Language Out of Place: Transgressive Semiotics and the Lived Experience of Race in Borderlands Education

Students’ talk about identity presents a challenge to teachers and researchers, as its social meaning is often ambiguous and indeterminate. This article adapts the concept of transgressive semiotics, originally developed in relation to linguistic landscapes, to explore moments when unexpected uses of language, involving some mismatch of speaker, utterance, and intention, were taken up in ways that offered profound insight into issues of racial identification and belonging in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Close analysis of interactional, observational, and interview data from a linguistic ethnographic study of a high school science classroom in southern Arizona shows that students monitored their own and others’ talk for out-of-place utterances, including stylized speech, errors, and gaffes. Students used these semiotic transgressions as opportunities to give voice to their lived experience of being Mexican in a social context characterized by widespread monitoring and surveillance.     

Gender ‘matters’ in the primary classroom: Pupils' and teachers' perspectives

A recent project involving Year 3 (seven–eight year‐old) pupils and their teachers revealed that ‘gender matters’ differently to boys and girls, and teachers. The study sought to elicit whether pupils and their teachers felt the gender of a teacher mattered to their experiences of schooling. Pupils were concerned about how effective teachers were in carrying out their professional functions and a teacher's gender was subsumed within this. For these pupils, ‘gender mattered’ in terms of the construction of their own gender identities. In contrast, teachers were aware of and attentive to the gender of pupils in managing and organising classroom interactions. The variety of differing views expressed and positions adopted towards the place of gender in teacher–pupil interactions demonstrates the complexity of developing ‘one size fits all’ approaches to tackling gender equity in the classroom.     

Attitudes towards languages,contact cultures and immigrant groups according to the ethnolinguistic identity of Basque students / Actitudes hacia lenguas,culturas en contacto y grupos inmigrantes según la identidad etnolingüística de escolares vascos

This study analyses the influence of ethnolinguistic identity on attitudes of secondary school students in the Basque Autonomous Community (N = 1,065) towards the languages, cultures and linguistic groups in traditional contact, as well as the emergent immigrant groups. Four identity prototypes were obtained according to the ethnolinguistic identity of the subjects. The Dual prototype integrates Basque and Spanish identity, two prototypes show a polarized identity towards either Basque or Spanish identification, and the Diffuse identity prototype shows low identification with both Basque and Spanish. The results indicate that ethnolinguistic identity has an effect on attitudes towards the traditional contact languages and cultures. Ingroup favouritism can be observed in the polarized identity prototypes, although to varying degrees. The subjects’ differing degrees of Basque-Spanish bilingualism and biculturalism is associated with more inclusive attitudes. The effect of ethnolinguistic identity in relation to the emerging contact was small.     

Language Codes and Classroom Practice

Abstract

Bernstein has argued, through nearly 30 years of writing about language codes, that there is an ‘opposition’ (or at least a ‘radical discontinuity') between the modes of communication which predominate in schools and those to which many pupils are accustomed. Briefly, he has maintained that schools are ‘predicated upon elaborated codes’. This claim is re‐examined, partly in the light of Paul Atkinson's recent structuralist critique of Bernstein, and mainly by reference to evidence from classroom research which suggests more readily a predominance of restricted (or perhaps quasi‐elaborated) codes. While the processing of ‘decontextualised’ information is undoubtedly a central feature of formal schooling, it is argued that an essential defining feature of elaborated codes as Bernstein himself presents them is that meanings are transmitted in ways which give access to the grounds for accepting them and which are therefore open to being challenged. It remains an unusual classroom in which pupils find opportunities for disturbing a body of received knowledge.

Unlike Bernstein, I do not assume that the classroom is normally ‘predicated upon elaborated codes and their system of social relationships’. Making deliberate reference to his own analysis of open and closed role systems, I would typify meanings in the ‘regulative’ context as being realised largely through imperatives and through positional appeals in a restricted code, and describe pupils as having to ‘step into’ a predetermined set of instructional meanings and ‘leave it relatively undisturbed’. It is surely an unusual classroom in which pupils find frequent opportunities for ‘disturbing or changing’ a body of received knowledge, and so of ‘achieving meaning’ on their own terms.

(Edwards 1981, p. 291)

     

Social Construction of Computer Experience in a First-Grade Classroom: Social Processes and Mediating Artifacts

Based on a Vygotskian perspective, as well as a broader socio-cultural perspective, we propose a transactional model of social processes and artifacts to investigate young children's social construction of their computer experience. An ethnographic study was conducted in a first-grade classroom at a public school located in a Midwest town. A grounded-theory approach was used to analyze video, field notes, interviews, and artifacts. The results indicate that young children constantly negotiate between their own individual and collective goals in the classroom and the affordances of the environment, as they create their own definition of computer use while simultaneously conforming to the rules set by the teacher. The artifacts students use—the computer, a timer, and waiting lists—both enable and challenge children's social negotiation. In this negotiation process, children socially construct not only their computer experience, but also their early school experience on a whole. The transactional model provides a useful theoretical framework to study children's social practice as well as practical suggestions for teachers to optimize students' collaborative interaction.     

Masking,mediators and agency: bilingual children and learning to read

This paper begins with a discussion of some of the key insights of recent sociocultural research that consider bilingual children and learning to read and culminates in a discussion of Syncretic Literacy Studies (SLS). It then presents data from an ethnographic study that focused on the learning experiences of a small group of Year Three Bangladeshi‐heritage pupils during 1 year of their schooling in order to problematise some of the claims made in recent sociocultural work and in SLS, particularly the focus on children's agency. The findings from the study suggest that (a) there are limits to children's agency that are not recognised in recent work and in SLS; (b) that identity has an important role to play: children can successfully mask what they cannot do as readers in order to present a particular identity in the mainstream classroom; and (c) that the access some children have to mediators may be limited and can change over time.     

“Until I Became a Professional,I Was Not,Consciously, Indigenous”: One Intercultural Bilingual Educator’s Trajectory in Indigenous Language Revitalization

Drawing from long-term ethnographic research in the Andes, this paper examines one Quechua-speaking Indigenous bilingual educator’s trajectory as she traversed (and traverses) from rural highland communities of southern Peru through development as teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and advocate for Indigenous identity and language revitalization across urban, periurban, and rural spaces. Neri Mamani grew up in highland Peru and at the time I met her in 2005 was a bilingual intercultural education practitioner enrolled in master’s studies at the Program for Professional Development in Bilingual Intercultural Education for the Andean Region (PROEIB-Andes) at the University of San Simón in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Drawing from my ethnographic research at PROEIB that year, situated also within a broader context of my ethnographic research on bilingual education in the Andes across several decades and Neri’s life trajectory across those same decades, this paper analyzes her narrative as it emerged in a 4-hour interview with me. I argue that Neri and her peers’ recognizing, valorizing, and studying the multiple and mobile linguistic, cultural, and intercultural resources at play in their own and others’ professional practices around bilingual intercultural education enable them to co-construct an Indigenous identity that challenges deep-seated social inequalities in their Andean world.     

On the margins of education,or two stories of arriving at school

Arrival stories are said to be typical components of anthropologically informed ethnographies in which the ethnographer as ‘stranger’ comes face to face with research subjects as ‘others’, establishes a context for the research and perhaps uses the story to justify the validity of his or her observations. The notion of a conventional ethnographic arrival is critiqued from the position of teacher–ethnographer, revealing a less conventional sense of arrival and a text relying more on reflexive ethnographic practice. After briefly considering arrival stories in ethnographic studies of schooling, those illustrating modernist epistemological tendencies are compared to more recent attempts to write a more reflexive sense of arrival. The trope of the arrival story is illustrated with reference to the author's arrival as a teacher–researcher at a school where research for this paper was carried out, and to the arrival of a student. Arrival is shown to be far more than an innocent physical activity but one that is accompanied by a range of emotions as both researcher and student confront their subjectivation. In the case of the student, the process of getting to school and arriving reveals some of the intensity with which his subjectivation is contested and throws light on what it is to be regarded as disaffected with one's schooling.     

Identification and subjectivity in a Year-3 classroom: using Lacan's mirror stage to analyse ethnographic data

This paper is a re-engagement with some ethnographic data, originally analysed using a sociocultural approach. It makes use of a recent proposal that Lacan's ‘mirror stage’ when applied to an analysis of classroom settings and interactions can offer a fruitful way of explaining and understanding classroom lives, identities and subjectivities. In this re-engagement, use is also made of Lacan's theory of subjectivity. An account is offered of the particular influence of the teacher in two learners' lives and the relationship of this to the learner identities, regulation, subjectivity and school achievement. The paper demonstrates and argues that psychoanalytic theory has a place in the analysis of ethnographic data, taking us beyond the rational, meaning-making teacher and learner to include the affective and emotional aspects of classroom life and their implication in identity and learning.     

Pink ... with shades of grey: mediating moments of diversity in urban secondary classrooms

In this paper, the authors trace the policy documents and legislation in Canada that have set, over the last twenty years, the context for ‘inclusion’ in Ontario's public schools. The authors then enliven this historical account of multicultural policy innovation by turning to a particular critical episode in a secondary classroom wherein they consider the pedagogical strategies of a teacher in a drama classroom who deftly navigates the unsettled terrain of race and power. Using a provocative monologue set in South Africa's apartheid, the teacher opens up a space for dialogue and whole‐group interaction with her class of Grade 11 (16‐ 17‐year‐old) students. Serving as an illustrative episode from a larger ethnographic study of four school sites (2 Canadian, 2 American), the analysis here, of one teacher's interactions with her students, and the students’ engagement with one another, points to many of the features of drama pedagogy that elucidate the study's broader interests in understanding the problems of social cohesion in richly diverse urban schools. In this discussion, the aims of inclusion and the possibilities of interactive pedagogy are clear, as are their limits, in the charged public space of an urban classroom.     

The boys who would be princesses: playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia

Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys’ classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily syncretic methods of analysis that enable critical examination of the complexity in children's play interactions with popular media artefacts as collaborative and heteroglossic negotiations of gender. Mediated discourse analysis of action and multimodality in boys’ Snow White princess play makes visible how children pivoted and anchored their performances as they negotiated, played, and blurred boundaries among gender identity intertexts.     

Exploring young children’s gendered discourses about skin colour

ABSTRACT

Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted with young children (4–5 year olds) in a multi-ethnic Early Years classroom in the north of England this paper shows how young children’s discourses about skin colour are informed by intersections with their gender identities. This ethnography uncovers how young children engage with the related concepts of ‘race’/ethnicity, racialisation and racism in their peer interactions alongside how they appropriate ‘markers of difference’ to promote their own identity and ascribe an identity to their peers. By comparing the discourses collectively produced by two groups of children in the class this study argues that there is a need for whiteness to be educationally discoursed in a way that uncovers the violence of racism and exposes the cultural and political privileges of ‘being white.’     

‘But sir,I lied’ – the value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom

This article aims to examine the benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. It explores the blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing and argues that teachers can help students if they provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives. Furthermore, it puts forward the case that when teachers share pertinent autobiographical episodes then pupils are more willing to respond in an engaged and passionate fashion. In developing my argument, I suggest that autobiographical writing can be therapeutic in certain classroom contexts. The data sources for this article are the author's own life and two case studies: an 11‐year‐old boy, George, and a 15‐year‐old girl, Eloise, both of whom were pupils of the author and wrote autobiographically for him. The methodological approach is that of bricolage: chiefly, the article combines ethnographical observation with interviews and discourse analysis. I also examine quantitative studies which look at the therapeutic dimensions of autobiographical writing. Theoretically I draw on Friere's concept of ‘conscientization’ (Friere 1985: 49) in order to critique the ‘banking’ concept of education, which would close down opportunities for pupils to write freely about their own lives.     

Inclusion,exclusion and marginalisation

This article considers issues relating to the marginalisation and inclusion of pupils in a secondary school. It takes the perspective of a teacher researcher examining her everyday teaching in such a school. It has a particular focus on some black boys learning French. The article critically examines the social norms that (a) define the relations between teachers and pupils within classroom situations, (b) guide the researcher's relationship to the researched. It draws on recent psycho-analytical theory in providing an account of how children in school construct their own identity with particular reference to ethnicity and gender     

Between continuity and change: identities and narratives within teacher professional development

This year-long ethnographic case study examined high school teachers’ participation in technology-focused professional development. By pairing a dialogical perspective on teacher identity with a micro-level analysis of narratives, findings indicate that teachers use language and other semiotic resources to express their own identity as well as to acknowledge, expand on, and counter others’ identity claims. Moreover, technology integration may challenge teachers’ established identities or threaten their authority in the classroom. This analysis suggests that teacher educators need to value teachers’ established and emergent identities as well as create space for dialogic narratives in order to facilitate technology integration in schools.     

Language and Identity Construction of China’s Rural-Urban Migrant Children: An Ethnographic Study in an Urban Public School

This article investigates the identity construction process of China’s rural-urban migrant children through analyses of their discourses and of their use of language. Rural children have relocated to the urban centers with their parents on a massive scale over the past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Many migrant children are able to attend urban public schools, and their identity construction emerges as an important issue that attracts increasing public and scholarly attention. This study draws on ethnographic data and presents four examples to illustrate the complex process of migrant identity construction. The results show that the migrant children deploy a range of linguistic features and claim multiple identities; in order for their identities to be established in social reality, they have to go through negotiation processes in which their identities are evaluated, ratified, challenged, or denied. Language is at the center of such processes.     

The Invisibility of the ‘Average’ Child in the Early Years

A sample of 52 children across two schools was tracked for the first four years of their school life. Adopting a naturalistic research strategy, relying on classroom observation of children and depth interviews with teachers, the emergence of each child's identity was monitored as it became revealed to their teacher. This investigation into early school careers suggests that children quickly acquire one of two distinct identities: either normal or deviant. The vast majority of children fall into the ‘normal’ category. Within the ‘normal’ category there seems to be a particular type of pupil who is to be found at the core of this socially constructed world of normality: the ‘average’ child. Acquiring an identity as an ‘average’ child seems to have important consequences for the child's experience of schooling. Whereas deviant pupils are conspicuous and continually noticeable, ‘average ‘pupils represent a conformity in classroom life which makes them apparently less visible to teachers. ‘Average’ pupils appear to conform to such an extreme degree that for much of their time in school they become ‘invisible’. This is an apparent anomaly for teachers in the early years when, in spite of a commitment to individualism, and often a tradition of child‐centredness, it seems teachers may be ‘blind’ to certain individuals in their class, especially those for whom teachers have recognised an identity as an ‘average’ child.

Research in early years education has understandably given prominence to issues of pedagogical practice, policy formation and curriculum development (Richards, 1982; Blenkin and Kelly, 1988). As in all sectors of education the concerns of educationists as practitioners or policy‐makers have often driven the quest for understanding and provided the dominant ethos of inquiry. In the field of early years education, the issues for debate, and consequently the questions generated for research, have rarely been prompted by the concerns of social scientists in their pursuit of more esoteric domains of theory construction.     

Assessment from a Sociocultural Perspective: Narratives from a first grade classroom

This study focuses on observations of classroom conversation as an approach to assessment of relationships between a teacher's teaching and pupils' learning and identity‐development processes. Detailed observation notes from two conventional conversation situations from a first grade classroom are written down as narratives and analysed within a sociocultural theoretical framework. Three significant themes emerge: (1) How the teacher sees the pupils, (2) How she connects with them, and (3) How she wanders on together with them. Together these themes function as strong “process motors” demonstrating how a teacher's support and scaffolding add positive influences to children's learning and personal growth. The study concludes that writing down information from classroom observations in a narrative genre manufactures excellent opportunities for revealing, describing, interpreting, and evaluating significant relationships between a teacher's teaching and pupils' learning and identity development.     

Building Inclusive Language Classroom Spaces through Multilingual Writing Practices for Newly-Arrived Students in Norway

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an action research project that aimed to increase opportunities for multilingual literacy engagement and identity investment for newly-arrived immigrant students in Norway. A language teacher and a researcher jointly developed a cross-curricular, multilingual module focusing on identity texts written in three languages: English, Norwegian, and each student's home language. Fourteen adolescent students speaking 15 different home languages participated. To assess the effectiveness of the multilingual pedagogical practices, the data collected included a language use questionnaire, student reflection logs, students’ identity texts, lesson plans, and the teacher's notes and reflections. The results suggest that explicit emphasis on including all languages in students’ linguistic repertories can help build inclusive classroom spaces and foster learners’ multilingual identities.     

Assessing pupils’ contributions in appreciating a poem

The focus on assessment of language is considered and it is suggested that a teacher's own ability to interpret and observe, together with his/her own knowledge about language and learning, are important elements in the business of evaluating pupils’ progress. Two contrasting poetry lessons are considered and a model is proposed which draws attention to their significant features and which may also be useful in analysing similar classroom activities.