Between Constraints and Possibilities: Narratives of Agency and Hope in Surveilled Educational Spaces

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Educational research's focus on institutional critique, at times, simplifies the work of individuals who are actively asserting their agency within typically constrained spaces. While scholars rightfully identify surveillance and control in schools and prisons, this exclusive attention inevitably turns our gaze to failures, amplify deficit narratives: powerless youth, teachers stripped of autonomy, alternative education sites defined by regulations. Drawing from Nicole Fleetwood's (2020) work on the "carceral state," this panel takes a both/and approach that acknowledges systemic oppression while centering stories of resistance, hope, and joy. We showcase counternarratives of teachers constructing communities of care, students asserting agency, formerly incarcerated youth rewriting fixed narratives, and educators enacting practices of care and agency in spaces too often dismissed as doomed.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 6: Inquiry in the Social Context of Education

Chair

• Nancy L. Lesko, Teachers College, Columbia University

Papers

• Re/turning to the Roots of Progressive Education - Classrooms as Sites of Social Change - Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Counternarratives of Inclusion: Exploring Disabled Youth Agency in Restrictive Educational Spaces - Katherine Newhouse, New York University

• Exploring Alternatives: Alternative schools and metrics of success - Adrienne Vitullo, Teachers College

• Teacher Education for What Comes Next - Anne Burns Thomas, SUNY - College at Cortland

• Daily Becomings: Ethnography of the Humane within an Inhumane System - Lalitha Vasudevan, Teachers College, Columbia University

Session Organizer

• Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University