Home > Events > MRC Speaker Series: Claudia Cervantes-Soon (Arizona State)
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MRC Speaker Series: Claudia Cervantes-Soon (Arizona State)

Time: 
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 - 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Location: 
https://go.umd.edu/S9V (Zoom passcode: Speaker)

 

Re-Building a Foundation for Reimagined Futurities in Dual-Language Education

Abstract: Two-way dual language programs, commonly referred to as dual language, integrate English-dominant students and speakers of a partner language through a content-based bilingual immersion approach with the three goals of bilingualism and biliteracy, high academic achievement, and sociocultural competence. Given the claimed benefits of dual language education for all students and its intention to improve equity, these programs have become increasingly popular, especially among English-dominant families. Unfortunately, research has made it increasingly clear that not all students in dual language programs reap the same benefits due to issues of racial, linguistic, and class inequalities found across educational contexts. Dr. Cervantes-Soon will discuss how critical consciousness can help interrogate current frameworks and goals undergirding these programs and reshape the pursuits and practices in dual-language bilingual education. Her talk will explore ways to re-envision new futurities for the children that these programs were originally intended to serve through a praxis of solidarity and the fostering of students’ agentic identities, languages, knowledge and joy.

Bio: Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon (PhD) is Associate Professor at Arizona State University. Her research is situated at the intersection of anthropology of education, bilingual education, and Chicana feminisms and focuses on anticolonial perspectives in the analysis of educational contexts, practices, and policies affecting youth from historically marginalized and U.S.-Mexico borderlands communities. Her most recent work explores critical consciousness as the essential foundation of dual-language bilingual education and the potential of building a vision of solidarity, particularly between Black and Brown communities. Dr. Cervantes-Soon’s scholarship has been published in leading journals and books and has been recognized by organizations like the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the Council of Anthropology and Education, among others. She is also the author of the award-winning book, Juárez Girls Rising: Transformative Education in Times of Dystopia.