Abstract
Social practice research can be seen to illuminate the practices of marginalised learners in ‘borderlands’, areas outside of formal educational frameworks. This paper examines the issues and challenges of social practice researchers as they explore borderlands logic set against a critique of the prevailing skills-based educational philosophies that dominate in the knowledge-based economies of the US and England. Social practice research highlights meaning-making through a wide-angled view of the learning contexts of marginalised groups. This paper introduces the themes and sets the scene in a series of papers in this volume from leading social practice researchers.
Highlights
Social practice research (Barton and Hamilton 1998, Lankshear and Knobel 2006, Street and Lefstein 2007, Purcell-Gates 2007) illuminates marginalised learners’ practices in ‘borderlands’ outside of mainstream frameworks
By emphasising the demarcations and the double-vision of marginalised groups moving between borders, ‘border pedagogy’ is manifested through ‘fragile identity... as it moves into borderlands crisscrossed within a variety of languages, experiences, and voices’ (Giroux 1992:34, Hayes and Cuban 1997)
The second criticism is that by focusing on communities, there is neglect of who community members are, where they come from and their unequal opportunities to use literacies (Gee 2005). This is a valid point especially when the labour of some members is exploited in maintaining community practices. This point needs to be clarified by social practice researchers who focus on how learning and literacies are linked to communities through particular socio-historical phenomena, networks, cultures and people
Summary
A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and the forbidden are its inhabitants (Anzaldua 1990:378)
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