Towards a postcolonial politics of appearance: unsettling lifelong learning as a racial contract

ABSTRACT

In the context of flexible capitalism, lifelong learning has been posed as a pathway for individuals to accumulate skills and actualise potentials. What is overlooked, however, is that the process of accumulation and actualisation is embedded within the culture of recognition. People who are historically constructed as the anthropos, a legacy of the colonial history struggle to appear as equals vis-à-vis the gaze of the humantias. With this critique in view, I reviewed the field of immigrant and lifelong learning in relation to a postcolonial politics of appearance. I sought to understand how lifelong learning settles itself in immigrant consciousness, and how it shapes immigrant experiences in the West. My review points to three metaphors that speak of the challenges and possibilities for immigrants to appear: fixation of the Eurocentric gaze, re-credentialing as precarious investment, and lifelong learning as trans/formation. Together, these metaphors suggest that lifelong learning has conjured a racial contract, which ironically binds immigrants to the labour of learning and yet continuously suppresses their appearance. To unsettle this racial contract, borders need to be reimagined and crossed/vexed by recentring immigrants as knowing subjects.     

Finding Diego: A Bilingual Student Integrates School,Language, and Identity

This article presents a mixed-methods case study of Diego, a bilingual teen who completed public school in Florida. During adolescence, Diego negotiated multiple identities: successful student, Mexican American, bilingual, and typical U.S. teenager. Diego provided interviews and bilingual (English/Spanish) writing (narrative/expository) in 2008 (at age 12, Grade 6) and in 2012 (at age 16, Grade 10). A qualitative analysis of his interviews and a quantitative linguistic analysis of his writing reveal central elements of Diego’s language development as related to academic English and identity. Educational implications for working with bilingual adolescents are discussed.     

东晋门阀政治中的桓氏父子

在以门阀政治为特征的东晋政局中 ,士族与皇帝分享权力 ,士族有时甚至凌驾于皇权之上。桓温、桓玄父子均以取得皇权为目标 ,最终却连门户也无法保全。桓温的失败在于没有充分理解门阀政治的运行规则 ,打破了门阀政治的平衡原则 ;桓玄的失败则体现了士族势力的整体衰落。     

离异家庭小学生心理压力状况调查

目的:探讨离异家庭小学生心理压力特点并比较不同亚群体离异家庭小学生的心理压力状况的差异。方法:运用问卷法对165名离异家庭小学生的心理压力进行测量。结果:(1)离异家庭小学生总体心理压力水平显著高于完整家庭小学生的总体心理压力水平。来自父母教养、教师、丧失、学业、需要缺乏和不良行为方面的压力事件对离异家庭小学生的影响显著大于对完整家庭小学生的影响;(2)高年龄段学生受到来自丧失和社会两方面压力事件的影响显著大于低年龄段学生受到的影响;(3)父亲文化水平较低的离异家庭小学生受到来自学业方面的压力事件的影响显著大于父亲文化水平高的离异家庭小学生受到的影响,母亲文化水平较低的离异家庭小学生受到来自学业、不良行为方面的压力事件的影响显著大于母亲文化水平高的离异家庭小学生受到的影响;(4)来自需要缺乏、父母教养、不良行为方面的压力事件对离异家庭小学生的快乐感有较大影响。     

Supporting Two Households: Unaccompanied Mexican Minors and Their Absences From U.S. Schools

This article illustrates simultaneous household participation in the lives of undocumented, unaccompanied Mexican teenage minors in New York City and its impact on their school attendance. Emigrating without parents, some Mexican youths arrive to enter into the labor market, not school. Unable to assume monetary dependence, these youths’ absences from New York classrooms is driven by financial participation in their natal households in Mexico and current New York City households. Drawing from fifty-three interviews with Mexican teenagers in Mexico and New York City, this article explores how these youth laborers learn to, understand and fulfill monetary obligations to two households.     

Tending School: A Forum on the Experiences of Refugee and Immigrant Students in the United States System

This article contributes to the investigation of refugee and immigrant education. As one part of a comprehensive qualitative study, it showcases the school experiences of three students: Quincy, a refugee from Afghanistan who came to the United States at age thirteen; Emily, an immigrant from Poland who arrived at age six; and Maung, a political refugee from Burma who arrived at age eighteen. The school experiences of these students mirror those of many children who come from countries and communities outside the dominant culture of the United States.The framework of investigation is based on the notion that school life for minority children, in this case, refugee and immigrant students, can be examined from a critical and political perspective; that is, contextualized socially, economically, and politically (Apple, 1990). Students who are not grounded in the mainstream culture struggle to get along in school settings that are institutionalized according to the moral, social, and cultural dimensions of society. Critical theorists contend that student voice can become an organizing force to negotiate and construct multiple interpretations of school life within the reality of institutionalized ways of being in school. In this study, a focus on finding and developing student voice offers the possibility of passages between private and public (Miller, 1990) to permit the sharing and envisioning of multiple interpretations of school life for students and for those with whom they interact with in school settings.     

Liana’s learning in a democratized classroom

In usual understandings of learning, youths’ development in classrooms is portrayed as a move from being a novice to an expert. However, findings of the present anthropologically framed study support us to argue that learning, rather, can be characterized as youths’ simultaneous occupation of novice and expert roles. We refer to this simultaneous occupation as “mutual reliance”. We make this assertion within the context of a multilingual, transnational classroom, where the presence of heightened diversity led teachers to put in place a structure (“autonomous learning groups”) that supported youth to rely on one another to learn. In a video-based case study that tracks one group of students over 33 hours and engages micro-ethnographic analysis of a student named Liana, we found that autonomous learning groups created a democratization of the learning space – everyone contributed from his or her knowledge base because no single person, including the teachers, could ever be an expert.     

浅析高等学校在国家助学贷款中的责任范围

目前国家助学贷款实施过程中，存在着银行要求高等学校承担一定的连带责任而学校不愿承担的问题。究其原因，这是由于国家助学贷款中的几个主体——政府、银行、高校、学生之间的权利与责任界定不清晰所致。从高等学校的功能和权利义务对等两个角度对问题的成因进行分析，有助于廓清高等学校在国家助学贷款中的责任范围，并提出解决问题的政策建议。     

Migrating selves: reconstructing and renegotiating Black immigrant academic identities

ABSTRACT

This study set out to explore how Black immigrant academics (BIAs) reconstruct their identities within academe. Utilising the research methodology of narrative inquiry, this article explores how BIAs came to see themselves across those communities, which were of primary importance to them in the reformation of their identities. Through the construction of narratives of experience, their lived and told stories emphasised the diversity of their identities that were negotiated with others within personal, historical and situational contexts. The study of BIAs’ lives from their perspective, in which they actively and socially develop their identities, not only provides a lens through which they can be understood as shifting constructions of identity but allows them to rethink who they are and have become and what influence power relations have in promoting or negating their sense of academic self.     

庐山植物区系的特征和植被的分布

本文通过对庐山植物区系成分的分析，指出庐山植物区系特征是：以亚热带植物成分为主，还有热带和温带植物成分的亚热带低山植被，具有古热带和冷北极两大植物区系成分的相互渗透、相互交融的一种过渡性自然景观．在植被分布上，明显地反映出亚热带低山植被的垂直地带性分布规律．