The Pernicious Whiteness of Coloniality in Elementary Science Classrooms: The Multigenerationality of Subtractive Schooling In El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán

Our study traces the pernicious whiteness of coloniality in elementary science classrooms in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. Our research method was an ethnographic case study that enabled us to explore participants' identities within bioregional contexts. In our findings, we emphasize the pernicious whiteness of coloniality via the participants' personal and professional identity tensions. Through our analysis, we subjunctively begin to outline what we call the multigenerationality of subtractive schooling.

Resumen: Nuestro estudio rastrea la blanquitud perniciosa de la colonialidad en las aulas de las escuelas primarias de ciencia en el Sur de Téjas, Aztlán. Enmarcamos nuestro estudio enfatizando las literaturas recientes de la blanquitud y la teoría crítica de raza Latina. Nuestro método de investigación es un estudio de caso etnográfico que nos permite explorar las identidades de los participantes dentro de contextos biorregionales. Nuestros hallazgos enfatizan la perniciosa blanquitud de la colonialidad a través de las tensiones de identidad personal y profesional de los participantes. A través de nuestro análisis, comenzamos a delinear subjuntivamente lo que llamamos la multigeneracionalidad de la escolarización subtractiva.

Keywords: Whiteness; Coloniality; Subtractive schooling; Elementary science education

This manuscript is part of the special issue on Borderlands, guest edited by Angela Chapman and Alejandro J. Gallard Martínez.

The purpose of this study is to trace the pernicious whiteness of coloniality in elementary science classrooms (ESC) in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. By definition, the whiteness of coloniality refers to the ongoing effects of state-led neoliberal globalization advanced by multinational corporate interests of the Global North represented by Europe, the United States (US), and Canada that variously homogenize, colonize, whiten, and exploit our and others' bioregions in advancing surplus value's uneven exchange ratios (Echeverría [16]). Though we understand the whiteness of coloniality as a malignant, viral, and global epistemic and ontic extermination project, we assert that the pernicious whiteness of coloniality is constituted in specific, social, and local contexts, including curriculum and, even more specifically, curricular implementation in ESCs ostensibly deemed inclusive. In our ethnographic case study, we trace the minute workings of ESCs as one site for the whiteness of coloniality that operates via state and local curriculum standards and curriculum maps. These standards and maps advance decontextualized science curriculum, related teaching practices, and English language standardized tests. Participants' data transcripts show personal and professional tensions of Mexican American elementary science teachers that allow us to begin to subjunctively outline a key whitening agent in our region: the multigenerationality of subtractive schooling.

For our purposes, science education refers to areas of curriculum and instruction that have historically advocated and advanced teachers and students' learning of what is presently called the nature of science (NoS; McComas [24]). As a hegemonic force in science education, NoS primarily advances positivist disinterested, objective, and generalizable epistemologies while serving as apologist mechanism for personal and social influences in those processes. NoS is a key term first because it suggests that science has its own inherent epistemic nature and second because it articulates state-supported and neoliberal-associated inclusive pedagogical apparatuses (e.g., National Science Teaching Association [27]). We identify NoS, to which hegemonic science education is inextricably tied, as emblematic of Europeanized and now UnitedStatesianized epistemic domination (Kincheloe and Tobin [21]). Asserting its epistemic privileges over feminist, geographically located, and race-based epistemologies like the ones we advocate, NoS covers its social–historical origins and economic interests by insisting on superior tools and so-called objective products and even democratic values while actively denying its shot-through and imbricated historical relation with Global North capital and, today, neoliberal globalization.

As indicated in the final phrase of our subtitle in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, our study is necessarily located in the borderlands. We use this Spanish-and-indigenous phrase to deterritorialize the nation states of the US and México as an act of intellectual self-determination in reclaiming our bioregion and its cultural and linguistic resources. Geographically, Aztlán refers to what is presently called North México and the US Southwest and West, whose boundaries are part of the northern region of what Américo Paredes ([31]) identified as Gran México. Both terms, El Sur de Tejas and Aztlán, represent historical, cultural, and territorial regions that are artificially divided by nation-states via colonial forces in the mid-1700s by the Spanish and in the mid-1800s by Anglo Texans and the US, followed by the whiteness of coloniality today. With profound meaning for us, the borderlands represent a liminal place where indigenous, Mexican-mestizx, Anglo Texan, and US cultures create "un choque, a cultural collision" (Anzaldúa [2], p. 78) but also a place where mestizx liminality provides stubborn remainders and uncolonized fragments that demonstrate "the irrationality of capitalist modernity" (Moraña [25], p. 159). This understanding of the borderlands, together with Critical White Studies (CWS) and Latinx critical race theory (LatCRT) discussed in section two, drives the analyses of our participants' empirical transcripts and other data.

With these understandings of science education and the borderlands, our study advances a purposeful provocation. We seek to interrupt hegemonic discourses in science education including (a) the interlocking frameworks of international rubrics such as Program for International Student Assessment ([PISA], [33]), national standardizations represented by Next Generation Science Standards ([NGSS], [28]), and state curricula and measurement developed by the Texas Education Agency ([TEA], [39]); (b) racist gap discourses that un-reflectively compare White students and students of Color through mediums such as the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and Student Research Foundation ([HHF and STF], [17]) on whitened science achievement; and (c) teacher diversity literatures that un-critically equate the numbers of teachers of Color with progress on race and representation in teacher education as measured by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation ([CAEP], [13]). With this provocation in mind, our study emphasizes that the whiteness of coloniality performs a eugenic, racialized, linguistic, and epistemological cleansing in ESCs via our participants' curricular focus on decontextualized science teaching coupled with English language standardized testing.

Preliminary to our study, we briefly provide our research positionalities. Nora, a career science teacher, is from El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, and has worked as a teacher of secondary science for over ten years. As a public-school teacher her identity has been formed by the multigenerationality of subtractive schooling. Nora is keenly aware of the long-term effects of language and cultural subtraction in all aspects of her education and community life. A daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, she is now predominantly a UnitedStatesianized English speaker. Nora is both traumatized and reflective of the effects of the epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]) on herself as participant, on other research participants, and on students in her classroom. Jim is a former public-school teacher; he worked in rural and inner-city Title I settings for eighteen years, teaching predominantly Mexican immigrants, Chicanx, and indigenous students from México and Central America. In his extended time and commitment to public-school teaching, he became accustomed to being the only White person in Aztlán's de facto segregated classrooms, and he took on the impossible and contradictory charges of culturally relevant teaching in the Texas borderlands.

The following are definitions of terms that help to frame our study. These terms are: neoliberal globalization; epistemicide of subtractive schooling; and multigenerationality of subtractive schooling. Neoliberal globalization refers to hegemonic corporate and market interests of Global North economic dominance along with related public pedagogy and epistemological dominances that proliferate around the globe. Epistemicide of subtractive schooling refers to the systematic subtraction of communities' knowledge bases within formalized curriculum management systems that devalue students' individual and collective knowledge bases. Multigenerationality of subtractive schooling refers to persistent curriculum management processes that subtract historical, cultural, and linguistic resources spanning generations.

Additionally, our report deploys and theoretically advances Critical White Studies (CWS) and Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCRT) within ESC discourses. Integral to what we understood from our participants' contexts and data, CWS helps us articulate the whiteness of coloniality in ESCs. Likewise, integral to our participants' enforcement of English as academic language, LatCRT helps us follow US nativism and the marginalization of Spanish as a subaltern and racial-ethnic and mestizx language, both in our participants' lives and in their classroom interactions with their students.

CWS is a framing that helps in our analysis of our contexts and data (Jupp and Badenhorst [18]). CWS follows the whiteness of coloniality's normative reproduction in the history of curriculum (Au et al., [4]) and, more specifically, in science education (Bybee and Pruitt [11]). The education system in the historical colonies and subsequently the USA has evolved continuously over the last 400 years advancing an epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]). Changes in curriculum theory occurred because of social, political, economic, or cultural paradigm shifts, yet one thing remained a constant: Affluent White men have promulgated the ideas of Western tradition via the organizing device of school subject areas (Schubert [35]), of which science represents one key subject. As exemplified in curriculum management systems today, the ongoing persistence of subject area teaching advances what William H. Schubert ([35]) deemed "the transmission of the Western cultural heritage" (p. 85). In the present, subject areas hegemonic relationship is highlighted in science education via the open links between technical knowledge and skills and elite globalizing interests (PISA [33]).

The whiteness of coloniality (Echeverría [16]) locates curricular subject areas as deeply tied to the historical colonization project in the USA (Paraskeva [29]). Historically, schooling and school subject knowledges have been inextricably enmeshed in the assimilation of both European immigrants (Kaestle [20]) and other racial subjects (Spring [37]). Schooling progressed through the establishment of communities in the Northern and then Southern USA. Education became compulsory with science taking a prominent position due to the advancements in the industrial revolution (Bybee and Pruitt [11]). The Progressive Era made a shift in the science paradigm toward experiential curricula casting a wider net concerned with the inclusion of greater numbers in understanding and applying science. A transformation occurred after World War I's social unity to disillusionment during the Great Depression. World War II saw an influx of soldiers coming back from war to attend college thanks to the G.I. Bill. Science was being taught using the scientific method when a big surge in society's attitude about science changed due to the Race to Space. The competition with Russia was the driving force that caused another transformation of the science curriculum. This transformed into a revolutionary change in science curriculum that underwent continuous reform promulgated by the critical report titled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education [40]). Reform evolved into the national standards which we have to date. Major reform in curriculum happened because of changes in the thinking of "society, learner, subject matter, and curriculum development technology" (Schubert [35], p. 91), but it should be noted that these changes advanced the school subjects organized around whitened Western civilization. This historical view of curriculum reform came from a diverse group of scholars from different contextual backgrounds but all of them having formed their ideals from epistemological racial biases. "Early in the history of the United States, schooling was reserved for the social elites-white, male, wealthy children" (Ladson-Billings [22], p. 95). Affluent White men, the White patriarchy in power, subjugated both people of color and women in these Western subject area traditions and also subtracted bioregional, racialized, and indigenous knowledge bases in a cognitive-linguistic eugenic cleaning project (Paraskeva [30]).

The evolving science education that we outlined in the preceding paragraphs understood White middle-class boys as primary target. Boys of color are marginalized in this history, first because of slavery and then after the Civil War because of a focus on vocational, not academic, preparation (Anderson [1]). Women too were subjugated. "The deeply entrenched deficit orientation toward 'difference' (i.e., non-Western European race/ethnicity, non-English language use, working-class status, femaleness) prevails in the schools in a deeply 'cultural' ideology of White supremacy" (Bartolomé [5], p. 179).

James J. Scheurich and Michelle D. Young's ([34]) notion of civilizational racism is instructive on this point. The whiteness of coloniality dominated for hundreds of years and its epistemological assumptions became ingrained so deeply that they were considered normative. Understood through the notion of civilizational racism, hegemonic and racialized interests constitute the world and the real, and through this constitution, have also promulgated the epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]) for generations. The most referenced curriculum theorists and educational leaders such as Rousseau, Herbart, Dewey, Tyler, and Wiggins have all been White and represented Eurocentric notions of individualism, progress, and achievement. Scheurich and Young ([34]) summarize:It is they who have developed the ontological and axiological categories or concepts like individuality, truth, education, free enterprise, good conduct, social welfare, etc. that we use to think (that think us?) and that we use to socialize and educate children. (p. 8)

Epistemologically, the philosophical underpinnings of curricula writ large and, more specifically, curricula in science education, all advance European-based sets of assumptions and foundations. Following Scheurich and Young ([34]), civilizational racism has historically informed dominant education research paradigms to which curriculum and, more specifically, science curriculum is inextricably tied. Scheurich and Young ([34]) explain:Epistemological racism means that our current range of research epistemologies-positivism to postmodernisms/post structuralisms-arise out of the social history and culture of the dominant race, that these epistemologies logically reflect and reinforce that social history and that racial group (while excluding the epistemologies of other races/cultures), and that this has negative results for people of color in general and scholars of color in particular. (p. 8)

The very notions of science that we have come to know today have emerged from a hegemonic and privileged White civilization that has dominated the technocratic understandings of science and related knowledge practices while advancing an epistemicide of othered knowledges, cosmologies, and situated sciences (Paraskeva [30]). Via Scheurich and Young's ([34]) notion of civilizational racism, the pernicious whiteness of coloniality that is inextricably tied to the epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]) becomes clear. Science education and its educational representations are and have been buttressed and supported on Western, Eurocentric, civilizational racism. Current science subject area content, which is dominated by discoveries attributed to White males omits contributions from women and people of color (Boutte et al., [10]).

The famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill (unknown origin) says, "history is written by the victors." This quote clearly reflects the whiteness of coloniality that has remained hegemonic as evidenced in science education's past and continuing into the present curriculum documents. Science education emerged in the US from within the whiteness of coloniality and has continued to evolve in the same manner penetrating every aspect of science education. According to Noah Borrero et al. ([9]), this is perpetuated in schools through the "dominant narrative—the white man's story—and they leave out all other histories that were involved in an incident" (p. 28).

CWS's linchpin concept of whiteness along with more recent theorists emphasizing the whiteness of coloniality help us read and understand the broader totality in which our study takes place and also our participants' state and local curriculum standards and maps, all of which advance whitened and decontextualized science standards similar to NoS outlined in our introduction. With central focus on the whiteness of coloniality in its relation to science education in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, we approach the reading of state and local curriculum standards and maps along with participants' transcripts and the social interactions they represent.

LatCRT is the second framing that helps in our analysis of our ethnographic case study data below. Emerging from critical race theory (CRT), LatCRT represents historically located and race-based epistemologies. Both CRT and LatCRT are historically tied to US Civil Rights protests of 1968 and Global South anti-systemic movements as continued intellectual content in the present. Emerging from the crisis in the humanities and the human sciences, new knowledge production developed into "new fields such as cultural studies, critical legal studies, ethnic studies, multicultural education, pedagogical studies, and gender studies" (Jupp et al., [19], p. 308). Although the new fields did not come directly from critical theory, they came about because of a societal need that generated critiques "of 'universality' in the humanities and 'objectivity' in the human sciences" (Jupp et al., [19], p. 308) that resonate with the foundations of critical theory.

"The foundations of critical theory stand in evaluating and criticizing society, culture, and civilization, in order to reveal, describe, and critique social inequity" (Stoilescu [38], p. 146). CRT and LatCRT emerged from and reflected this social turmoil with excoriating anti-systemic and structural critiques of things-as-they-are along with emancipatory reasoning to reconstruct the social world via alternative ways of conceiving human social structures and relationships. Of course, ideas in CRT and LatCRT defy science education's reform discourses that emphasize NoS with inclusive pedagogies, access to NoS epistemologies, or numbers of professionals of Color, and instead, they point to critically re-constituting the aims of science education via feminist, geographically located, and race-based epistemologies.

On the US scene in the 1970s, critical theory re-emerged in critical legal studies as a means of analyzing class reproduction in the law (Berry [7]). Finding class analysis as an incomplete framing of inequalities in US historical contexts, Black legal scholars created a series of publications that later became known as CRT. CRT began with a theoretical framework for exploring laws and policies that, like NoS, were considered positivist, disinterested, objective, and generalizable yet in their practices overtly perpetuated race, ethnic, and gender subordination (Delgado Bernal [15]). Thandeka Chapman ([12]) argued that research was negatively impacted by White scholars' reproduction of whitestream ways of thinking and being in the world, including ways of teaching and learning. To restructure ways of teaching, learning, and research, scholars of Color began to conduct research using CRT as a social justice foundation.

Chapman ([12]) explains that throughout the history of the US, racism has always been deeply entangled with the domination of racialized "others":The pervasiveness of race informs the rationales for decisions at all levels of government and administration. CRT posits that the U.S.A. developed and prospered through its dependence upon the work of slaves and immigrants and the subjugation of Native American nations. The forging of the U.S.A. through the oppression, dominance, and annihilation of people of color is stitched into the fabric of the country; and this history creates binaries and hierarchies of race, class, and gender that remain woven in the laws, policies, and social understandings that shape the country. (p. 221)

Race and racism are socially constructed for the benefit of the whitened elite in power. Positivist so-called neutral positions like those represented in NoS merely buttress historical racism in the present. Positivistic bureaucracies are constructed to build a strong nation through the oppression of the marginalized people of color. This history is not written about in textbooks, nor is it included in school curriculum, much less science education. To the contrary, as our participants' interactions with state and local curriculum standards and maps demonstrate, ESCs represent pedagogical sites for positivist epistemologies specifically linked to the whiteness of coloniality indicated above.

Solórzano et al. ([36]) point out that there are six tenets to CRT. These tenets include (i) race as a social construction; (ii) the permanence of racism; (iii) White ascendency through interest convergence; (iv) differential racialization; (v) anti-essentialism and intersectionality; and (vi) uniqueness of voices of color. Yet CRT was insufficient to approach our context, El Sur de Tejas Aztlán, because of specific social questions geographically located in mestizx identities, language, borderland contexts, and the multiple waves of the whiteness of coloniality in our region. To better approach our data and the phenomena represented therein, we integrated LatCRT as part of our analytical framing. Francisco Valdes ([41]) argues that LatCRT is complementary to CRT and is part of the same critical-familial genealogy. For our study, LatCRT "is a framework meant to function in congruence with CRT and gives educational researchers a more focused lens to examine the experiences of Latinx students and their respective communities" (Perez Huber [32], p. 643). Besides issues of race, ethnicity, and gender that CRT take up, LatCRT better situates circumstances and analyses experienced by the Mexican–American and other Latinx communities in our bioregion, such as issues of racialized experiences as they relate to language, immigration, culture, identity, phenotype, and sexuality.

As a body of theory, LatCRT "has stood firmly committed to anti essentialism—the acknowledgement of the great diversity in the Latinx community—and anti-subordination" (Aoki and Johnson [3], p. 1157). Latinxs have a multidimensional identity that is intersected with racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression. "Scholars who shaped LatCRT wanted a theory that focused on the unique history and challenges facing the Spanish-speaking diaspora of immigrants in the United States" (Chapman [12], p. 223), with special reference to the bioregion we call Aztlán in our introduction. In ways like CRT, Jupp et al. ([19]) characterize LatCRT via five contours that differentiate LatCRT from CRT: (i) mestizx borderland identities, (ii) immigrant and transnational experiences, (iii) translanguaging as transgressive phenomena, (iv) Latinx transgressive sexualities, and (v) testimonio as a voice for the marginalized.

First, mestizx borderland identities provide conceptual content for discussions on Latinx hybridized, indigenous, African, and European racially blended identities in the USA that re-constitute Pan Latin American and Chicanx unity on US terrains both in popular struggles and in academic knowledge production. Second, immigrant and transnational experiences provide conceptual content for discussions on South-North immigration to the USA, North–South migrations home and deportation experiences, undocumented workers' experiences in the workplace and in human trafficking, and the perpetual push–pull and in-between space that make Latinxs permanent brown-skinned "foreigners" that, regardless of nationality or birth status, might be told at any time to Go back to México. Third, translanguaging and transgressive language phenomena provide conceptual content for discussions on speaking across languages such as indigenous, Spanish, and English within families, communities, and regions and for challenges to oppressive academic and genteel language conventions that seek to tame wild tongues in schools and universities. Fourth, Latinx transgressive sexualities provide conceptual content for challenging gendered sexual norms for Latinxs both within and beyond their communities and narrate coming-out counter stories of liberatory pleasures, communities, and transgressive practices. Fifth, testimonio as critical praxis provides a counter-western narrativized form of subject-in-history narrative closely tied to LatCRT that, in drawing on Latin American intellectual traditions, is described as epistemology, research method, and pedagogy by LatCRT scholars.

Our choice of LatCRT in our study is driven by our commitment to better analyze and represent the Mexican–American experiences in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. Nora, along with other research participants, is Mexican American, and therefore, LatCRT provides a productive analytical framework for our study.

Using ethnographic case as method, this study takes place in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, where decades of state standards and high stakes examinations in English insist on a relentless program of whitening teachers via the epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]). While standardized curriculum and English language standardized tests impose the whiteness of coloniality discussed above via state and local standards and curriculum maps, CRT and LatCRT inform our analyses of participants' transcripts within the borderlands.

Ethnographic case study allowed for the incorporation of the views of the participants' culture with the unique setting of a fifth-grade ESC. In ethnographic study, the setting and historical contexts are an integral part of the research. The setting for this qualitative ethnographic case study took place at Gold Elementary (pseudonym) which is located on the west side of a major city in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. From the purview of the whiteness of coloniality, the vast majority of Gold Elementary School students are considered English Language Learners, racial minorities, and low socioeconomic students. The specific ESC culture was utilized because of its natural setting and because participants were observed and described interacting in their own social setting of the fifth-grade science classroom.

The location of the school was significant because the observation of teachers in a classroom with students with a Mexican and Mexican–American majority did not prevent the whitened assimilation that was observed and perpetuated in the ESCs. It would seem logical that when a majority exists, the culture, language, and traditions are followed, especially if the teachers are part of that same culture. Nonetheless, despite being located in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, within a predominant Mexican–American context, the whiteness of coloniality prevailed in ESCs. The multigenerationality of subjective schooling continued, first with the subtraction of the language identities of the teachers, then to the decontextualized NoS teaching and learning they carried out in the name of English language standardized tests. Neoliberal globalization via decontextualized standards and English language testing have advanced the whiteness of coloniality curtailing previous gains made in the strange career of bilingual education in Texas (Blanton [8]).

The goal of this study was not to generalize, but to learn from the lived experiences of the sample. Therefore, the most appropriate sampling strategy was purposive sampling. The first criteria were that the teachers in this study be US citizens of Mexican descent. The second criterion was that participants be science teachers of Mexican and Mexican–American students. The sample size for this study was three elementary science teachers, including the first author, Nora. The two participants were Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores (both are pseudonyms). Ms. Aggie is a light brown haired, light complexioned tall young woman in her thirties. Regarding her light complexion, she told Nora that her grandmother on her father's side was White. Ms. Aggie was raised hearing Spanish but does not speak it very well. She has been teaching science for six years. She has a master's degree in leadership but reported that she feels no desire to become a principal. She began teaching at Gold Elementary three years ago. Ms. Flores is a black haired, dark complexioned short lady in her mid-thirties. Ms. Flores claims that her Spanish vocabulary includes about ten thousand words, which she claims is "not very good," but she says she understands enough to get by. Ms. Flores' education includes a bachelor's degree in biology with a minor in chemistry. Ms. Flores has been teaching at Gold Elementary for eleven years. The first author, Nora, has dark brown hair and stands at five feet four inches tall in her late fifties. Nora is light complected. Her mother was adopted but still knew all her biological relatives who all looked White. Although Nora has a bilingual teaching certificate, she is not fluent in Spanish. All participants are phenotypically diverse and have different levels of fluency in the Spanish language.

In Nora's dissertation study, She collected interviews, lesson observations, and reflective journals, as both participant and observer. Preinterviews took place to get background information on the participants and to gather insights on the participants' interpretation of a topic. This was followed by observations of the lessons, in which participants taught a science lesson on Force, Motion, and Energy based on local curriculum maps, with a thin reference to Mexican soccer as an inclusive culturally relevant strategy. As a participant observer, Nora was able to observe the participants in their natural setting, the science classroom, teaching their own students to understand the interactions from the participants' perspectives and was able to record field notes on experiences in relation to observations. Likewise, participants were asked to keep a reflective journal. The purpose of the reflective journal was to include information on a memory or thought that the participant felt was significant to the research or to understand their thought process. As a participant in this study, Nora also kept a reflective journal. Using the journal, she was able to write about experiences in ESCs and recollections as student and teacher.

Revised selections from the reflective journal have been added to this manuscript as data under the level three headers called "Nora's reflexivity reflection," thereby rounding out the data presentation and analyses under each finding. Jim's role in this study is as co-author and mentor, and therefore, no data were gathered from him as part of this study. Jim is not a participant in the study, nor does he fit the selection criteria for participants, therefore, the researcher reflexivity sections that support each finding belong to Nora, first author and third participant in our study.

After data were collected, the corroboration of interviews, lesson observations, and reflection journals reinforced findings through an inductive approach. The focus of the data analysis consisted of making sense of the data via the theoretical frameworks of CWS and LatCRT, outlined above. All data were analyzed using John W. Creswell's ([14]) five tenets, which are data managing, coding, describing, interpreting, and representing the findings. Triangulation of the data such as interviews and reflection journals was coded and recoded until a clear picture of summarized patterns emerged. Data analysis began with an analytic process that produced concise findings. To begin with, managing the data consisted of organizing it into distinct groups for each participant, and then the files were further subdivided into subject matter by thematic patterns. Nora continually perused the data which was written into summarized statements and looked for identifiable patterns. Once the raw data were organized, it was coded into patterns of shared experiences of the participants.

In this article we focus on two findings relevant to Mexican–American teacher identities in ESCs in our bioregion: (a) Personal tensions with the Spanish language and (b) Spanish language tensions in the classroom.

As demonstrated below, data-based empirical findings indicated that both personal and classroom tensions could be attributed to superordinating English over Spanish in participants' linguistic, racial, and ethnic identities. This tension transcended into a constant struggle observed when teachers were interacting with students. Via Mexican–American teachers' interviews, observations of practice, and their reported interactions with state and local curricular standards in English language tests, we theorize an ongoing and pernicious whiteness of coloniality taking place in participants' ESCs. The pernicious whiteness of coloniality was present both in science teachers' mostly assimilated and unreconstructed English dominant language identities and their related decontextualized insistence on English language teaching through the Texas state standards.

Mexican–American teachers in this study struggled with the Spanish language. The first finding that emerged permitted insight into Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores' lived experiences with personal tensions due to the Spanish language. Language is an integral part of life. It is also an integral part of negotiating understanding and communication in the classroom setting. According to the contours of LatCRT discussed above, the languages we use have much to say about performed racial and ethnic identities.

Participants' personal tensions. Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores' experiences with personal tensions were similar. Ms. Aggie's position was observed going full circle with comments like "No, I can understand more than I can speak '' (Preinterview, Ms. Aggie January 2020, p. 1). When asked if she spoke Spanish, Ms. Aggie later responded, "I never had a desire to speak Spanish as a child" (Postinterview, Ms. Aggie, January 2020, p. 1), and on another occasion, she responded, "I want to speak Spanish so badly" (Postinterview, Ms. Aggie, June 2020, p. 3). Ms. Flores' experiences with personal tension could be discerned in her position and thoughts on her language preference, "English, I can speak a little bit of Spanish" (Preinterview, Ms. Flores, January 2020, p. 1). She also responded in the same interview, "I grew up speaking in English because I was one of the youngest ones and me and my older siblings spoke English" (Postinterview, Ms. Flores, January 2020, p. 1). In the post-study interview, she responded, "Well, Spanish is a beautiful language that is a great asset to possess" (Postinterview, Ms. Flores, June 2020, p. 3).

When analyzing personal tensions between Spanish and English, LatCRT as a framework allowed researchers to understand the experiences of Mexican-Americans through a lens of language (Morita-Mullaney, [38]). Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores' narratives suggest they lost their language to the dominant language of English. In Winstead and Wang ([43]), bilingual teachers came to believe that speaking Spanish delayed their English language development thus promoting dominant English language rhetoric when they became teachers. Our education system consists of an environment with a dominant English monolingual culture (Worthy et al., [44]). In the comments characterized here, we observed Mexican-Americans' own linguistic and cultural subtraction as a broader personal-historical context of the epistemicide (Paraskeva, [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, [42]). As one key structured silence in the data, none of the three participants named a time in which Spanish was understood as part of their school learning, science learning, or academic identities. Moreover, Nora's only recollection of science being momentarily taught through Spanish as an elementary student left her bewildered and confused. For all three participants, Spanish was never leveraged as language of science learning, thereby leaving Spanish they retained as a stubborn remainder or uncolonized fragment (Moraña, [37]) of their family or personal lives, unavailable in academic learning.

Nora's reflexivity reflection on finding one. Like Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores, I did not speak Spanish at home and was embarrassed to admit that I did not speak Spanish very well. Spanish had been subtracted from my life via school experiences. I finally realized that an epistemicide of subtractive schooling had occurred. Valenzuela ([42]) called this de-Mexicanization, and this happened to many Mexican immigrant students in my community after entering school. Ms. Aggie, Ms. Flores, and I have experienced the whiteness of coloniality while vacillating between the dichotomy of valuing the Spanish language because it was part of their Mexican heritage or valuing the English language because of the hegemonic whiteness of coloniality. In this way, we learned to de-value Spanish as only a social language and to view English as the language that might lead us to academic and social successes. Although Mexican-Americans, participants were raised speaking English rather than Spanish and conceptualized cultural relevance in science as knowing the importance of the Spanish language yet thinking it was not important enough to overshadow the internalized hegemonic English language inherent in the whiteness of coloniality. It is precisely this type of de-Mexicanization of students that I oppose in this article. This article represents an attempt to find alternative epistemologies and methods in science teaching to the ongoing epistemicide (Paraskeva [30]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]) that I endured as a student and that my students endured as well.

Mexican–American teachers in this study struggled with the Spanish language in the social context of the science classroom. The second finding that emerged allowed us to explore the ways Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores conceptualized Spanish language tensions in the classroom.

Participants' language tensions in the classroom. Ms. Aggie's position about hearing Spanish in the classroom was as follows, "If I catch the students saying things they shouldn't say (in Spanish), then I tell them, 'hey, we don't say that'" (Preinterview, Ms. Aggie, January 2020, p. 1). An observation of an interaction with a student initiated this response, "First let me start by saying that I feel that it is okay for students to use Spanish to learn the science content, but they must [participant's emphasis] be able to say it in English" (Postinterview, Ms. Aggie, January 2020, p. 1). Ms. Aggie was adamant about enforcing the use of English as an academic language while viewing Spanish as merely a means to English acquisition rather than as a means to academic learning. Here, we see the whiteness of coloniality through ostensible tolerance of difference but only as a means to advance whiteness with students.

As reported in her interview, Ms. Aggie's reason for wanting students to speak fluent English tied into her feeling the urgency to teach students English for the purpose of passing standardized tests. Nora faced the same struggles that Ms. Aggie went through because she too wanted her students to speak fluently in English. Understood via CWS frameworks, English language standardized tests are designed epistemologies that propel NoS in curriculum and instruction and on positivist, decontextualized science subject area content advancing the whiteness of coloniality. It continues to be promoted in the standardized science education curriculum with the whiteness of coloniality being continually superordinated. This whiteness of coloniality in the curriculum is so well established that teachers like Ms. Aggie, Ms. Flores, and Nora could not help but assimilate to the hegemony that was very well rooted in our education system and in their psyches.

Similarly, Ms. Flores commented that when a student spoke to her in Spanish, she would respond in English. "Spanish is a beautiful language but let's make sure they are practicing in English" (Preinterview, Ms. Flores, January 2020, p. 2). Ms. Flores' pre-interview responses showed signs of her experiencing mixed feelings about her comfort level with Spanish. This revealed a struggle with a constant ebb and flow on speaking Spanish and English and could be interpreted as tensions felt between the assimilation into the hegemonic language and her fidelity to the Mexican–American heritage. Ms. Flores' expressed exigency in wanting her students to speak fluent English was for their ostensible success after they finished school. Here, the pernicious whiteness of coloniality operates through instrumentalization of imagining successful Mexican–American students as de-Mexicanized students, assimilated and whitened in ways similar to the teachers' whitened linguistic identities.

The struggle for hegemonic English language assimilation. Via our LatCRT framing, we found a disparity that was common in schools in which teachers like Ms. Aggie, Ms. Flores, and Nora not only encouraged but also enforced the assimilation of the whiteness of coloniality. Bartolomé ([6]) argued for the "need to theorize about this phenomenon using a model that recognizes our country's legacy of internal colonization in how it treats students of color, and the significant yet unacknowledged role that racist and assimilationist ideologies play in supporting this English-only movement" (p. 28). Responses in the interviews by Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores suggested an enforcement of English and English language standardized tests in academic science teaching that reflects the epistemicide (Paraskeva [31]) of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela [42]). In a secondary setting, Valenzuela ([42]) also found that Mexican–American students were subjected to daily negative messages that undermined their culture and language as part of assimilationist practices of standardized tests. According to Bartolomé ([6]), the colonial legacy of the USA became a hegemonic English-only ideology, which persists today in schools. Ms. Aggie, Ms. Flores, and Nora, whose schooling takes place in contexts where Spanish is discounted as personal and familial, reproduced and encouraged the assimilation of the whiteness of coloniality. Our empirical findings support Valenzuela ([42]) and Bartolomé's ([6]) findings, following them specifically into science education classrooms.

Whiteness of coloniality and standards. When interpreting data through a LatCRT lens, informal "no Spanish in the classroom" narratives promoted a prejudice of the Spanish language that advanced the whiteness of coloniality. Students learned very quickly that the Spanish language was not appreciated and utilized in academics, but rather, English was the correct language of academics. According to Bartolomé ([6]) when languages other than English are limited in academics, White supremacist ideologies and the remnants of colonialism create a subordinated and domesticated state of being experienced by students of color. A LatCRT lens allowed us to recognize the Spanish language and culture did not comply with the expectations of whiteness of coloniality. Building from Anzaldúa, Bartolomé ([6]) argued that colonization is so embedded in our psyches that we have just accepted it internally. Speaking like a White person is the accomplishment of assimilation. A LatCRT lens makes for the awareness of the reproduction of whiteness of coloniality.

Nora's reflexivity reflection on finding two. I learned a lot about myself in doing this research. For example, I was selected for Teacher of the Month at our school because the science test scores were some of the highest in the district. Everyone wondered why I was not excited. I could not help but think that I had conformed to the whiteness of coloniality in our education system by emphasizing the curriculum standards in the English language standardized tests. During and after the awards, I thought quietly "My Mexican–American students were becoming proficient at taking an English language standardized test. I am successful in assimilating my Mexican–American students to whiteness." Ten or even five years ago, I would have been elated with my success as a science teacher but being critically conscious of the assimilated whiteness of coloniality I am perpetuating, my perceptions have changed. "Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself" (Anzaldúa [2], p. 59). This quote by Anzaldúa has a profound meaning that took a long time for me to understand. A reflexive introspection based on my professional experiences allude to a time when I required all my students to speak in English. Why did I do this? I made a connection to Ms. Aggie and Ms. Flores. We all know that there is a stigma surrounding anyone who does not speak English correctly, yet might I have done more with my students than complying with whitened standards? The pernicious whiteness of coloniality, ubiquitous in the ESCs and seen in the teachers I studied, makes it very difficult to survive as confident Spanish-speaking students from the ongoing messages received from teachers like Ms. Aggie, Ms. Flores, and myself. The messages continually sent to students in our context was that English is the language of true science learning and everyone who is American should strive to perfect the English language, and moreover, that academic success in science meant success on decontextualized, English language standardized tests emphasizing NoS. Despite the stubborn remainders and uncolonized fragments (Moraña [26]) of our own Mexican heritage backgrounds and different levels of Spanish, from our data we can see that Mexican American teachers can and do become instruments of the whiteness of coloniality in schools en El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. Who better to insist, I emphasize, on English in ESCs than Mexican American teachers who themselves have passed through the subtraction of their own Spanish in science career pathways? And moreover, what better school subject, I emphasize, than epistemically privileged, decontextualized, NoS-imbued, and objective science to insist that English is the serious language of academic study?

In the borderlands, we found that Mexican–American teachers' themselves perpetuated the whiteness of coloniality's epistemicide of subtractive schooling in their ESCs in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán. This assimilation consisted of having become possessors of whitened and decontextualized science knowledge implicative of NoS along with becoming proficient English language speakers, both of which were acquired via American schools and universities as processing agents of whiteness in science-focused career pathways. The same assimilation of Mexican–American teachers was observed being carried out in participants' own science classrooms with emphasis on ostensible student success in the future via English language proficiency and English language standardized tests.

Here, we can subjunctively begin to outline the multigenerationality of subjective schooling that first subtracted the linguistic and cultural resources from one generation, and then, these same subtractive practices are continued in the next. The multigenerationality of subtractive schooling is one conclusion here that deeply indicts both the history of mainstream schooling of Mexican-Americans that continues despite the in-roads of bilingual education in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán (Blanton [8]) and the decontextualized, English language, positivist, NoS-implicative, un-critical, and unreconstructed approaches to science education.

To recap our two main findings, the first finding that emerged gave insight into our participants' struggles with the Spanish language. Analysis of interviews and reflection journals revealed the participants' unreconstructed, whitened, Mexican–American identities being dominant in English yet acknowledged the importance of speaking in Spanish only to realize they had lost their Spanish fluency because of hegemonic position in English in the first place. This finding is not to blame Mexican–American teachers, but rather to subjunctively outline the processes of the whiteness of coloniality in the multigenerationality of subjective schooling.

Our first finding drives at the irrationality of the whiteness of coloniality and how it plays out in borderland contexts. How is it possible, we ask, that Spanish was systematically reduced to resistant remainders and uncolonized fragments in ESCs only to reappear in participants' interview transcripts as an asset for the job market? Here, consistent with the whiteness of coloniality, the epistemicide of subtractive schooling that eugenically cleanses Spanish from Mexican–American students in ESCs is then followed by the instrumentalized reappearance of Spanish as a great asset within an economy of already imposed scarcity, as exemplified in Ms. Flores' transcript. Paradoxically and quite dysconsciously, the ongoing subtraction of Spanish in their own classrooms is the site of the disappearance of what is deemed as future market asset in their speech and part of students' future job market success. The analytic framing of the whiteness of coloniality helps us trace this paradoxical forced disappearance and then reappearance of already subtracted Spanish as both strangely disappeared only to reappear later as scarce, marketable commodity. Only as processed through the insistent irrationality of the whiteness of coloniality must a racialized-ethnic language such as Mexican Spanish be forced to disappear and yet suddenly reappear later in an economy of scarcity as a great asset.

The second finding that emerged allowed an exploration into the conceptualization of the Spanish language in ESCs. The analysis of the classroom observations along with interviews and reflective journals was interpreted as the participants' tensions with the Spanish language that overflowed into their tensions with Spanish in the classroom. Participants' insistent preference for speaking English being transcendent into the science classroom was an ongoing feature of their interviews. Implicative of NoS and science standards, science subject matter—over and over again—was contextualized via participants' language emphasizing "English standardized tests," "have to say it in English," and thin attempts at cultural responsiveness, as if language had nothing to do with Mexican and Mexican immigrants' history, culture, and cognition. Students in the ESCs we studied, repeatedly heard rhetoric about the importance of speaking in English by the participants, and science teaching meant teaching decontextualized and NoS imbued state standards as if student growth, intellectual development, learning of school subjects could all take place without any specific context except the subject matter itself. This decontextualized and standardized get-it-in-your-head approach must be identified as part of the pernicious whiteness of coloniality in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán, with clear implications for cultural and linguistic subtraction.

We think the time has come for open provocation at all levels, including and beyond those mentioned above. In 2020, we lived through a series of health and social crises that emphasized the permanence of racism (Ladson-Billings and Tate [23]). First, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic took racialized contours victimizing communities of color and poor communities not only in the USA but throughout the world emphasized dramatically in news feeds by the construction of mass graves. Second, the 2020 summer of racial protests ignited by George Floyd's murder were followed by counter-protests and violent clashes between a multicultural progressive-left and White supremacist militia groups. Third, in the 2021 January 6th pre-planned assault, White supremacist Trump supporters violently attacked the Capitol decked out in tactical gear and Kevlar vests brandishing the Confederate flag and other supremacist symbols. The pervasiveness of racism is so deeply "stitched into the fabric of the country" (Chapman [12], p. 221) that it is inevitable that it seeps into our education system and re-enacts the violent whiteness of coloniality on children in the borderlands, subtracting their Mexican heritage and their Spanish language resources. In decontextualized science teaching, what we saw definitely represented one site for the reproduction of the whiteness of coloniality.

Significance of this research is that it adds insight into the pernicious workings of whiteness in ESCs, exposing tensions Mexican–American teachers' experience in the social context of a fifth-grade science classroom in El Sur de Tejas, Aztlán as an assault on their linguistic and cultural identities. Besides the pernicious whiteness of coloniality evident in our data, the multigenerationality of subtractive schooling represents a second substantiated finding. Mexican–American teachers, themselves successfully whitened in the NoS-implicative pathways of ESCs, teacher education competencies and examinations, and science-focused career pathways, later became whitening agents with new generations of immigrants.

Clearly, additional research in science education should continue the study of the whiteness of coloniality as reproduced in these contexts via NoS-implicative, decontextualized standards-based versions of science subject matter. In our study, much more is going on than just a benign science education. As demonstrated above, we see the pernicious workings of the whiteness of coloniality via the multigenerationality of subjective schooling. Only by following this critical view can we begin to imagine different ways of doing science education that go beyond raw numbers of teachers of color to ostensibly represent their communities; predominant gap, equity, and inclusive pedagogies; or surrounding liberal-cultural-responsiveness approaches to science education.

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