research and literature

Research and Literature

Research Context: 

This is a four year project that started working with a cohort of pre-service teachers (now teachers) at the University of Puerto Rico, Bayamón during their last year taking literacy methods courses, their student teaching year and as first year as teachers. In collaboration with Dr. Maria del Rocío Costa, professor of literacy methods at the University of Puerto Rico, the goal of the project is to enhance and develop these future teachers’ skills and knowledge in the area of critical literacy with young critical readers and writers. We want to support this cohort in creating an understanding of their role as agents of social change through their work as literacy teachers.

The project is funded through the IU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Title VI grant. Through this funding we are able to have an emphasis on expanding teacher candidates' knowledge on Latin American and Caribbean children’s literature to create curricular inquiries that relate local current social and political situations to how communities in the Caribbean and Latin America live through social struggles. To engage in this critical literacy work, we rely on the abundance of children’s literature found in Latin America that addresses different social struggles.