Research Spotlight: Mr. Raul Garza
Q & A with Mr. Raul Garza, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Teaching and Learning
What are your research interests and research achievements?
As an emerging scholar and doctoral student, I primarily engage in research in the areas of critical pedagogy, place-based pedagogies, and minoritized identities, especially migrant student identities. In my role as Professor of Practice for the Department of Teaching and Learning, I am also beginning to explore teacher education in Chicanx and borderland contexts. Currently, I am co-editing a special issue in Texas Education Review that explores the current state of research in cultural studies at UT Austin and UTRGV. I am also part of the editorial team for the journal of the Curriculum & Pedagogy Group. In addition, I recently co-published an article in the Journal of Curriculum Studies that focuses on resistant, transnational, and translanguaging traditions of the RGV that conjugates them with an in situ notion of critical curricular-pedagogical praxis.
How does your work align with UTRGV’s and CEP’s strategic plans?
The work I do in the classroom, as well as the scholarly work that I engage in focus on enhancing student success through bicultural, bilingual, and biliterate educational practices. Particularly, I focus on highlighting the wealth of historical, cultural, and social resources available to our students in and around the communities that are serviced by UTRGV.
What are your current projects?
A first manuscript explores the writing of Gloria Anzaldúa and her work on challenging the hegemonic ways of knowing, thinking, and being in the U.S, but more specifically the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) through her children’s books. A second manuscript that is also co-authored, explores Chicana preservice teachers’ experiences of Chicanx studies curriculum in preservice teachers’ social studies methods classes. A third project explores the experiences of U.S-born students who completed their primary/secondary education in Mexico and are preparing to teach in the U.S./RGV. The study examines the possible tensions that these students may experience in their preparation to teach U.S. versions of history/social studies in a borderland area that has a strong tradition of consensual and contested histories of U.S./Mexico relations in the RGV.