Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-2023
Publisher
Springer Nature
Abstract
In the United States, approximately one in five college students are of Latinx1 descent or identify as Latinx. The representation of Latinx in higher education has been steadily increasing in recent years. However, the trend slightly decreased during the 2021 academic year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent reports indicate that some Latinx students are postponing higher education to support and care for their families (Marshall et al. 2021). In the context of providing Latinx students with meaningful learning opportunities that foster a sense of community, alongside a critical consciousness, we facilitated a decolonial pedagogical activity to help members of the Latinx Student Union (LSU) reflect on human rights discourses in the United States. Higher education institutions, while purporting the development of citizen leaders of conscience and democratic engagement, are often experienced by Latinx as oppressive disenfranchising spaces because such settings do not actually enact equity, diversity, and inclusion (Bell 2018).
As a response to these conditions, we implemented an intervention, the Circle of Encounter decolonial pedagogical activity, called ciranda, with the Latinx Student Union (LSU) at a private Jesuit institution in the Silicon Valley (California, United States). The activity sought to cultivate a critical consciousness about the implications of racist nativism, structural violence, whiteness/white supremacy, and human rights as these manifested in their lives, families, and communities. In this way, our goal was to facilitate a space for Latinx students to engage with these topics, and to reflect on the significance or meanings of human rights.
In this reflexión pedagógica, we offer a brief description of the ciranda, or Circle of Encounter activity. We reflect on how we facilitated the ciranda, which has roots in Latin American popular education, decolonial pedagogy, embodied experiential learning, and social movements. Additionally, we reflect on our process of leading the activity and learning from Latinx students who challenged sociocultural political discourses of human rights. We present a decolonial pedagogical activity, the ciranda, that contrasts the banking model of education, which is a form of disembodied learning (Watkins et al. 2018). We demonstrate how Latinx students conceptualized notions of human rights in relation to the experiences of Latinx in the United States, specifically immigrant and undocumented families. Our reflexión pedagógica illustrates our practice and commitment to cultivating Latinx students’ critical consciousness through reflexive dialogues grounded in a decolonial pedagogy aligned with Latinx studies. Our process of cultivating critical consciousness through reflexive dialogues and embodied learning via dance is characterized by the ciranda. We offer this activity as a strategy for educators desiring to facilitate learning opportunities for students that are grounded in a Latin American decolonial pedagogy.
Recommended Citation
Fernández, J. S., & Ferreira, J. M. (2023). Ciranda, a circle of encounter: Reflections on a decolonial pedagogical activity on human rights discourses with Latinx students. Latino Studies, 21(2), 270–280. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-023-00417-3
Comments
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