Spaces of Hope: Sustaining Identities of Bilingual Arab/Muslim Youth

• In Event: Identity Development in Bilingual and Dual-Language Settings

Abstract

In this paper, I examined how teachers of Arabic understood the challenges that bilingual Arab/Muslim American students faced as a racialized group in mainstream educational spaces in the US. I further investigated how the teachers (all of Arab descent) addressed the needs of Arab/Muslim youth in their own L2 classrooms. Data were collected through individual as well as focus groups interviews. Findings indicated that the participants were intentional about creating liberating “counterspaces” (Shirazi, 2019) within their classrooms. They built these spaces on narratives that countered the damaging hegemonic narrative in mainstream schools.

Author

• Oraib Mango, California State University - San Bernardino