Abstract
This chapter presents the results of an ethnographic study conducted at a community library in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. In this library, three Mexican student teachers conducted their teaching praxicum, working with low-socio-economic-status children aged 3–12 years old. In order to highlight the importance of Mexico’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, one part of the praxicum was to develop and conduct a critical thematic unit (López-Gopar, Engl Lang Teach J 68(3): 310–320, 2014; Decolonizing primary English language teaching. Multilingual Matters, Bristol, 2016) centered on health issues using a plurilingual approach.
This critical thematic unit, as carried out by the three student teachers at the community library in Oaxaca, is the focus of the ethnographic study presented in this chapter. First, we provide the ethnographic portraits of the three student teachers followed by a brief description of the critical thematic unit. Second and based on the iterative analysis of the student teachers’ ethnographic diaries, children’s work samples and ethnographic field notes, we discuss three emergent themes: (a) community and children’s social problems driving the language curriculum; (b) challenges faced by student teachers in a plurilingual class; and (c) issues in teaching a critical thematic unit on health issues.
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López Gopar, M.E., Sughrua, W.M., Córdova-Hernández, L., Torres, B.P.L., Aldaz, E.R., Morales, V.V. (2020). A Critical Thematic Unit in a Teaching Praxicum: Health Issues and Plurilingualism in the “English” Classroom. In: Lau, S.M.C., Van Viegen, S. (eds) Plurilingual Pedagogies. Educational Linguistics, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36983-5_5
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