A Culture of Inquiry in San Antonio

On April 30th I was in San Antonio, Texas, among an audience of professors, graduate students, and teachers gathered at the American Educational Research Association(opens in a new tab) (AERA) annual meeting. We were there to hear high school seniors and college undergraduates from Worcester, Massachusetts, present their research on Poetry Inside Out. Impressed by their presentation at the Ethnography Forum in February, Vivian L. Gadsden, the then president of AERA, extended an invitation for them to present their findings here, at the world’s largest gathering of education researchers.

During the hour and a half session the youth researchers from Claremont Academy and Clark University presented three papers. Each unique in perspective, all reflected a deep understanding of the power of language and diversity.

The four seniors from Claremont Academy were the first to present. Based on their experiences in an after-school research club, their paper answered research questions regarding differences in culture and languages, how diversity can be a productive classroom catalyst, and what “productive diversity” looks like. The last being a term they coined.

A key belief in their research was that they saw differences not as something to be overcome, but rather as “a positive force in learning and as a critical element in challenging social norms.” Further, that to understand an individual translation and the process by which it is accomplished, they needed to understand the people who are engaged in the practice. As they stated, “all of us have differences that impact the way we translate texts and understand language and the world…differences are resources not flaws.”

These resources were forefront in their presentation as they discussed how different translations led to different interpretations of meaning. In an example from their research, when asked to translate Daisy Zamora’s poem “La inmigrante,” the club’s students, divided into groups, came up with five separate translations of the poem’s first two lines: “Despierta extrañada / desconociendo el cuarto.”

She wakes up exiled, / not recognizing the area.

She wakes up surprised / in a room she doesn’t know.

She awakens perturbed, / not familiar with her surroundings.

She awakes, exiled, / not knowing the room.

She wakes up surprised, / not recognizing the room.

The researchers argued that it was the student translators’ cultural background that helped inform how they chose to translate the line and, in turn, interpret the poem. Only after recognizing their group’s own diversity and taking those differences seriously did participants allow themselves to be changed by them, questioning and revising their initial positions.

Another research topic focused on how best to include and empower English language learners (ELLs) in the poetry and art club, allowing them to “find their voice” during the process of translation from various languages.

While the club is comprised of both English native speakers and ELLs and works to support every student as capable contributors to the collective learning, there still exists “a dominant narrative in society that continues to construct ELLs as intellectually deficient in academic spaces.” The researchers were hoping to disrupt such a narrative.

A term coined by a professor at Clark University—and used to describe a byproduct of Poetry Inside Out—is a “culture of inquiry.” Such a culture is created when participating students and educators ask critical questions of themselves and others during the process of translation. The presenters in San Antonio were a clear example of such a culture, one that honors diversity and encourages deep thought.