Developing Culturally and Historically Sensitive Teacher Education: Global Lessons from a Literacy Education Program (Reinventing Teacher Education)

Shortlisted for the UK Literacy Association's Academic Book Award 2021 This volume explores the literacy education master’s degree program developed at Universidad de Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, with the aim of addressing the nation’s emerging social, economic, technological, and political needs. Developing the program required taking into account the cultural diversity, historical economic disparities, indigenous and colonial cultures, and power inequities of the Mexican nation. These conditions have produced economic structures that maintain the status quo that concentrates wealth and opportunity in the hands of the very few, creating challenges for the education and economic life for the majority of the population. The program advocates providing tools for youth to critique and change their surroundings, while also learning the codes of power that provide them a repertoire of navigational means for producing satisfying lives. Rather than arguing that the program can be replicated or taken to scale in different contexts, the editors focus on how their process of looking inward to consider Mexican cultures enabled them to develop an appropriate educational program to address Mexico’s historically low literacy rates. They show that if all teaching and learning is context-dependent, then focusing on the process of program development, rather than on the outcomes that may or may not be easily applied to other settings, is appropriate for global educators seeking to provide literacy teacher education grounded in national concerns and challenges. The volume provides a process model for developing an organic program designed to address needs in a national context, especially one grounded in both colonial and heritage cultures and one in which literacy is understood as a tool for social critique, redress, advancement, and equity.

Yolanda Gayol Ramírez is a Fellow at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, USA, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.

Marie Brennan is Professor of Education at Victoria University, Australia, and a former Dean of Education at the University of South Australia. She is currently leading the final year of a major Australian Research Council grant (LP100200499) Renewing the teaching profession in regional areas through community partnerships and participating in the Australian study of the Work of Teacher Educators (WOTE).

Patricia Rosas Chávez is Professor and Director of Innovation and Undergraduate Studies at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.

Joce Nuttall is Amo Matua | Executive Dean in the Faculty of Education and Professor at the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, USA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He has won a number of internationally recognised awards, including, the National Council of Teachers of English Distinguished Service Award in 2017, the International Federation for the Teaching of English Award in 2018, Distinguished Scholar at the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy in 2018 and the Horace Mann League Outstanding Public Educator Award in 2020.