Lourdes Diaz Soto – författare

Latinos in the United States have fought hard to attain equality, especially in the field of education. The Praeger Handbook of Latino Education in the U.S. focuses on this fight for equal educational access and represents a significant addition to American educational literature. The contributors to this volume reveal that many Latino children still face challenges that were present many decades ago. In addition to such obstacles as cultural conflicts and racism, they also face teachers, curricula, and assessments that are not always respectful to their backgrounds.Educators, parents, policy makers, and communities across the country will find this work a goldmine of detailed historical and current information.

Provides insights into the impact that eliminating bilingual education programs has on the lives of families and communities. Persuasively argues that linguistic repression is an unwise language policy for a democratic nation.Decades of educational research have documented the best practices and optimal educational experiences for language-minority children. Yet, the current conservative climate in our nation openly threatens bilingual education programs in schools and communities.Over a nine-year period, the author collected data from bilingual families residing in "Steel Town" Pennsylvania regarding their educational experiences. In January 1993 the local school board and school superintendent decided to eliminate its nationally recognized, twenty-year-old bilingual education program. For the first time in the history of this community, the bilingual families organized themselves to speak out on the importance of these programs to their lives. The political struggle that ensued during the bilingual controversy in Steel Town led to asymmetrical power relations. The voices of the bilingual community leaders, bilingual educators, and, more important, the bilingual children, were disregarded by the decision makers.

The basic premise of this book is simple – it brings together early childhood and cultural-studies professionals who are willing to provide a kaleidoscope of views capable of challenging the sanctity of the early childhood western lens. Marianne Bloch, Hedy Chang, Amos Hatch, Henry Giroux, Jan Jipson, Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Kessler, Sally Lubeck, Shirley Steinberg, Beth Blue Swadener, Nila Rinehardt, and Lourdes Diaz Soto call for a move toward the critical, toward the multicultural, toward the dialogic, toward the feminist, toward the personal, with the others, with the silenced, and in solidarity with multiple players.

As the conservative political mood of our nation eliminates programs for the increasing numbers of bilingual children, educators are nevertheless expected to teach linguistically and culturally diverse learners with limited background knowledge and resources. This edited volume challenges «mainstream» educators to critically examine how to best meet the needs of bilingual/bicultural children in contemporary America.

This volume critically examines issues of power and voice in research with children. Chapters focus on the relationship between researchers and children and explore how to more adequately represent the complexities, multiple perspectives, and understandings that emerge when the research process more fully includes children and youth. Contributors explore issues of imposition and power that are inherent in traditional research and even more problematic with children. Authors document how children’s voices can guide us in learning about research methodologies, theories, and praxis, as well as about issues of race, identity, class, linguistic diversity and gender within larger postcolonial contexts and research traditions.

For the past 20 years, a range of scholars, educators, and cultural workers have examined dominant discourses of «childhood» using critical, feminist, and other postmodern perspectives. Located in a variety of disciplines, these poststructural, deconstructive, and even postcolonial critiques have challenged everything from notions of the universal child, to adult/child dualisms, to deterministic developmental theory. The purpose of this volume is to acknowledge the profound contributions of that large body of literature, while demonstrating the ways that critical analyses can be used to generate avenues/actions that increase possibilities for social justice for those who are younger while, at the same time, avoiding determinism. In this time of globalization, hyper-capitalism, and discourses that would control and disqualify through constructions like accountability, we believe that projects such as this are of utmost importance.The volume is divided into four major sections to reflect the multiplicity of human voices and perspectives (section I), contemporary circumstances and dominant discourses within which we all attempt to function (sections II and III), and the generation of new possibilities for constructing relationships together (section IV). Finally, a voice from the «heart» within a «reconceptualist» social science agenda for early childhood studies is presented.

This edited volume is dedicated to contemporary teachers. Its goal is to provide a practical book for in-service and pre-service teachers of bilingual/bicultural children. The authors, each of whom is herself bilingual/bicultural, share personal wisdom garnered from working in classrooms with bilingual/bicultural learners. This book provides practical knowledge for teachers who are struggling to meet the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms.

There are an estimated forty-eight million Latinas/os living in the United States, roughly sixteen percent of the population. Not only are they the largest minority group in the country but also the youngest: one out of five children is Latina/o. The rise in the Latina/o population has caused for panic in some areas of the country, resulting in hostile and sometimes violent racism and xenophobia, and yet, much of that hatred is fueled not on facts but rather on myths about immigration.To date, most studies on immigration have been data driven, focusing on migrating groups or policy analyses. Latina/o Hope is different. It incorporates salient theories on migration as it moves toward a new theorizing, one that views immigration from the immigrant's perspective. Thus, it integrates research into the depiction of various slices of immigrant experience—the young women disappearing in the city of Juarez, the various students at various stages of their educational journeys,the young children in need of ESL programs, the ethnically-mixed immigrants, the undocumented workers, and others. Latina/o Hope discusses the impact of neoliberal policies and global capitalization on the daily lives of Latina/o immigrants, serving as an inspiration for dialogue, praxis and imagination to love and serve one another.

There are an estimated forty-eight million Latinas/os living in the United States, roughly sixteen percent of the population. Not only are they the largest minority group in the country but also the youngest: one out of five children is Latina/o. The rise in the Latina/o population has caused for panic in some areas of the country, resulting in hostile and sometimes violent racism and xenophobia, and yet, much of that hatred is fueled not on facts but rather on myths about immigration.To date, most studies on immigration have been data driven, focusing on migrating groups or policy analyses. Latina/o Hope is different. It incorporates salient theories on migration as it moves toward a new theorizing, one that views immigration from the immigrant's perspective. Thus, it integrates research into the depiction of various slices of immigrant experience—the young women disappearing in the city of Juarez, the various students at various stages of their educational journeys,the young children in need of ESL programs, the ethnically-mixed immigrants, the undocumented workers, and others. Latina/o Hope discusses the impact of neoliberal policies and global capitalization on the daily lives of Latina/o immigrants, serving as an inspiration for dialogue, praxis and imagination to love and serve one another.