Applying Anzalduan Frameworks To Understand Transnational Youth Identities

Framed by the theoretical work of Gloria Anzaldúa, this volume focuses on the cultural and linguistic practices of Mexican-origin youth at the U.S. border to explore how young people engage in acts of "bridging" to develop rich, transnational identities. Using a wealth of empirical data gathered through interviews and observations, and featuring perspectives from multinational and transnational authors, this text highlights how youth resist racialized and raciolinguistic oppression in both formal and informal contexts by purposefully engaging with their heritage culture and language. In doing so, they defy deficit narratives and negotiate identities in the "in-between." As a whole, the volume engages issues of identity, language, and education, and offers a uniquely asset-based perspective on the complexities of transnational youth identity, demonstrating its value in educational and academic spaces in particular. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in the sociology of education, multicultural education, and youth culture more broadly. Those interested in language and identity studies, as well as adolescence, schooling, and bilingualism, will also benefit from this volume.

This edited volume contributes to the creation of a comprehensive and a more inclusive understanding of an increasingly complex global ELT landscape across countries as well as across teaching and learning settings. The volume brings together inquiries from language teachers, educators and researchers from different backgrounds in the Global South and the Global North, who use their experiences of shuttling across borders to reflect on the shaping of their pedagogical, research and professional practices across higher education settings. The chapters weave the personal, professional and theoretical in a seamless manner, examining transnational identities and pedagogical practices formed and informed by both communities – ‘home’ and ‘host’ – and include narratives that are not unidirectional. The contributing authors also use a variety of qualitative research methods, along with reflexive writing and exploration of the authors’ own positionalities, to shed light on transnational identities and critique dominant pedagogical assumptions.

This book counters the common understanding of study abroad in Latin America as a White and middle-class colonizer practice and re-imagines it to fit the needs of Latinx immigrant/transnational higher education students. The book centers Latinx youth inhabiting familial heritage spaces as a pathway toward a deeper understanding of themselves as racialized and colonized individuals, reframing study abroad for Latinx youth as a way for them to reclaim, negotiate, and strengthen their own immigrant/Latino/a/Chicano/a and other identities. The text is undergirded by a theoretical argument based on decolonial methods in education and Critical Race Theory and draws on counter-stories, rich descriptive interviews, and participant observations across 26 years of combined experience leading educational trips to Latin America. The authors analyse, reflect, and critique the field of study abroad to advocate for the rethinking of recruitment strategies, pedagogical experiences, language practices, and community partnerships that include Latino/a, Chicano/a, and Latin American immigrant youth and their families from the beginning. They present a new conceptualization of Latinx immigrant students studying abroad as engaging opportunities for reclaiming heritage, culture, histories, and language, for exploring a sense of identity and obligation to Latin communities, and for healing from the effects on Whiteness and ethnocentrism in ways online possible outside the continental United States. As such, the book shifts the gaze of the entire field toward new diversities showcasing examples of how educational trips abroad can be re-envisioned to suit the needs of ethnically minoritized students in the United States. This volume will appeal to scholars, researchers, educators, and education officers working across higher education and international education, looking for contemporary, global. and forward-thinking decolonial methodologies.

This book offers a unique focus on the well-being of Chinese and South/Southeast Asian students in the context of Hong Kong, and in particular the experience of integrating these young people into its schooling system. Yuen uses a narrative method that captures and offers a vivid insight into the actual experience of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, whilst providing fascinating comparisons between students coming from Mainland China and those whose parents are South/Southeast Asian immigrants. Readers will be particularly interested in the attention given to spiritual well-being and how religious participation and affiliation make a difference in giving meaning to life and in creating a positive mindset, as viewed and explained by students themselves. This well-organised volume begins by laying out the major themes relating to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, followed by a richly elaborated theoretical chapter which defines core concepts and their interconnection. This is followed by substantive chapters where the voices of each of the different diverse groupings of students, Chinese Mainland immigrants, Chinese Cross-boundary youth, South/Southeast Asian ethnic youth and mainstream HK youth from underprivileged backgrounds, are heard and interpreted in relation to themes of inclusion and well-being. It then builds upon the narratives to provide bottom-up solutions and pathways towards the inclusion and well-being of all students, as well as the professional development of teachers who can take up the challenge of ensuring that all young people are nurtured to fulfil their potential. Providing readers with practical implications and takeaways for education practice, this must-read work will appeal to a wide range of education practitioners and students involved in providing or researching inclusive education relating to mainstream and non-mainstream Chinese, South Asian, and other ethnic minority students.

This edited volume is about diversifying the teaching profession. It is unique in its inclusion of multiple dimensions of diversity; its chapters focus on a wide range of under-represented groups, including those from lower socio-economic groups, Black and minority ethnic groups, migrants, the Travelling community, the Deaf community, the LGBTQI+ community and those of mature age. The book includes contributions from Australia, England, Iceland, Portugal and Scotland, as well as a number of chapters from the Irish context, mostly emanating from projects funded under Ireland’s Higher Education Authority’s Programme for Access to Higher Education (PATH): Strand 1—Equity of Access to Initial Teacher Education. The book also critically engages the rationale for diversifying the profession, arguing not only that representation still matters, but also that ultimately teacher diversity work needs to encompass system transformation to achieve a diverse, equitable and inclusive teaching profession.

Foregrounding diverse lived experiences and non-dominant forms of knowledge, this edited volume showcases ways in which narrating and sharing stories of pain and suffering can be engaged as critical pedagogy to challenge oppression and inequity in educational contexts. The volume illustrates the need to consider both the act of narrating and the experience of bearing witness to narration to harness the full transformative potentials of counternarratives in disrupting oppressive practices. Chapters are divided into three parts - "Telling and Reliving Trauma as Pedagogy," "Pedagogies of Overcoming Silence," and "Forgetting as Pedagogy" - illustrating a range of relational pedagogical and methodological approaches, including journaling, poetry, and arts-based narrative inquiry. The authors make the argument that the language of pain and suffering is universal, hence its potential as critical pedagogy for transformative and therapeutic teaching and learning. Readers are encouraged to reflect on their own lived experiences to constructively engage with their pain, suffering, and trauma. Focusing on trauma-informed non-hegemonic storytelling and transformative pedagogies, this volume will be of interest to students, faculty, scholars, and community members with an interest in advancing anti-oppressive and social justice education.

This text offers a hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of the lived experiences of Filipinx American teachers in U.S. schools, classrooms, and colleges. By drawing on one-on-one dialogues, group discussion, and reflective writing, the text identifies racial, cultural, and linguistic barriers that members of this minority group have faced in their training and practice as educators. The text questions the underrepresentation of Filipinx Americans among U.S. teaching staff and identifies causes both within the Filipino community and via external factors, including the absence of Filipino culture in curricula, as well as a lack of peer support in the development of Asian American teacher identities. This timely volume highlights the need to expand diversity teacher education to create a more racially diverse and inclusive workforce. Offering rich insight into the experiences of Filipinx American teachers, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers drawn to studies of multicultural education, as well as teacher education.

Drawing on participatory action research conducted with students, parents, families, and school staff in a Southwest community in the United States, this volume contests the interpretation of the achievement gap for students of Mexican descent in the American education system and highlights asset-based approaches that can facilitate students’ academic success. By presenting the Asset-Based Bicultural Continuum Model (ABC) and demonstrating the applications in a variety of family, school, and community-based initiatives, this volume demonstrates how community and cultural wealth can be harnessed to increase educational opportunities for Latino students. The ABC model offers new strategies which capitalize on the bicultural and linguistic assets rooted in local communities and offers place-based strategies driven by communities themselves in order to be tailored to students’ strengths. The text makes a significant contribution to understanding the social ecology of Latinx students’ experiences and offers a new direction for effective and evidence-based academic and health programs across the United States. This book will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics with an interest in the sociology of education, multicultural education, urban education, and bilingual education. It will be of particular interest to those with a focus on Hispanic and Latino studies.