Understanding children's funds of identity as learners through multimodal self-expressions in Mexico City

Abstract

This qualitative study examined the multimodal self-expressions of 39 students in grades 4th–6th attending public schools in Mexico City. Students' shared perspectives of their learning environments and of themselves as learners throughout their teachers' participation in a program designed to shift traditional teacher-centered practices toward co-constructions of learning spaces that are conducive to dialogue, reflection, and socio-emotional awareness through art and narratives. Drawing from a multimodal social semiotics and funds of identity theoretical framework, we analyzed students' responses to three prompts that elicited their perspectives regarding their own learning and their learning environments. Prompts were completed at three different points in time during one school year. Findings include: (1) changes in classroom configurations illustrating teacher-student relationships, (2) the emergence of additional materials and resources for learning, (3) variation in the learning approaches preferred by students, and (4) expanded purposes and motivations for learning. This study illustrates how student-centered pedagogies and teacher-mediated learning processes can mobilize students' funds of identity for learning by co-constructing knowledge and connecting to students' experiences through dialogue and art.

Introduction

Children's learning experiences are enhanced when pedagogical approaches integrate their identities, life experiences, and agency as learning resources (Adair, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992). Nonetheless, traditional approaches that center the teacher as the transmitter of knowledge and position students as blank slates—a banking model of education—continue to dominate educational systems globally (Freire, 2018). Consequently, student-centered pedagogy has been the focus of many global educational reforms (Anderson-Levitt, 2008), to varying levels of success (Gauthier & Dembelé, 2004). In Mexico, the location of this study, national education reforms over the past decade have indeed shifted toward more constructivist perspectives that emphasize participation, interaction, and the holistic development of student competencies, including socio-emotional development (Secretaría de Educación Pública, 2018). However, the teacher-centered classroom structures addressed by past reforms have been slow to transform and continue to be deeply ingrained in daily practice (Blanco Bosco, 2011; Patrinos, 2007; Zorrilla, 2002).

One of the central challenges of implementing student-centered pedagogy lies in the process of revising the teacher-student relationship (Bartlett, 2005). For the past 25 years, a social enterprise in Mexico, La Vaca Independiente (LVI), has worked to shift the role of teachers by orienting their pedagogical practices toward more student-centered and equitable approaches that invite students' experiences into the learning process, promote collaboration, and integrate the use of multimodal resources such as art and dialogue. LVI's instructional program—Desarrollo de la Inteligencia a través del Arte (DIA) [Development of Intelligence through Art, DIA]—aims “to create a learning space in which oral expression, participation, and collective construction of knowledge are fostered to promote the integral development of language and thinking skills, as well as social-emotional skills” (La Vaca Independiente, 2017). The methodology of the DIA program aims to shift the focus of teaching from a model of transmitting knowledge to that of mediating learning. Teaching as mediation involves navigating the dialogic relationships between a set of stimuli and the learner, recognizing the individual's learning processes so as to modify engagement accordingly (Tzuriel, 2012; Vygotsky, 1978). Through mediation, teachers adapt the instructional materials to expand learners' awareness and understandings. This study examined students' perceptions of their own learning experiences while their teachers integrated mediation processes as a pedagogical approach in their classrooms.

This study examined the written and pictorial reflections of 39 4th–6th graders in Mexico City, which were created during the eight weeks that their teacher participated in the DIA training program. Additional reflections and responses were collected from the same 39 children six months later at the end of the school year. The focus of this study is to examine how students' perceptions of their learning experiences and as learners themselves changed over time. The research questions that guided this study were:

• In what ways does the development of teachers who receive the DIA training promote learning among students?

• How do children's multimodal self-expressions depict learning, themselves as learners, and their classroom as a learning environment across time?

• How are students' funds of identity evident in their reflections?