Excursions in Latinx-Canadian Music: A Critical Appreciation Inquiry to Envision Transcultural Identities Among Language Learners and Teachers

Date
2024-12-20
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Abstract

Beyond curricular content, teaching in Canada calls educators to address Indigeneity while being culturally responsive to the diasporic community of learners in their classrooms. Increasingly globalized classrooms and commitments to teach Indigenous ways of knowing present a complex environment. For language teachers, beyond teaching a language, this environment challenges them to design learning that weaves in Indigenous knowledge while leveraging students’ intricate assemblage of relations to languages, lands, peoples, and materials that connect them to various places on the globe. This study explored two questions: (a) How might a Spanish language teacher consider Latinx Canadian music as a pedagogical agent in developing transcultural literacies of youth? (b) How can pedagogical experiences with Latinx Canadian music engage adolescent learners in the exploration and expression of their transcultural identities? It took place at Legados Latin American Institute for the Transmission of Language and Culture (herein Legados) in Montréal, Canada, whose vision is to sustain the language and culture of Spanish-speaking communities and to provide courses in Spanish as a foreign language. By marrying new materialism with a transcultural literacies approach, I analyzed how the material relations produced the teaching and learning assemblage and shaped students’ exploration and expression. Furthermore, I took an active role in supporting the cocreation of learning experiences that fostered the discovery of the heterogenous ways in which students are interconnected. Methodologically, I applied critical appreciative inquiry to contribute to the professional growth of a Spanish language teacher at a school in Montréal and to expand Legados’s curricular resources. Through internet research, the teacher participant and I selected songs based on themes and representations of Indigeneity, migration, and transcultural identities across North and South America and designed lessons to explore how a Spanish language classroom could be retrofitted to become a musical ecosystem, inclusive of the diverse voices of Latinx Canadian diasporic communities. I examine the findings in relation to the two research questions, noting the relationships and affects that emerged through the research assemblage. Finally, I highlight the capacities that were produced from the material relations and consider their significance for Spanish language education and transcultural literacies research.

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Keywords
transcultural literacies, Spanish as a foreign language, Latinx Canadian teachers, new materialism, Indigenous knowledge, critical appreciative inquiry
Citation
Moreau, E. (2025). Excursions in Latinx-Canadian music: a critical appreciation inquiry to envision transcultural identities among language learners and teachers (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.