This section provides an overview of the Discovering Our Experiences: Studies in Bilingual/ESL Education Project and its publications. Each volume is presented in this blog (bilingualfrontera.com) as a dedicated feature within separate sections, encompassing summaries of articles and edited versions of some of the original pieces. The PowerPoint slide presentation below includes the front cover and TOC images of the volumes (8 ½” x11”), with the Fable Writing Project publications also included. Each publication is accessible in a PDF file following the slide presentation.
Technological advancements have enabled us to disseminate this work to a wider audience than ever before. We are honored to have the opportunity to showcase the contributions of our school teachers, students, administrators, university students, and faculty.
Overview
Thirty-four years ago, as part of a team of university researchers, we initiated a collaborative project between the university and a local school district. Our goal was to address the substantial challenges educators faced in reversing the academic setbacks experienced by language minority students. While our vision was clear, the specific tasks were in the early stages of development. We focused on broad, yet manageable dimensions, rethinking and exploring a research model at a grassroots level. This involved identifying our roles, establishing relationships with teachers, administrators, students, and determining the relevant, major components of theory-based knowledge and essential practitioner details of our desired outcomes. At the forefront of this project was a strong desire to publish our work and create a platform for exchanging ideas and fostering dialogue based on action research. We welcomed the opportunity to share best practices research, promote teacher and student voices, and encourage others to engage in similar collaborative research endeavors.
In a matter of weeks, we chose a title for our project, “Discovering Our Experiences: Studies in Bilingual/ESL Education,” and determined that we would commence publishing our research within a year. Although we eventually published our inaugural volume, “Leadership for Change in Bilingual/ESL Education,” in the fall of 1993, the entirety of our project remained confined to the experiential phase. In this volume, we published the interviews of elementary and secondary principals, as well as a state education official. These interviews utilized their platforms to emphasize the pressing and deteriorating educational challenges while simultaneously advancing innovative ideas for school reform and transformation.
Upon identifying three project goals, including two research areas and a third goal of promoting the project and inviting reader collaboration, the final product began to take shape. The two research areas, teacher research and transformative and mediated instruction, were combined to create a synergy of topics. These topics encompassed teacher research reframed as unconventional and unconstrained, mediated/transformative literacy, and the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching.
The four volumes, each thematically organized, act as a time machine, magnifying the comparison of various trends, ideas, concerns, and practices of the present with the past. Indeed, an in-depth, comparative analysis of the content may yield surprisingly similar as well as dissimilarities between then and now. The volumes are as follows:
Volume 1 (1993): Leadership for Change in Bilingual/ESL Education;
Volume 2 (1995): Reflective Practice for Teacher Change;
Volume 3 (1996): Transforming Ourselves Through the Power of Mediated Instruction; and
Volume 4: Critical Knowledge Beyond the School: Teachers as the Ones Who Learn.
Additionally, the post, Expanding the Research: Additional Resources for Discovering Our Experiences Project provides the reader with a list of recent scholarship that point to verifying evidence or support of the effectiveness of the project activities and the soundness of the theoretical basis which underly the premise of the entire project.
The friendly, magazine-style design was intentionally crafted to showcase the content as both scholarly and professional, while simultaneously ensuring its accessibility to a broad audience. This project spanned from 1993 to 1996.
The third objective, which aimed to foster teacher engagement in practitioner action research and facilitate dialogic exchange among diverse stakeholders, did not achieve the anticipated outcomes and results. However, it was posited that its realization could have been achieved had the project been subsequently continued.
The Fable Writing Project
The initial of two writing projects involved the collaboration between university researchers and graduate students with fourth and fifth graders and their teachers in three Houston Independent School District (Houston ISD) schools. The project culminated in the publication of a book (also 8 ½” x11) titled “Cuéntame una fábula” in the fall of 1996. This book comprises 76 fables written by the students in both Spanish and English.
The second writing project, titled “Cuéntame más fábulas,” encompassed five elementary school classrooms within Houston ISD. The students were enrolled in first, third, and fourth-grade bilingual education classrooms. This volume included 73 fables authored by the children in both Spanish and English.
The Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project
Our Teacher Research Collaborative expanded in depth and scope with the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching (FKT) Project, which we began in November, 1996. Our group was comprised of four University of Houston faculty members and eight teachers from the Houston area school districts. The main focus of our collaboration was on exploring and developing alternative means by which to create a curriculum more meaningful and responsive to the diverse needs of students, culturally and linguistically. We designed and operationalized our own model based on the work of the university project faculty and teachers from Tucson, Arizona. An alternative model to the traditional school-based parent involvement model, the FKT Project focused on the professional development of teachers learning about their students through home visitations. During the academic year, the collaborators engaged in monthly workshops, making home visits, refining their research capabilities, providing feedback, organizing their data, and writing up their final reports. Two central questions guided their inquiry: how did they implement the FKT project and how did the experience lead to change in teaching behaviors.
Volume 4, Critical Knowledge Beyond the School: Teachers as The-Ones-Who-Learn, is the featured journal on the FKT Project. Was it successful? Dr. Patterson, the lead faculty member, describes it this way: The articles in this volume are filled with those decisions which were absolutely inconceivable when we began this project. The inquiry and conversations required by a funds of knowledge project led us far beyond our old notions of parent involvement.
Privacy Disclosure
We respect the privacy of the individuals in our research in Bilingualfrontera.com. To protect confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for teachers, students, and schools, and identifying details have been modified where necessary.
Creative Commons Attribution
Unless otherwise noted, content on Bilingualfrontera.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). You may share and adapt the material for noncommercial purposes only, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
Note on Images
Some illustrative images in the Discovering Our Experiences publication posts are AI-generated and are used solely for presentation purposes; they are not archival photographs from the original project.
