Patricia Enciso - Education: “One of the most cherished, democratic and liberatory spaces.”
By Ligia Lundine

Professor Patricia Enciso grew up in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, a small town located 40 miles from Columbus. As a third generation Mexican, Prof. Enciso explains that she led an interesting life in Mechanicsburg (where her family was one of several Mexican families). In 1983, after obtaining an undergraduate degree in education at Ohio State, Enciso went to England to pursue a master's degree in education at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

During her undergraduate years, Enciso explored several majors but then when she was a junior she became attracted to an education program that was progressive and very interested in children's points of view and their capacity to understand the world and produce knowledge. After returning to Ohio in 1984 and teaching one more year, she decided to enter the doctoral program at OSU.

"From there," Enciso points out, "I began to construct my doctoral work around how kids make the story world happen when they read. What goes through their minds? How do they talk with other kids about what is happening? How do teachers talk to kids about the world of a story?" Following her doctoral program, Enciso went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison as an assistant professor: "I began to examine my work through the lens of critical theory and multicultural education. I found that, evidently, children are not just creating a world; they are borrowing social discourses and using their knowledge of social relations to make that world. In other words, imagination can also be colonized. That's when I began to examine how the use of multicultural literature in classrooms allows kids to explore cultural identities and also what teachers could do or didn't do to mediate what kids have to say about their lives in relation to others, such as who they are and how they get positioned as one kind of person or another situated."

Currently, Enciso is working on two major research projects. The first one is a theoretical and pedagogical study of what she has called "critical engaged reading." With this project, Enciso wants to intervene in mechanical and exclusive approaches to reading that maintain categories of children as good or poor readers. The second project deals with how history is defined and used in socio-cultural learning theories. The first project will be a book titled Critically Engaged Reading; the second project is part of a book (in press) titled "Reframing Socio-Cultural Theory: Power, Identity, and Agency in Learning" for which Enciso is a co-editor. When talking about the significance of her second project, Enciso states: "I think that examining learning theory and the way in which reading in education functions, across the curricula not just in literature classes, helps us see that we have more agency as students than schools often allow us to think."

In spite of all the progress made at OSU in order to create a space for Latin@ scholars, such as the creation of Latino/a Studies (in which Enciso has been actively involved since its inception, and which she coordinates), she also recognizes how challenging it has been to create that space for Latin@ scholarly work. Nonetheless, Enciso has developed a graduate-level course called "Ethnic Studies in Education: Latino Youth and Community Perspectives." This course trains graduate students to work within the Latin@ community and in classrooms where the majority of the students are Latin@s. This is the first course in the College of Education dedicated exclusively to the study of Latin@s in education.

Enciso sees herself as an optimistic person. In her opinion, education is one of the most cherished, democratic and liberatory spaces. "I am disheartened by what is happening in schools right now because of unfunded mandates and an increasingly restricted curriculum where students have less and less opportunity to ask questions." Enciso continues saying: "Nevertheless, I am optimistic, and I think that by pursuing the research that I do, I can help create principles by which innovations can happen. These principles have to do with recognizing the fundamentals of human rights that children have to adequate education, to their language, to their culture to their definitions of their own futures."

When asked for a message for the Latin@ community Enciso said: "Students at OSU have the opportunity to really expand the vision of what is possible for Latin@s in education…. I look forward to working with them on creating that future."

In her free time, Enciso enjoys traveling with her husband Prof. Brian Edmiston (College of Education) and two children, Michael (15) and Zoe (11). She also enjoys visiting galleries to admire the work of local artists. Literature is on her list of favorite hobbies, particularly the works of Latin@ children's literature authors.