The Alaska-Kenya Collaboration: Inclusive Pedagogy as a Hallmark of the Classroom Public Space

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Learner Identities and Social Situations of Knowledge Production in an Epoch of Globalization

Abstract

As various scholars (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013; Pennycook, 2010) push for a shift from viewing language as being tied to place/time/community, towards a view where “language exists in and for mobility across space and time” (Blommaert, 2010; p. 181), the field of Literacy Studies seeks robust understandings of the “spatiotemporal mobility” (Canagarajah, 2013; p. 153) of language. My study explores explicit and implicit sociocultural practices that shape intercultural communication between students in Aleknagik and Nairobi. I explore language use within public spaces that both groups of students collaboratively construct, and how they navigate local and supralocal meanings (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002). I argue that inclusive pedagogy can offer students opportunities for reciprocal meaning-making across cultural and geospatial difference.

Author

• David Bwire, The Ohio State University