Unhomely Praxis: Palestinian Students’ Agency in Israeli Jewish Schools

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 9:45 am
  In Poster Session: Inquiry in the Social Contexts of Education

Abstract

This study examines how Palestinian graduates of Israeli Jewish state schools navigate and reconfigure belonging in educational spaces shaped by settler-colonial dynamics. Using Critical Narrative Inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) and a multidimensional framework of transformative agency (Bajaj, 2018), it introduces unhomely praxis to theorize student responses to civic-national tensions. Findings reveal a multi-stage process of naming exclusion, negotiating identity, and challenging institutional norms that contest dominant narratives of integration and hybridity. Drawing on selected postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, the study foregrounds student-led transformation through acts of self-naming, ethical hospitality, and dialogic intervention. It reframes schooling not as a neutral civic space but as a contested site where marginalized students enact agency to imagine new possibilities for recognition, belonging, and educational justice.

Authors

• Orwa Sedawi, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Assaf Meshulam, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev