Showing papers in "Anthropology & Education Quarterly in 2009"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a model for thinking about how learning settings provide resources for the development of the practice-linked identities of participants, drawing on data from a study on an African American high school track and field team.
Abstract: In this article, we present a model for thinking about how learning settings provide resources for the development of the practice-linked identities of participants, drawing on data from a study on an African American high school track and field team. What does it mean to make an identity available in the context of a learning setting? In this article, we draw on current theories in anthropology, psychology, sociology, and sociocultural theory to develop a conceptual frame that might be helpful in addressing these questions. We focus on how individuals are offered (and how they take up) identities in cultural activities. We define three types of identity resources that were made available to student-athletes learning to run track and explore how they took shape in teaching and learning interactions in track. [identity, learning, African American students, culture]
227 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how black students construct their racial and achievement self-concepts in a predominantly white high school to enact a black achiever identity and suggest that these students do not maintain school success by simply having a strong racial selfconcept or a strong achievement selfconcept; rather, they discuss achieving in the context of being black or African American.
Abstract: In this article, I examine how black students construct their racial and achievement self-concepts in a predominantly white high school to enact a black achiever identity. By listening to these students talk about the importance of race and achievement to their lives, I came to understand how racialized the task of achieving was for them even though they often deracialized the characteristics of an achiever. I suggest that these students do not maintain school success by simply having a strong racial self-concept or a strong achievement self-concept; rather, they discuss achieving in the context of being black or African American. For these students, being a black or African American achiever in a predominantly white high school means embodying racial group pride as well as having a critical understanding of how race and racism operate to potentially constrain one's success. It also means viewing achievement as a human, raceless trait that can be acquired by anyone. In their descriptions of themselves as black achievers, these students resist hegemonic notions that academic success is white property and cannot be attained by them. [self-concept, high achievers, black student achievement, achievement self-concept]
78 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored an Arab American community arts organization as a site for promoting youth civic participation and social activism, and examined the symbolic political argument for postnational citizenship that the young participants articulated through a film they produced.
Abstract: This article explores an Arab American community arts organization as a site for promoting youth civic participation and social activism. Studying a citizenship education project outside the school walls, and focusing on the arts as a medium for this work, foregrounds the role of the symbolic for engaging youth as active participants in democratic society. The article also examines the symbolic political argument for postnational citizenship that the young participants articulated through a film they produced. [Arab American youth, citizenship education, arts, immigration]
69 citations
TL;DR: The authors describe a town in which residents often characterize Mexican immigrants as model minority with respect to work and civic life but not with respect for education, and trace how this stereotype is deployed, accepted, and rejected both by long-standing residents and by Mexican newcomers themselves.
Abstract: Rapid Mexican immigration has challenged host communities to make sense of immigrants' place in New Latino Diaspora towns. We describe one town in which residents often characterize Mexican immigrants as model minorities with respect to work and civic life but not with respect to education. We trace how this stereotype is deployed, accepted, and rejected both by long-standing residents and by Mexican newcomers themselves. [Mexican immigration, social identification, ethnic contrasts, minority students]
69 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe Mazahua children's participation in learning interactions that take place when they collaborate with more knowledgeable others in everyday activities in family and community settings, and argue that experience with this way of interacting implies readiness to take on responsibility for carrying out important family activities, and an understanding of and capacity for reciprocity.
Abstract: This article describes Mazahua children's participation in learning interactions that take place when they collaborate with more knowledgeable others in everyday activities in family and community settings. During these interactions they coordinate their actions with those of other participants, switching between the roles of “knowledgeable performer” and “observing helper.” It is argued that experience with this way of interacting implies readiness to take on responsibility for carrying out important family and community activities, and an understanding of and capacity for reciprocity. Observations in a sixth-grade classroom with a Mazahua teacher and children show that children continued to interact in ways that allowed for collaborative task-oriented organization of classroom learning activities. [Indigenous education, family and community learning, interactional practices, Mazahua learning]
66 citations
TL;DR: This article conducted an ethnographic study of 8- to 11-year-old students in four fourth grade classrooms in the southeastern United States and found that black students were more likely to openly discuss race and racism and used race talk to silence or isolate certain students.
Abstract: This article addresses how preadolescents produce and perform race through an ethnographic study of 8- to 11-year-old students in four fourth grade classrooms in the southeastern United States. Although Asian, Latino, and white students tended to avoid explicit talk of race, many white students constructed black students as disruptive “troublemakers.” Black students were more likely to openly discuss race and racism and used race talk to silence or isolate certain students. [race, identity, media, elementary school, multicultural education]
59 citations
TL;DR: The authors conducted a two-year ethnography of eight Latino immigrant families, in which fifth-grade children were followed in home, school, and community contexts, and their reasons for presenting themselves as English fluent suggest a sophisticated awareness of the power and status of English in this country and a clear link between language and identity.
Abstract: This article describes passing for English fluent among Latino immigrant children. A two-year ethnography of eight Latino immigrant families was conducted in which fifth-grade children were followed in home, school, and community contexts. This article presents passing as a consequence of U.S. race relations. Their reasons for presenting themselves as English fluent suggest a sophisticated awareness of the power and status of English in this country and a clear link between language and identity. [bilingualism, English language learners, Latino students, identity]
56 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the contested and racially coded cultural politics of creating mixed-income schools in mixedincome communities and argue that these policies are grounded in "culture of poverty" theories that pathologize Black1urban space.
Abstract: In this article, I examine the contested and racially coded cultural politics of creating mixed-income schools in mixed-income communities. Policymakers claim deconcentrating low-income people will reduce poverty and improve education. However, based on activist research in Chicago, I argue these policies are grounded in “culture of poverty” theories that pathologize Black1urban space. They legitimate displacement and gentrification and further the neoliberal urban agenda while negating that urban communities of color and their schools are spaces of community.[mixed income, race, neoliberalism, cultural politics]
54 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnographic study of American Muslim undergraduate women at two universities in Washington, D.C. examined undergraduate Muslim women's construction of gendered discourses and highlighted their resistance to and adoption of such stereotypes as they construct various modalities of interaction with men on campus.
Abstract: Building on an ethnographic study of American Muslim undergraduate women at two universities in Washington, D.C., I examine undergraduate Muslim women's construction of gendered discourses. Stereotypes feed into both majority and minority constructions of Muslim women's gendered identities. I highlight Muslim women's resistance to and adoption of such stereotypes as they construct various modalities of interaction with men on campus. [higher education, gender, Muslim women, ethnography, sexuality]
45 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present research conducted within Latin American configurations and intellectual trajectories, yet maintaining an open dialogue with research done in the Anglo-American tradition of anthropology of education.
Abstract: Cultural contexts influence the conceptual tools used in anthropological research in profound ways. Through this special issue, we hope to contribute not only accounts of education in other places but also novel ways of understanding the past and present experiences of Indigenous education. Our choice sought to present research conducted within Latin American configurations and intellectual trajectories, yet maintaining an open dialogue with research done in the Anglo-American tradition of anthropology of education. Although it is one of the more promising fields in Latin America, little research on schooling and other forms of education in Amerindian communities has been published in mainstream anthropological or education journals, 1 in contrast, for example, to the large number of references to the Latin American tradition of popular education and its emblematic figure, Paulo Freire. As in other areas, ethnographic research on education in Latin America has developed within several related disciplines, whereas the incorporation of anthropological theory within studies on formal schooling has remained problematic. By focusing on the theme of Indigenous education, we sought to bring together ethnographic research that engages creatively with various traditions of anthropology and ethnology. 2 Although there is a long history of involvement of anthropologists in the implementation of educational policies and practices for Indigenous peoples in Latin America, particularly within the indigenista tradition, the anthropological study of education is fairly recent and has a particular history in each country. There is a considerable distance between the theoretical issues discussed by anthropologists working with Indigenous groups and their “non-theoretical” involvement with Amerindian village schools, often in response to the communities where they work. The present moment offers the opportunity of relating Indigenous education to ethnological research on Amerindian peoples of Latin America, a field that has witnessed significant growth in empirical research and theoretical sophistication during the past decades. In this vein, some recent developments, not fully reflected in this issue, might deeply alter current frameworks for conceiving Indigenous education broadly. The anthropology of Amazonian groups, which, after significant advances in the classical themes of cosmology, myth and ritual, kinship and social organization, is opening up to a broader dialogue with all human sciences (Overing and Passes 2000), offers significant alternatives. Amerindian cosmologies challenge the western notion of “multiculturalism” through the provocative concept of “multinaturalism” (Viveirosde-Castro 1998), the notion that all natural beings are the result of metamorphoses of an original, universal humanity. Latin American elaborations of postcolonial theories
43 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that parents and children engaged creatively in solving math-relevant problems at home, using a combination of everyday practices and school forms, but generally did not recognize mathematics in their problem solving.
Abstract: We present three cases showing families' competence in mathematical problem solving as a practical aspect of daily life. At home, parents and children engaged creatively in solving math-relevant problems. They used a combination of everyday practices and school forms, but generally did not recognize mathematics in their problem solving. The findings invite new forms of participation that bring families into discussions of math-relevant situations and relates them to their children's school math. [families, math, ethnography, daily practices, math in context]
TL;DR: The authors examined how one Guatemalan American teenager negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in three primary educational contexts: her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school.
Abstract: Drawing from a multiyear ethnography and a longitudinal case study, this article examines how one Guatemalan American teenager negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school. She must face processes of Americanization and Mexicanization. Americanization’s thrust is to replace the languages and cultures of Latino/a students with English and mainstream middle-class European American ways while Mexicanization pushes Central Americans to Mexican and Chicano dialects of Spanish and ways of being. With respect to gender, Amalia confronts a process of sexualization, particularly in school. Tensions between the socializations create spaces where Amalia enacts her agency and constructs her identities. The article is informed by research on multiple socializations, scholarship on identity and agency, and studies of Latino/a language and identities. [Latina, socialization, language, identity, agency] Research on socialization for students of color and working-class students has documented cultural differences that exist between home and school contexts focusing in particular on the negative consequences for schooling and academic achievement (Bourdieu 1977; Heath 1983). However, these studies have not adequately addressed how students respond to and negotiate their multiple socializations. Addressing this issue for Latinos/as, a burgeoning body of research has grappled with the complexities of socialization and its connection to identity and learning (Gonzalez 2001; Valdes 1996; Zentella 1997). However, the majority of these studies focus on Chicanos or Mexicans and Puerto Ricans; hence, the situation of Central Americans remains underresearched and undertheorized. Drawing from a multiyear ethnography and a longitudinal case study, this article examines how one Guatemalan American teenager, Amalia Gramajo (pseudonym), negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in three primary educational contexts: her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school. Each institution has its own cultural values, norms, beliefs, and languages that are sometimes in conflict with one another in significant ways. Amalia must face both Americanization (Gonzalez 1997) and Mexicanization (Guerra Vasquez 2003). Americanization’s thrust is to replace the languages and cultures of Latino/a students with English and mainstream middle-class European American ways while Mexicanization pushes Central Americans to Mexican and Chicano dialects of Spanish and ways of being. With respect to gender, Amalia confronts a process of sexualization, particularly in school. Tensions between the socializations create spaces where Amalia enacts her agency and constructs her identities. To do so, she leverages various tools and resources, including language, performance, and dress. Research on multiple socializations, scholarship on identity and agency, and studies of Latino/a language and identities provide a conceptual framework to examine these issues. Theoretical Framework
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the way the American Dream discourse is presented to Khmer American middle school children of migratory agricultural workers by examining ethnographically the ways its dominant discourse is circulated to Cambodian American children of migrants.
Abstract: In this article, I add to the critique of the myth of the American Dream by examining ethnographically the ways its dominant discourse is circulated to Khmer American middle school children of migratory agricultural workers. Drawing on social theories of discourse, I juxtapose the ideology embedded in the American Dream Discourse with the complexities of urban immigrant life. By looking at four Khmer students’ worldviews and experiences, I provide a nuanced analysis of the complexities involved in the students’ responses to the Discourse. The findings challenge the notion of meritocracy and suggest that educators need to investigate their role in supporting and promoting student agency. [Khmer American (Cambodian), Discourse, urban education, immigrant student populations] I am a promise, I am a possibility. I am a promise with a capital “P.” I can be anything, anything that I want to be. And if I’m listening, I’ll hear my inner voice And if I’m trying, I’ll make the right choice I am a promise to be, anything that I want to be The words for the song entitled “I Am a Promise” rang out over the very warm un-air-conditioned auditorium where the students of the summer Migrant Education Program gathered every afternoon. 1 The 150 Cambodian (ethnic Khmer), Vietnamese, and Chinese children of migrant agricultural workers were singing. The kindergarteners and first graders were enthusiastically shouting the song as loudly as they could. I noticed that gradually, as the kids got older, this enthusiasm waned. My homeroom group, the future seventh, eighth, and ninth grade students, was not singing. Instead, as the other students sang, they were either slouched in their chairs with their eyes closed or talking to each other. They were not interested in singing or listening to the words both Vantha and Seteya deemed as “corny.” In its use in this context, the song “IAm a Promise” reflects the discourse of a larger ideology, of societal values and beliefs in the American Dream. Since 1867 when Horatio Alger began writing stories of “rags to riches,” the American Dream, which has its roots in Protestant religious beliefs, has been a central aspect of American schools and society. The “Discourse” of the American Dream suggests that we live in an egalitarian society and promotes the idea that those who are strong in the face of adversity and who work hard will succeed. The assumptions of the ideology are that of the individual as an autonomous self, while education is seen as neutral. Hence focus is placed on the individual students to be agents of their own success or failure. The placement of this burden on the individual diverts attention away from the role institutions play in this construct of success or failure, ignores structural determinants, and fails to recognize the multiple ways the self is constructed (Giroux 1997; Varenne and McDermott 1998).
TL;DR: This article explored the experiences of Puerto Rican women attending a family literacy program in Chicago and investigated the repositories of knowledge and information available to participating women that figured into the development of their notions about parenting.
Abstract: This article discusses the findings of an ethnographic research study exploring the experiences of Puerto Rican women attending a family literacy program in Chicago. In particular, the study investigated the repositories of knowledge and information available to participating women that figured into the development of their notions about parenting, in the process posing these various trajectories against the types of knowledge and approaches usually promoted within family literacy and parent education programs. [teen mothers, family literacy programs, parent education, Puerto Rican mothers, Chicago, Latino/a communities]
TL;DR: The authors examined hybrid literacy practices among bilingual rural speakers in the context of the household and the community, and examined the coexistence of two types of textual practices that operate side by side, at times integrated in the same activity.
Abstract: Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in a Quechua rural community in the Peruvian Andes, this article examines hybrid literacy practices among bilingual rural speakers in the context of the household and the community. I examine the coexistence of two types of textual practices that operate side by side, at times integrated in the same activity. Hybrid literacies in this Andean community challenge narrow views of literacy, because they include diverse media of communication. [Peru, Quechua language, Indigenous education, literacy, communities]
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the Brazilian Indigenous formal educational policies through two ethnographic cases (Karipuna and Mebengokre-Xikrin) that allow us to approach the Indigenous perspective on schooling.
Abstract: The article analyzes the Brazilian Indigenous formal educational policies through two ethnographic cases (Karipuna and Mebengokre-Xikrin) that allow us to approach the Indigenous perspective on schooling. We first discuss the possibilities and limitations of past and current legal references and educational policies. In the analysis of the two experiences, we use the notions of cultural boundary and the “openness to the other” to understand the dialogical and interactional spaces that emerge through Indigenous schooling. [Indigenous schooling, Mebengokre-Xikrin, Karipuna, Indigenous protagonism, cultural boundaries, openness to the other]
TL;DR: The authors found that a large percentage of white students cannot trace their identities to a particular nation in Europe and are, as a result, unable to name the shared meanings of a particular ethnic culture.
Abstract: Findings from a four-year action research project at a highly diverse, West Coast U.S. university reveal that a large percentage of white students cannot trace their identities to a particular nation in Europe and are, as a result, unable to name the shared meanings of a particular ethnic culture. Each time Latino, Asian American, and African American classmates describe their families' ethnic histories, it is the European American student who feels dissociated. Extracted from a polyphonic novelistic ethnography, this essay focuses on an exchange among three students at a town hall meeting and explores the ramifications for social cohesion when members of “the dominant group” appear to be experiencing declining subjectivity. This reflection also raises two larger disciplinary questions: (1) How can 10,000 U.S. anthropologists continue to deploy the concept of culture at field sites outside the United States when so many in their own population cannot claim an ethnic culture of their own? and (2) Given the recent turn in events in the U.S. political scene, shouldn't anthropologists now begin developing new constructs for social analysis after race and culture? [culture concept, subjectivity, soul]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the decolonization of schooling in an Arhuaco community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of Colombia and describe how Indigenous educators incorporate local forms of knowledge into schooling, and how these are presented and understood relative to the structures and discourses of the colonized school.
Abstract: This article examines the decolonization of schooling in an Arhuaco community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of Colombia. Interweaving ethnographic description with accounts of key events that took place between 1915 and 2006, I trace the community's struggle to develop an Indigenous school capable of appropriating Western forms of knowledge while retaining Indigenous practices and beliefs. I describe how Indigenous educators incorporate local forms of knowledge into schooling, and how these are presented and understood relative to the structures and discourses of the colonized school. Using the concepts of “translocality” and “transculturation,” I frame this discussion of the struggle for educational autonomy within broader efforts to decolonize knowledge and epistemologies inherited from European traditions and the Colombian state. I argue that educators have transformed the school from a colonizing space to one in which Indigenous people contest and negotiate, via practices of cultural and linguistic revitalization, the state violence that threatens to surround them. [Arhuaco, Colombia, decolonization, Indigenous education, local knowledge, transculturation, translocality]
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This paper made a case for greater empirical specification of the real extent of children's non-school-sanctioned communicative competence, and proposed ways of reframing and reforming language loss in language contact situations.
Abstract: This article expands our understanding of how language-minoritized children's communicative competence interrelates with schooling. It features a verbal performance by a young Native American girl. A case is made for greater empirical specification of the real extent of children's non-school-sanctioned communicative competence. The case disrupts Euro-Western ideologies of language and corresponding instructional policies and practices that pervade U.S. schooling. It also offers productive ways of reframing and reforming language loss in language contact situations. [ethnography of communication, verbal art, language ideologies, language policy and planning, Indigenous language education, Lakota]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the design and implementation of the EIB program for Mapuche children in the province of Neuquen, and revealed how this program reinforces a hegemonic definition of mapuche identity, which relegates Mapucher culture to times past and to a rural setting.
Abstract: This article explores the sense of belonging promoted by the current program of Educacion Intercultural Bilingue (EIB) of the province of Neuquen for Mapuche children, examining the design and implementation of this program. The analysis reveals how this program reinforces a hegemonic definition of Mapuche identity, which relegates Mapuche culture to times past and to a rural setting. At the same time, the program subordinates the Mapuche identity to the provincial realm, and merges it with the Argentine and Catholic identities in supposed “harmony.” [Mapuche childhood, sense of belonging, bilingual intercultural education, Indigenous policy]
TL;DR: The authors examines a grassroots movement in Mexico, the Feria pedagogica (Pedagogical Fair), as one such site of contestation, which represents an alternative educational space where literacy practices are tied to the construction of counterhegemonic identities and epistemologies.
Abstract: Within the context of neoliberal globalization, portrayals of “literacy” and “knowledge” are increasingly emphasized for their instrumental value for individuals and markets. At the same time, locally situated movements have emerged to challenge, resist, and transform these representations. This article examines a grassroots movement in Mexico, the Feria Pedagogica (Pedagogical Fair), as one such site of contestation. Grounded in nonmainstream notions of “civil society,” this movement represents an alternative educational space where literacy practices are tied to the construction of counterhegemonic identities and epistemologies.[literacy, civil society, social movements, popular education, Mexico]
TL;DR: In this article, the authors demonstrate the relationship between the educational policies of the Brazilian and French Guyana governments and the sociopolitical structure of the Wayapi in respect to these educational practices.
Abstract: In this article, I aim to demonstrate the relationships between the educational policies of the Brazilian and French Guyana governments and the sociopolitical structure of the Wayapi in respect to these educational practices. My main objective is to go beyond the normal concept that the school is an external interference that catalyzes processes of “Indigenous acculturation,” to make clear that the Wayapi sociopolitical forms of interaction that govern their relationships with alterity also govern their relationships with the state and its representatives. This article is based on my ethnographic study of the school experiences among the Wayapi living in villages in both countries. [Wayapi Amerindians, Brazil, schooling, sociopolitical interaction, alterity]
TL;DR: In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 verdict in the case of Milliken v. Bradley, thereby blocking the state of Michigan from merging the Detroit public school system with those of the surrounding suburbs.
Abstract: In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5–4 verdict in the case of Milliken v. Bradley, thereby blocking the state of Michigan from merging the Detroit public school system with those of the surrounding suburbs. This decision effectively walled off underprivileged students in many American cities, condemning them to a system of racial and class segregation and destroying their chances of obtaining a decent education.