Integrating postcolonial perspectives in the Community Cultural Wealth Model: a qualitative framework for educational research in South-South migration

Abstract

Nowadays, it is commonly recognized that educational researchers are challenged to address the cumulatively interwoven pathways where critical theories must become complementary and responsive to developing complex research design (e.g., Critical Race Theory). Postcolonial theories, in this sense, have longed enriched a criticality committed to the deconstruction of Western ways of knowing by interrogating and dislocating mainstream notions of science, modernity, and identity. Still, it seems necessary to engage in a discussion about how it would be possible to carry out research with a post-colonial perspective on current identity formation scenarios strongly marked by new pathways of social mobility in the Global South. This paper focuses on two contributions to postcolonial thought: 1) multiplicity, 2) and concrete study analysis. In it, the authors seek to share their experience designing a complementary qualitative framework underpinned by these terms that serve to translate and contextualize the model of Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) as applied to developing global education research about immigrant students and their emerging educational pathways in relatively new pathways of social mobility in South America. By drawing on lessons learned from the ongoing research built on the testimonios of Latin American students and their mothers in the northern region of Chile, the authors share analytical strategies that deploy post-colonial perspectives to complement the content and narrative analysis normally deployed in ethnographic educational methods. Finally, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about fractures, expansions, and openings within post-critical educational investigations regarding methodological aspects; postcolonial thought contributes to the reinvention of new ways of thinking about cultural diversity in education.