When the Global Becomes Local: Seeking Agency Through Educational Research With Diverse Communities

Session Submission Type: Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

As the classroom increasingly becomes a globalized context, the opportunity arises to revisit the shifting fields of global and local positionings across diverse populations within educational institutions. This session presents research focusing on the lives of children, and teachers who occupy diverse cultural, national, raced, gendered, and classed identity locations – African, African American, Japanese, and Appalachian. It explores the ways in which these children and teachers negotiate and position themselves across multiple social contexts, the complexity of global and local construction of identities, and the ways in which these social contexts both afford and limit their attempts. The papers presented extend research and pedagogies which are culturally relevant, but also conceptualize research as a source of agency for diverse groups.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Section 5: Social Context of Research on Schools and Communities

Chair

• Cynthia B. Dillard, University of Georgia

Papers

• Culturally Relevant Practices of Immigrant Teachers: Hybrid Global and Local Life Experiences in Teaching - Gumiko Monobe, Kent State University - Kent

• Locating Agency in African American Girls’ Negotiations of Gender, Class, and Race With Peers - Samatha Wahome, Kent State University

• When the “Public” Has a Global Face: Understanding African Immigrant Identities Across Sociocultural Contexts - Chinwe Linda Okpalaoka, The Ohio State University

• Researching Community, Constructing Selves: Appalachian Adolescents’ Identity Positioning in English Class - Audra Slocum, West Virginia University