UW College of Education student Dana Arviso was awarded a scholarship from the UW Alumni Association Minority Affairs Program in November 2005. Arviso co-chairs the student group Educators for Social Justice and is working with the College’s Office of Student Services to promote minority recruitment. She recently took a few minutes to discuss what brought her to the College and her aspirations for her work in education.

My academic interests and professional experiences have grown out of my dedication to the Native American families that I have worked and grown up with.  In nearly 10 years of work in several daycare centers as a preschool teacher, and with the family literacy program on the Bishop Paiute Indian Reservation in California, I witnessed the unique educational needs and challenges of Native families. The labels of “illiterate” and “dysfunctional” were frequently part of the discourse. 

It is not sufficient to expect Native American children and families to change without also expecting significant reform from schools as well. The goal of my research is to understand the reasons why Native American children experience home-school discontinuities, to examine the effect that these discontinuities have on their literacy experiences, and to understand what kinds of changes we can make at the curricular, pedagogical, and structural levels to increase Native American students’ access to literacy in meaningful ways. 

My current research is focused on using both sociocultural and critical approaches to literacy to increase access for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Sociocultural approaches to literacy suggest there is no singular definition of “literacy” but, rather, many different ways of reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are embedded in multiple social contexts and resulting in situated meanings and practices. Educators should recognize and value the rich cultural “funds of knowledge” that diverse students bring from home, and allow students to utilize these tools in their school literacy experiences.

Critical literacy engages students in activities that shed light upon the nature of power, oppression, and societal inequalities. It serves as a means of empowering students to resist these forces in their own lives and in society. The classroom can become a powerful place in which literacy lessons become the impetus for social justice action. Teachers can use research to inform and empower their students to use literacy as a critical tool to reflect on their lives and the communities around them. 

My research will help me develop innovative curricular materials and pedagogical methods to foster more culturally relevant literacy experiences for Native American children. I plan to field test my materials and methods in multiple tribal family literacy program sites and preschools to determine the degree to which my design is effective in generating additional access to literacy for Native American elementary students.

The MAP scholarship I recently received will help me in my work. I’m honored to have received the scholarship and will do all I can to use it to further access and social justice through education. Thanks to all of you who have supported the College and its students in their work to advance education.