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. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, 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