaching, and the school system that was disabling to him. So through the process of testimoniando, Diego was able to reconcile this notion of what many would consider educational failure as a problem that wasn't a problem within him. It was actually a problem within the educational system. And to me, him coming to this realization is really a powerful moment of seeing his critical consciousness at work. He was able to think historically about his own educational experience and in this case, injustices. And like you said, it was at the same time he's dreaming of new possible futures, right? So in many ways that knowledge generation that happens through testimonios is like, I call it youth dreaming work. For Diego, he recognized that this was his personal experience and it was very personal, but his story was also the story of many. I mean, there are collective groups that could resonate with Diego's experience. So we don't provide disabled or youthly people with disabilities enough opportunities to generate. These new understandings or contrasting understandings of what it means to navigate our educational system at these intersections. and I just want to share Diego's written testimonio. He ends with just this last statement. This is a quote from him- "With my testimonio, I would like others to know that me and many others have had to struggle in school at a young age. And that I may not now have learning problems currently in school, but there are still many students who still have education learning problems. So what I want others to take away from my testimonio is that there has to be change in school systems and the education many schools give to students." So for Diego. This was more than larger than just him. He recognized that a lot of students were still struggling and, really receiving unjust educational experiences. and for other GANAS youth, then the program, they generated knowledge about their experiences with a variety of issues connected to education, such as their migration to the U. S., racism, colorism, linguacism, and just marginalization that they experience. For instance, School and society that oftentimes we're not attending to when we're thinking about how to make better, more inclusive schools. So for me, this is about creating spaces for young people to rewrite and re understand their experiences and more, just as importantly, to dream of new futures and for us to attend to what they're saying matters, right?
Jeffrey Anthony:
Wow. So yeah, Diego is reminding us of our responsibility, right? And I think that's really important. And thank you for sharing that. So why do you believe this research is particularly important to the community here at the University of Arizona? And how can it influence our educational approaches?
Dr. Taucia González:
Yeah, well, I think many of us probably already recognize that bilingual students with disabilities have a long history of exclusionary practices in Arizona. and especially due to this dual classification, these students have experienced segregation due to their English language learner classifications, and it's still very commonplace in Arizona for special education services to be provided through pullout models. So. This creates very fragmented experiences for students, that often come in the form of remedial forms of education and are not tapping into students cultural and linguistic repertoires, their voices and agency, nor are they identity affirming. And even though, even in like Tucson, for instance, we have a long history of social justice and assets based pedagogies, oftentimes that still leaves out students with disabilities. So, thinking where disability falls, within these assets based pedagogies is important.
Jeffrey Anthony:
Let's say we step into a time machine and step into the year 2054. What transformative changes do you hope to see in educational for bilingual and marginalized students?
Dr. Taucia González:
well, I basically want to see Diego's vision come to life, but I want to see, educational spaces that are redesigned to be youth and disability informed, that understand disability as normal human variants rather than something to be fixed, and that provide youth opportunities to affirm their linguistic, disability, ethnic, and racial aspects of their identities as learners, You know, how that comes into practice, that could be in many different ways. But for me, I hope, disability is centered in our future, understandings of assets and strengths.
Jeffrey Anthony:
Yes, I would love to see that future. As we near the end of our conversation, we'd like to ask you to recommend a book or a paper that has been impactful in your field and to yourself. could you share one with our audience and explain its significance?
Dr. Taucia González:
Yeah, definitely. You know, for a long time, I've long drawn from outside of my field because, you know, I tend to issues such as race and language, but I think it is an exciting time in my field of special education because there is now more attention to those issues. A more recent book that's been impactful to me is entitled Sustaining Disabled Youth, Centering Disability and Assets Pedagogies. It's edited by friends and colleagues, Federica Waitoler and Kathleen King Thorius. And to me this book's significant in that it builds on the rich traditions of culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally sustaining pedagogies, works by scholars such as Gloria Latzen Billings, Sami Alim, and Django Paris. And as influential and exciting as their work has been, disability, like I said before, is often left out of most ACID's pedagogies. So this book centers disability as a cultural identity to be sustained. And many of the contributors, in the book identify as disabled BIPOC folks or folks that have worked in collaboration with them rather than on them. So to me, this book is also really accessible. I've drawn on it for my pre and in service teachers because it gets to that intersectional nature of disability in assets based, agentive, and humanizing ways.
Jeffrey Anthony:
So Dr. Gonzalez, your insights into the power of testimonios and the experiences of bilingual learners have been incredibly enlightening today. Your dedication to fostering inclusive educational systems is incredibly inspiring. We look forward to the continued impact of your work in shaping more equitable and understanding educational environments. And thank you, listeners, for joining us today in the Inquiry Oasis. We hope our conversation with Dr. Gonzalez has enriched your perspective on educational equity and inclusivity. Remember, we're back on the first and third Wednesdays every month with fresh insights and conversations, so be sure to tune in. Until next time. Keep your curiosity alive, and remember, knowledge is our oasis.