| Description |
This study examines the everyday experiences of contemporary Chicana/o elementary aged youth through a Chicana feminist and critical youth studies framework. Through this framework, Chicana/o elementary-aged youth are recognized as nepantleras/os as a result of their borderland experiences tied to race/ethnicity, gender, class, and age. Recognizing Chicana/o elementary-aged youth as nepantleras/os helps to center these youth and to acknowledge their material realities as well as desire for social change. As such, the focus of this study was to not only better understand the everyday realities of nepantlera/o elementary-aged youth, to include their experiences in school, but to examine how they respond to a Chicana feminist and critical youth studies curriculum and praxis. Understanding elementary-aged youth of color as positioned within a borderlands helps to recognize their everyday experiences as a multiply marginalized population, especially within schooling institutions. Further, recognizing the borderland experiences of Chicana/o elementary-aged youth helps to understand their embodied knowledges, pedagogical devices that are youth-centered, and their desire and ability to effect social change. When introduced to a Chicana feminist and critical youth studies approach to education, nepantlera/o elementary-aged youth revealed their desire to participate in undoing colonizing constructions of themselves, thus contributing to reconceptualizations of youth of color and the creation of educational practices, pedagogies, and spaces that are transformative for traditional as well as emerging Chicana/o and ethnic studies curricula. As such, a Chicana feminist and critical youth studies framework contributes to the co-construction of youth-centered pedagogies as well as provides momentary glimpses into Anzaldas El Mundo Zurdo within educative spaces with youth of color. The findings elaborate on the embodiment of a nepantlera/o subject position by Chicana/o elementary-aged youth and the co-construction of a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy through a Chicana feminist and critical youth studies approach to education. |
