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Critical Literacy Project

Puerto Rico Critical Literacy Project

In 2019, Professors Carmen Lilian Medina (Indiana University) and Maria del Rocio Costa (University of Puerto Rico Bayamon, UPRB) started the Puerto Rico Critical Literacy (PRCL) Project which focuses on developing literacy skills using Latin American and Caribbean children’s literature.

PRCL has enhanced the children’s literature taught by Dr. Costa, using student teachers enrolled in the elementary educational program and in-service teachers in their classrooms, benefitting over 100 elementary school children.

The project adjusted to the earthquakes and COVID-19, both occurring months apart from each other by making its workshops available as webinars. Webinars on “Teaching in Time of Crisis” and Latin American and Caribbean children’s literature received over 500 Facebook Live views. Motivated by the success of the program, Professor Medina is looking into bringing it to IU Northwest, a Hispanic Serving Institution, and including Indigenous children’s literature to increase the project’s impact.

Project Coordinators

IU Project Coordinator

UPR Project Coordinator

Graduate Assistant

The overall project across the last 3 years has impacted several communities.

Teacher's Choice

Children's Literature Resources:

Y oyes cómo llora el viento by Dora Sales and Enrique Flores

Un día perfecto by Javier Garrido

Mejorar la raza by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro

Negro, negrito by Gloriann Sacha Anontetty Lebron

Los caballitos se mudan de coral by Sandra Rivera Sanchez

Yo Opino de Ita Venegas Pérez

Pelo bueno- Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro

Titi Chabeli- Laura Rexach y Carla Torres Dávika

Un día perfecto by Ira Levin

Ricitos de ónix by Laura Rexach

A de activista by Martha González

El rio de los cocodrilos by Gustavo Roldán

Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico! Brotes de las Américas by Pat Mora

Matador by Wander Piroli

Antonia va al rio by Dipacho

Vivan las uñas de colores by Alisha Acosta and Luis Amavisca

Historical Context and Justification

This collaborative project supports Puerto Rican teacher candidates, in-service teachers and elementary school students’ critical literacy pedagogies focusing on literacy inquiries into local social struggles contextualizing them into a Latin American and Caribbean perspective using children’s literature.

This initiative is in response to the challenges Puerto Rican teachers face as they are asked to implement United States federal educational initiatives, such as, Common Core, Teaching Values, etc. ,in local schools that do not necessarily take into consideration the cultural connections between Puerto Rico and other Latin American cultural contexts.

Pedagogical Foundations

We draw upon a “culturally sustaining” (Paris, 2011) “critical literacy theory of instruction” (Leland, Lewison and Harste, 2013; Freire, 1970) that uses learners’ personal experiences, local histories and larger social histories (such as Latin American social struggles) in literacy pedagogies to explore potential ways to envision the transformation of inequities in current Puerto Rican realities. As Vásquez, Albers, and Harste’s (2014) work illustrates, when children can engage critically with texts that relate to their immediate realities and larger associated histories, even young children become participants in a different kind of reading and writing community where they can consider both the social effects of texts while analyzing the social context and effects of everyday experiences (Luke & Freebody, 1999).

Our Focus

Our main focus has been on using Latin American and Caribbean children’s literature to create curricular inquiries to develop an understanding of the local current social and political situation relating to how communities in the Caribbean and Latin America have lived through social struggles. To engage on this critical literacy work, we rely on the abundance of children’s literature found in Latin America and the Caribbean emphasizing different social struggles.

The project has included enhancing the children’s literature collection from Latin America and the Caribbean.

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.

Work in Action

Over the past 4 years:

Created a long term unified project that integrates teacher candidates, teachers and children within a continuum for the design of a local culturally sustaining critical literacy pedagogies in Puerto Rico.
Explored the potential of critical Latin American children’s literature as tools to help educators and children recognize trajectories of social struggles in Latin America relating to the current social struggles Puerto Ricans face.
Devised critical literacy curricular materials grounded on collecting participants’ memories of social challenges in Puerto Rico relating to the study of Latin American critical children’s literature.
Developed and sustained a long-term network (4 year cycle) of induction and retention among teacher candidates in the University of Puerto Rico, local school teachers and literacy faculty at the University of Puerto Rico and Indiana University. This long-term system supports current and future elementary teachers in the development of local critical literacy pedagogies in classrooms that foster memorable and engaging forms of reading comprehension as meaning making practices that relate to local lives, histories and to a broader Latin American and Caribbean context.
Explored the nature of participants’ (teacher candidates and teachers) perceptions and understandings of the complex social conditions present in local communities and their vision for the construction of new social futures in Puerto Rico using literacy as a means for interpreting how different social struggles in Latin American serve as lenses to examine local Puerto Rican realities.

Puerto Rico Critical Literacy Project