Capstone Synthesis & Literature Review Combined M Hernandez (1)

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University of Texas, El Paso *

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5313

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Jul 3, 2024

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Madeline Hernandez SCFE 5313.001 The University of Texas at El Paso Synthesis of DESJE Program Courses & Literature Review Combined November 20th, 2023

1 Introduction The University of Texas at El Paso’s (UTEP) graduate program of Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice in Education (DESJE) offers curricula for students who are looking to bring equity, diversity and culture to the educational field. This program covers so many important aspects to make change in the education system as well as in the world we live in. Such as bringing feminism to young students and bringing diversity to the classroom. I chose this program because I believe it goes hand in hand with what I do in my career now. I am a Site Coordinator with Communities in Schools at an elementary school in Texas. We are a non-profit organization that strives to provide students with a community of support to empower them to stay in school and achieve in life. The DESJE program reflects all of my own personal values of diversity, feminism, empowerment, and the goals of my work. DESJE is something I did not grow up learning in school and I wish to change this for the future of our youth. The main purpose of this essay combine and reflect on an overview of what I have learned from the DESJE graduate program and to introduce my topic of choice that is rooted in my interests and professional experiences. First, in this paper, I will introduce the two most influential courses in my academic preparation at the graduate level. Then, I will reflect on what I have learned in my DESJE coursework, between Fall of 2021 to Fall of 2023. Next, I will provide a narrative description of 15 articles I have chosen to support my topic. I will begin by providing a brief synthesis of 15 research articles. Then, I will present a comparison and contrastion of the articles. Finally, I will provide a conclusion that focuses on implications for future research. The 2 Most Influential Courses

2 While being in the DESJE program the two most influential courses I took were SCFE 5313 Transnational & Postcolonial Feminisms and SCFE 5307 Lang, Race & Culture in Ed. I am currently still in Transnational & Postcolonial Feminisms, but in the short time I have taken this course, I feel a connection with the material. The content we go through really sparks my interest when reading. Feminism is very important to me because of how I grew up. My household believed that women were meant to stay home, clean, and raise the kids but this was not how I saw as a life for myself. I believed I could do even more. Feminism is something that has been a fight for equality and this is an advocacy I wish to bring into my classroom. I want to show young girls who may be in the same situation that I was in, that they can do more if they wish to do so. SCFE 5307 Language, Race, & Culture was also very influential to me in this program because it reached into my personal experiences. I am Mexican American and I grew up not learning Spanish and with a White name. I did not feel connected to my culture until my adulthood when I moved from my hometown, Lubbock, Texas to El Paso, Texas. This move was a major culture shock to myself and my husband but in a positive way. I was able to learn more Spanish and see different Mexican-American practices like Dia De Los Muertos and making Albondigas for my daughter. This course had many examples like Baker-Bell (2020) codeswitching and being Whitewashed that I could relate to. Now that I am working back in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas, I want to be able to bring cultural awareness and appreciation for the different ways of knowing communities of color in the classroom. This was something I definitely did not see growing up in the school system. The alignment of these two courses was a personal connection to me because I grew up in a male-dominated household and I also grew up in a town where I felt the need to be Whitewashed in order to fit into society and to be respected.

3 Course Chronological Overview Next, I will discuss all of the courses I have taken in the DESJE Program in chronological order starting from Fall of 2021 through Fall of 2023. I will structure my paragraphs with the course name and the main points I learned in the course. I will express my major takeaways from each course along with influential references and or media used in each course. I will also provide my overall evaluation and thoughts. Fall 2021 TED 5301 Learning Contexts & Curriculum In this semester, I took three courses. In TED 5301 Learning Contexts & Curriculum. I learned about incorporating multicultural teachings and diversity in the classroom. This course created a stance to have a more equitable classroom for all. In this course, I got to take a look into the curriculum and teaching side of this program. An important assignment of this course was our group curriculum innovation paper. In my team, we were able to split the coursework and go into detail about important ways to innovate our classrooms while reflecting on course material and incorporating our own personal experiences. A media reference that I will always remember was Hancock (2011) Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful . This media showed how different the school system is in Finland and how much teachers in Finland are respected by society. When I first saw this media I was shocked by the differences between the United States and Finland. For example, teachers in Finland are highly paid and must have at least a master’s degree. They are treated with the utmost respect of society, similar to the respect of doctors. This greatly differs from how low pay is for teachers and how many teachers lack the respect of society in America.

4 TED 5304 Scholarly Writing for Educators In TED 5304 Scholarly Writing for Educators I used my researching skills to help with my writing. I was able to not only research but to reflect on assigned topics. I was able to look back on my own personal experiences to incorporate this into my educational writings. In this course, an important assignment was writing a detailed thesis argument. I thought this assignment was challenging but I was able to get more practice in my writing skills while doing so. In this paper, I was to summarize and synthesize sources throughout the course and use the evidence to support my argument. A source that I thought was important was the Writing Literature Reviews textbook (Galvan, 2017). We used this text in our weekly assignments and referred back to it on multiple occasions. This text was critical to have in order to help with identifying specific themes and parts of writing. TED 5319 Graduate Workshop In Education Anti-Oppressive and Anti-Racist Education In the last part of Fall of 2021 I took TED 5319 Graduate Workshop In Education Anti- Oppressive and Anti-Racist Education. In this course I learned to implement anti-oppressive and anti-racist education in different ways throughout the school settings. This course helped to enlighten how we can break the inequity in classrooms and create a better learning environment. I found this course very important because these issues of inequity still go around in classrooms across America today. Important assignments in this course were the case studies. I thought the case studies brought to life real examples we could examine and deliberate about among our peers. For example, we got to take a look at a case study where there was an overview of a topic for a professional development day for a high school in Illinois. The issue was that Hispanic/LatinX students were being pushed around and assumed that they did not know the class material. Teachers were not taking the time to go through their work thoroughly as they do

5 for the White students. We were able to examine and reflect on these case studies as well as read other views on the case studies to get a better understanding. Love (2018) was an important source from this course. This text, We Want To Do More Than Survive, does not only focus on what is wrong with the system but instead provides an educational survival guide for educators. Spring 2023 TED 5301 Learning Contexts & Curriculum In this semester, I took 3 courses. I took TED 5301 Learning Contexts & Curriculum. In this course, I learned how to be able to reach across all learners in the classroom. I learned how I can incorporate different and culturally relevant instruction while following state and national standards. This course provided different pedagogies to study and incorporate in our educational professions. An assignment that was important was the reflection papers. I really enjoyed doing these reflection papers because I was not only able to summarize the readings but also provide my own input and how they relate to my life personally or professionally. A source I thought was important was What Curriculum Could Be: Utopian Dreams amidst a Dystopian Reality by Wayne Au. Au (2012) mentions how the conscious learns from the physical and social environments. This article was interesting because it provided a different side to teaching and how we can incorporate learning outside of the classroom. TED 5398 Thesis I: Critical Discourse Analysis In TED 5398 Thesis I: Critical Discourse Analysis I was able to explore different ideas and strategies to select a thesis or ideas I was interested in. I used Multicultural Discourse Analysis to examine readings and express my own thoughts of the readings and how they connect in educational settings. I also learned how to compare and synthesize two master theses of Dillard (2021) Beauty, Brains, and Boldness and McNinch (2015) Fat Bullying of Girls in

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