ABSTRACT
N. Pantic conceptualized teacher agency for social justice to include purpose, competence, autonomy, and reflexivity. Teacher agency with purpose means that an educator is mindful and intentional such that his or her actions create a socially just climate. In this chapter, the authors examine the prevailing dominant structures that they experienced in their PK-12 education. The College of Education & P-6 Integration at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley considers itself to be a Hispanic-Serving College of Education. As a college that prepares science teachers or teachers who will be teaching in science technology, engineering, and mathematics fields for predominantly Latinx populations there are additional factors, such as the intersection of gender and ethnicity that also demand attention. The federal definition of Hispanic-Serving Institution is “an institution of higher education that has an enrollment of undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25 percent Hispanic students”.
