Specialisms for Generalists

The understanding of gender inequality for women entering work has not been subject to significant research or theorizing. This small study indicated that young women entering the workplace are subject to direct discrimination and by using an intersectionality approach this paper proposes that the intersection of gender and young age results in women being identified as the out-group, stereotyped and subjected to micropolitics. This paper also argues that the continued unequal power relations in organizations ensures that equality and diversity policies do not change the individual non-conscious processes that take place that allow the continuation of the glass ceiling.     

Intersecting identities and positionality of U.S.-based transnational researchers in second language studies

ABSTRACT

Despite a growing number of Second Language (L2) researchers working in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic settings, issues related to these uniquely situated researcher identities have only scantily been addressed. In order to close this gap, we investigated three U.S.-based Korean female researchers in L2 studies. We sought to understand (1) the ways in which these researchers chose research topics, contexts, and participants; (2) how they related themselves to their research participants; and (3) to what extent and how they negotiated identities in conducting and reporting their research. With theoretical frameworks of positionality and intersectionality of researcher identities, we drew upon a few salient points from multiple data sources such as interviews, published papers, and field notes. We found not only that their research interests stemmed from their life experiences and graduate training, but accessibility, familiarity, and researcher’s self-identification also influenced their research topics, contexts, and relationships with their research participants. Furthermore, researchers’ active positioning themselves in relation to research content, contexts, and participants using their intersecting identities proved to be beneficial to their research. What our findings further suggest is that researchers embrace hybridity and multiplicity of subjectivities and identities in order to make a fair contribution to knowledge construction.     

Counterstories of college persistence by undocumented Mexicana students: navigating race,class, gender,and legal status

This paper draws from four sets of four in‐depth interviews and one subsequent focus group to examine how undocumented Mexicana students navigate identities and the meanings of race, gender, class, and legal status. We mobilize a critical race theory framework to center and explore the content of students’ counterstories. While majoritarian stories perpetuate stereotypical narratives that portray communities of color as culturally deficient, counterstorytelling creates a space for exposing and resisting hegemonic narratives in the home, community, and college settings. We argue that, through counterstories, Mexicana students are able to develop a positive self‐image that allows them to hang on to their academic aspirations, to persist in college, and to envision and pursue the possibility of success. We look at how undocumented Mexicana students’ narratives also reproduce and/or reinscribe elements of oppressive discourses of race, class, and gender in the contemporary USA. We consider some implications of our discussion of counterstories for educational theory and policy.     

Reconciliation through dialogical nostalgia in post-conflict societies: a curriculum to intersect

The curriculum has been proposed as a powerful means with the potential to initiate social transformation. It reflects the dominant social, economical and political discourses and for this reason it seems reasonable to situate reconciliatory discourses in relation to the curriculum. Whilst curriculum scholars mostly agree that we need to seek new directions and ways of understanding curriculum, there is little consensus about the direction the field should take. Two particular issues that this article addresses are the tendency of curriculum practitioners to tackle social issues at a symptomatic level instead of considering the roots of the problems, and the over-emphasis on the political dimension with little or no attention given to the ethical dimensions of the curriculum. In an attempt to develop new ways of understanding curriculum and enabling social change, I explore nostalgia as a way to stimulate dialogue over competing narratives. To facilitate this exploration, I draw on the notion of the ethical turn in the study of curriculum and the theory of intersectionality. Examples from South Africa are used to develop the argument. I conclude by situating the discussion in the context of other post-conflict societies where reconciliation is needed.     

School effects and ethnic,gender and socio-economic gaps in educational achievement at age 11

There are long-standing achievement gaps in England associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and gender, but relatively little research has evaluated interactions between these variables or explored school effects on such gaps. This paper analyses the national test results at age 7 and age 11 of 2,836 pupils attending 68 mainstream primary schools in an ethnically diverse inner London borough. The groups with the lowest educational achievement and poorest progress were both Black Caribbean and White British low SES pupils. White British middle and high SES pupils made substantially more progress than White British low SES pupils, significantly increasing the SES gap over time. However low and high SES Black pupils made equally poor progress age 7–11. School effects on pupil progress were large, but there was no evidence of differential school effectiveness in relation to SES, ethnicity or gender. Low SES pupils in the more effective schools performed significantly better than high SES pupils in the less effective schools, but all pupils (both low and high SES) benefit from attending the more effective schools and so these schools do not eliminate the SES gap. The limits to change that may be achieved by schools alone are discussed.     

David Purpel,Emeritus Professor: In Memoriam

This article employs an intersectional analysis of the experiences of Black faculty at an elite US university who have mentored Black undergraduates, and focuses on faculty’s meaning making of their connection to their mentees, and challenges they face in these relationships. Findings reveal that faculty found their shared cultural background enhanced mentoring, and they worked hard to establish trust with their mentees, absent at times in mentees’ relationships with White faculty. Participants shared barriers to engaging in mentoring relationships, with gender and age intersecting with race for unique challenges and benefits for the subjects. Policy recommendations are made to support junior faculty mentors in the tenure granting process, and produce incentives for all faculty to share the responsibility of mentoring.     

Empowering English as an Additional Language students through digital multimodal composing

While digital multimodal composing, underpinned by a critical literacies approach, provides opportunities for students to make informed semiotic choices and voice concerns about social issues, there is limited research exploring how digital multimodal composing is employed to interrogate and challenge the entanglements of language, immigration status and power. This article explores how 23 primary-aged English as an Additional Language (EAL) students (Years 3–6) engaged in digital multimodal composing, in the context of an after-school multiliteracies programme in one Australian school. Conceptualising critical literacies as a bridge to access and transform codes of power, the article explores how the participating students selected and used different semiotic resources for their digital texts while challenging and redefining dominant discourses based on their lived experiences and interests. The study found that both students and pre-service teachers found value in students having access to digital technologies and experimenting with a range of multimodal and multilingual resources to create digital texts, which reflected cultural and linguistic identities. The findings illustrate how the creation of digital multimodal and multilingual texts allows for opportunities for students to reposition themselves as knowledgeable and active meaning-makers with strategic support from teachers and peers.     

The Coming-Out Process of Gay and Lesbian Individuals from Islamic Malaysia: Communication Strategies and Motivations

This exploratory study was an attempt to understand the coming-out process and lived experiences of gay and lesbian individuals in Islamic Malaysia. Fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted, and data were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. Three themes which centered on the “coming-out” process were uncovered, and they include: disclosure as self-acceptance, concealment as self and other protection, and sexual identity is not public identity. Even though the specific condition for disclosure and concealment vary from individual to individual, relationship with others and safety appeared to be the two most common reasons for why disclosure and concealment were enacted by the participants.     

Dynamics of parent involvement at a multicultural school

This paper describes a research project that uses Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital to penetrate how middle‐class parents exercise influence and form positive relationships at the neighbourhood public school that serves various ethno‐cultural groups of students. One group of white, economically privileged students have populated the school since its founding; the others are new, immigrant, and diverse in ethnicity, race, and immigrant status. The parents of the former group of children enjoy active involvement in the school and trusting relationships with teachers that involves their differentiation from and exclusion of the new immigrant group. While the paper affirms the importance of social class differences in parent involvement, it integrates additional dimensions of immigration status and ethnicity.     

Working towards more socially just futures: five areas for transdisciplinary literacies research

Policy-makers and provincial governments have a responsibility to prioritise equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (EDIA) with approaches that leverage both intersectionality and transdisciplinarity, especially when looking at literacies research. Supported by a federally funded knowledge synthesis grant that surveyed the scope of EDIA in Canadian schools, this article focuses on youth marginalisation to address literacies learning. The authors address five concepts from a three-phase literature review to examine inclusive practices that respect, acknowledge and address EDIA in K-12 education. Across reviewed studies, there is an underlying trajectory outlining methodological challenges in implementing EDIA practices. We advance anti-racist and abolitionist approaches by addressing five areas: (1) making learning more accessible by adopting culturally responsive pedagogy informed by local cultures, languages and values; (2) pursuing sustainable professional development in culturally inclusive teaching practices; (3) creating safer school environments that nurture community-driven relationships between parents, students and their teachers; (4) reforming educational policies to concretely address structural racism, discrimination and misrepresentation of socially marginalised students by disrupting what is conceptualised and accepted as ideal culturally responsive pedagogy; and (5) prioritising community perspectives and input curriculum decisions to support underrepresented students. Ultimately, this article echoes this issue's orientations as it explores transdisciplinary practices composing an evolving understanding of literacies.