Becoming In/competent Learners in the United States: Refugee Students’ Academic Identities in the Figured World of Difference

Abstract

A practice-based dialectic theory of identity was used in this study to explore the cultural-historical context of an urban charter school in which a group of newly arrived Muslim Turk refugee students’ academic identities were formed. The school, located in the Southwestern United States, was founded by a global Islamist movement. Ethnographic methods were employed over a nine-month period of fieldwork. Findings suggest the demands and consequences of claiming competent learner identities were costly when the refugee students struggled to participate in multiple cultural worlds. The refugee students were sorted into generic institutional identities such as English Language Learners that came with negative social implications and resulted in exclusion of the students from general education classrooms. Over time, the refugee students became closer to special education identification.