Testimonio and Pedagogy

My research has previously focused on testimonio and critical ethnographic methods in exploring how Mexican American community college students in Oregon use their lived experiences to serve as a catalyst to “empower” them to pursue higher education. My current research interest is focused on racialized social class as a unit for analysis in the schooling experience(s) of Mexican American students along the borderlands of Arizona.

My pedagogical praxis in educational training is centered on the application of what Chicana feminist scholar Dr. Josie Méndez-Negrete (2013) refers to as pedagogical conocimientos as a method for creating social justice in the classroom. I focus on crafting a praxis for educators to decolonize schooling by empowering students to be critical and constructive citizens, while problematizing deficit views in the surveillance of difference which enacts discipline within normalized teaching pedagogical practices.

Such pedagogies of hurt contribute to social stratification that builds the school-to-prison pipeline. This pedagogical practice is guided by my own lived experiences as an educator and is something that I believe furthers equity literacy mediated by a social justice lens in the spirit of social justice for the common good. 

Reference

Mèndez-Negrete, J. (2013). Pedagogical conocimientos: Self and other in interaction. Rio Bravo. A Journal of the Borderlands, 226–250.

Learn more:

https://coe.arizona.edu/person/jesus-jaime-diaz
https://coe.arizona.edu/semillas-del-pueblo
My name is Jesus Jaime-Diaz Ph.D. is Recruitment & Outreach Coordinator in the M.Ed. Secondary Education Alternative Pathway Program in The College of Education at The University of Arizona. I earned a Ph.D. in Language, Reading & Culture with a Minor in Mexican American Studies from The University of Arizona.