Educational Foundations & Policy Studies

This course provides an overview of key historical voices, text, and practices in the tradition of Latin American thinking about education covering Pre-Columbian, Conquest, Liberal, Nationalist, and Liberatory periods.
Typically offered in Fall, Spring & Summer.

The diversity of populations in Latin America and the region's political, cultural, and economic achievements and challenges have shaped unique education philosophies and practices. Likewise, a variety of education philosophies and practices within the region have had enormous sociological, political, and economic impacts on the region's populations. The principle aim of this course is to begin an exploration of Latin American philosophies of education. Particular emphasis will be placed on investigating the different ways that philosophers of Latin American education have conceptualized education as a (trans)formative and liberatory process. Our inquiry will be guided by these questions and others: What is the place of education in the forming of Latin American cultures, identities, epistemic paradigms, and social movements across the region? How have Latin Americans and those who study the region conceived "education," "teaching," "curriculum," and "schooling"? How can we trace educational theory, practices, and institutions from the pre-conquest civilizations of the Aztecs, Incas, and others, to the communities and modern nation-states that make up contemporary Latin America? To what degree is Latin American education theory "situated"? What does it mean to suggest that education and knowledge can be colonized? What does it mean to suggest that people can decolonize knowledge and liberate themselves to strive in new cultural directions? How does philosophical inquiry into these issues illuminate the quest for justice and equality in education and civil society? And finally, how have a wide variety of contemporary Latin American social movements incorporated liberatory education practices into their struggles for social justice?.
Typically offered in Fall, Spring & Summer.

When it comes to preparing teachers, we speak about "knowledge," since that is the foundational raw material with which teachers work. Nonetheless, what is knowledge? What is knowledge for Latin Americans? Is it something generated only when teachers and students meet together? Or is it created spontaneously? That question implies concrete, but mostly philosophical, implications. In other words, it is an epistemological matter. This course is devoted to showing how we have built our epistemologies growing up in Latin America. Throughout history, foreign approaches tried to translate our thought. Currently, many scholars and international organizations are seeking to hear directly from us. This is why "decolonial thinking" is in vogue. Since you as an educator or teacher work with Latin American students on a daily basis, you have the opportunity to learn what knowledge and ways of knowing your students already have. This is related not only to what contents or skills your students already handle. This course will show you the way in which we have grasped our ways of knowing through our ways of being, since our cosmovisions, cultural learning, qualitative symbols, and stories have shaped our ways to know (epistemology) the world.
Typically offered in Fall, Spring & Summer.

This course will address how narrative learning or narrative ways of knowing are necessary epistemological foundations to curriculum in education. Stories are themselves ways of knowing for us, the Latin American peoples. The epistemological breakthrough that enabled narrative learning gaining a place within educational research has been a historically difficult process. Narrative learning can be traced back to the way in which indigenous peoples of Latin America have made sense of reality over millennia. This idea leads to the notion of narrative knowledge as a special form of reasoning, feeling, and grasping the world for us in Latin America. In our countries we translate knowing into telling and telling into knowing. Narrating or telling our knowledge is a special form of reasoning, feeling, and making sense of reality. In this course students will learn how narratives become the key aspect of an intimate relation between knower and the known for us. While we were growing up in Latin America, narratives shaped the manner in which we thought about what we know and how we know it. That process passed down from generation to generation. Thanks to the decolonial thinking perspective in vogue, today we have the opportunity of speaking for ourselves to explain our narrative ways of knowing and learning. Since you as an educator or teacher work with Latin American students on a daily basis, you have the opportunity to learn what knowledge and ways of knowing your students already have with them.
Typically offered in Fall, Spring & Summer.