ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors share their learning journeys using ethnography of place with undergraduate and graduate students as novice researchers developing a project on Literacies, Culture and Pedagogy in Bogotá. They became interested in exploring the local literacies of the historic center of La Candelaria, in downtown Bogotá, Colombia, as resources for their students’ education curriculum. They started exploring personal assets to recognize the capacities (assets) of each one of the members of their research group and then they moved into mapping their neighborhoods to understand and value the social, cultural, and linguistic resources of places. Walking the city center with a positive view of “the city as content” challenged deficit views based on social class of city places and students and families living there. This chapter reports on the authors’ opportunities for learning as a group about the city literacies from the multiple texts they found (graffiti, murals, stencils, advertisements in different languages) and about the process of learning to do research about texts and discourses of the city with students.
