Rochelle Gutierrez PhD University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This presentation draws on Latina/Latino studies to offer education a potential framework for reconceptualizing knowledge and for engaging teacher candidates in a process that acknowledges the complex identities of students. Although many scholars have commodified Anzaldua's notion of border theory, I return to a focus on Nepantla. Problematizing teacher education programs that focus on the development of knowledge without experience in real communities, I will describe aspects of an experimental model of teacher education I have developed and offer examples of how teacher candidates move through states of what Anzaldua (1987, 1990, 2002) would call desconocimientos (ignorance/distancing) versus conocimientos (knowledge/connection with others).
Finally, I suggest that beyond helping our teacher candidates develop a knowledge base and connection with Latina/Latino students, teacher educators may benefit from a focus on Nepantla, a liminal space that facilitates transformation. That is, our work of preparing teachers must help them not only recognize a state of Nepantla (to see and participate in multiple realities) but also come to expect the uneasiness with being in that space, while celebrating its potential to birth new identities and create new (forbidden) knowledges.