Critical Ethnography Research Articles

KNOWLEDGE AND INFANT FEEDING PRACTICES’ INFLUENCE ON ARAB IMMIGRANT MOTHERS’ INITIATION AND EXCLUSIVE BREASTFEEDING

Breastfeeding is known to provide health benefits for newborns and breastfeeding mothers. The World Health Organization and Health Canada recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life. However, the rates of exclusive breastfeeding practices among Arab immigrant mothers are lower when compared with rates for non-immigrant Canadian mothers and mothers in the immigrants’ countries of origin. Critical ethnography was used to explore the contextual factors that influence the initiation and exclusive breastfeeding practices by Arab immigrant mothers in Canada. Critical ethnography, using individual in-depth interviews was employed to explore the breastfeeding practices among immigrant Arab mothers in Alberta, and factors influencing the mothers’ decision or ability to breastfeed exclusively. Exploratory and open-ended questions were used. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with ten women for 1 and 1 and ½ hours . Participant selection criteria included Arab mothers who were within six months postpartum, aged 18–49 years, and who have resided in Canada for less than five years. An analysis of the qualitative narrative data indicated that knowledge and traditional infant feedingpractices primarily influenced Arab immigrant mothers’ initiation and exclusive breastfeeding practices. The findings from this study have the potential to facilitate supportive culturally safe and sensitive interventions that are tailored to address Arab mothers’ breastfeeding concerns and needs, so that exclusive breastfeeding might be promoted within this population in Canada. Further, the research will provide information needed for addressing some key challenges relating to culture, religion, and the healthcare system. Key words: Arab immigrant mothers, exclusive breastfeeding,

Learning and Not Learning in the Heritage Language Classroom: Engaging Mexican-origin Students by Adilia K. Helmer

Reviewed by: Learning and Not Learning in the Heritage Language Classroom: Engaging Mexican-origin Students by Adilia K. Helmer Sarah Kersten Albrecht Helmer, Adilia K. Learning and Not Learning in the Heritage Language Classroom: Engaging Mexican-origin Students. Multilingual Matters, 2020. Pp. 251. ISBN 978-1-78892-762-8. Helmer’s recently published book, Learning and not learning in the heritage language classroom: Engaging Mexican-origin students, is an ethnographic work set in a charter high school in the southwestern United States. Helmer, a Teaching Professor in the Writing Program at UC Santa Cruz with interests in Latinx engagement and related pedagogies, continues in the style of Valdés’s (2001) Learning and not learning English: Latino students in American schools and fills a research gap as few studies on heritage language learners (HLLs) focus on the high school level. Additionally, her study builds on prior research on HLL motivation, using narrative, interviews, and analysis in each chapter to evocatively lay out the immediate causes and longer term effects of HLL disengagement, the need for teacher and administrative training, and the need for administrative vision and commitment. The book’s seven chapters are organized with chapter 1 as an introduction to the ethno-graphic setting, chapter 2 as an orientation to the study, and chapters 3, 4, and 5 as analyses of classroom observations. Chapter 6 offers recommendations for heritage language (HL) teaching, and chapter 7 places the study into the current context of the school and schooling. The first chapter briefly introduces the study’s inception, its desert southwest and new charter school setting, some of the school’s key HLL, teacher, and administrative participants, and the book’s organization. Chapter 2 begins with observations of the school’s first days and details how these observations led to research questions about HLL engagement. These questions are grounded by a thorough explanation of the ethnographic contexts, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks used throughout the book, including its successful blend of microethnography, which describes the charter school’s institutional culture and language practices, and critical ethnography, which problematizes power imbalances in the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language to Mexican-origen students. [End Page 140] Chapter 3 focuses on the resistance of 16 HLLs in a class with a non-native Spanish-speaking teacher. The chapter begins with discursive examples to show the students’ non-participation in class based on their lack of respect for the teacher’s perceived language ability and the teacher’s cultural disconnect with her students. This results in significant tension between the teacher and students, some inappropriate course material, and student unwillingness to engage when content is relevant. Explorations of the larger language context in which students are resisting and of the theoretical frameworks of imagined (rather than authentic) communities and student performance strikes follow. These frameworks are then used to explain student rejection of their teacher as not part of their community and their refusal to engage. Chapter 4 also focuses on the resistance of six original and six new students in an HLL class, this time with a native Spanish speaking teacher who connects with students’ language and culture but who is not trained as a teacher and who cannot manage the class or select appropriate material. The larger context of HLL characteristics is then explored, including identity insecurity and language. Theory therefore centers on the complex intersection of HLL language and identity, with ethnic identity construction being used effectively as a framework to examine the relationship between positive identity development and HL acquisition. Given the complexity of this learning environment, the author claims that systematic language policies must be implemented at school and district levels in order for HLLs to succeed. In chapter 5, Helmer observes a Humanities class with most of the same cohort of students. In this class, the students participate, are respectful to the teacher, and find the content relevant. This behavior is in contrast to the student responses in the HLL classroom. Helmer finds that student engagement is first based on respect for the teacher, then on perceived relevance of course content. She supports these findings with theoretical investigation of teacher ethos and experiential learning. Chapter 6 examines language...

The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University by Rick Bonus

Reviewed by: The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University by Rick Bonus Rachel Endo (bio) The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University, by Rick Bonus. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 264 pp. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 978-1-4870-0742-5. The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University is a critical ethnography that centers the collegiate experiences of culturally diverse Pacific Islander students and their allies who attended the University of Washington between 2004 and 2018. Rick Bonus, who has spent over twenty years on the faculty in American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, provides firsthand insights into how an elite predominantly White university (PWI) that purported to value diversity, equity, and inclusion failed to fully live up to its promise in serving Pacific Islander students and other minoritized students. Using the cultural metaphor of the ocean to amplify the significance of "respecting nature, ancestry, and religious belief, and how paramount it was to the community care for the community above the self" (6), this work investigates how Pacific Islander students transformed their university by creating culturally affirming programs and spaces with little formal institutional recognition and support. The introduction interrogates several dominant definitions and explanations of "student success" in relation to the literature on academic achievement. Primarily drawing on Angela Valenzuela's framework of subtractive schooling, Bonus untangles the various individual and institutional challenges that Pacific Islander students navigated at a PWI that materially and symbolically failed to nurture their imagined-community values of care and collectivism. The first chapter provides an in-depth analysis of Pacific Islander students' collegiate experiences in relation to their university's structures and systems that stratified different groups of students based on classed, racialized, and other identities. While college is often imagined as a time for discovery, most incoming Pacific Islander students instead experienced despair and uncertainty, carrying forward memories from their K-12 years where they felt perpetually devalued [End Page 171] and uncared for. The second chapter provides an overview of the challenges and possibilities of collective mentorship through the Pacific Islander Partnerships in Education mentorship program (PIPE), where Bonus has also served as faculty advisor. In contrast to dominant mentoring programs that focus on one-to-one-relationships, PIPE is a culturally relevant partnership where participants "treated each other as if they were family members, something that many of them thought was the glaring omission in their school lives" (92; original italic). Like any close-knit community, various misunderstandings and tensions arose that at times created hard feelings, but overall, the program has persisted because it is a dynamic space where everyone genuinely cares for each other like family. The third chapter highlights the various reasons why many Pacific Islander students leave school. Bonus offers all PWIs with a bold reminder: several high-promise students do not necessarily drop out of school, but rather are pushed out for a range of reasons for which the institutions are directly and indirectly responsible. For Pacific Islander students, their university was a persistent reminder of their "colonized lives" (196) in all aspects of multiple types of curricula: formal, hidden, and informal. Ironically, many left school because they spent too much time participating in extracurricular activities for which most faculty and staff view as "wasteful, excessive, and unnecessary" (122). Indeed, universities pressure students to finish their coursework and degrees quickly without fully considering the value of a whole-person approach to retaining and supporting them. The fourth chapter articulates the possibilities of high-impact educational practices, which are loosely defined as "courses and programs that were central to students' lives rather than peripheral or extracurricular to their course of study in the university" (151). There are intangible payoffs when students are afforded opportunities to co-construct knowledge in ways directly connected to their lived experiences. Bonus focuses on several case examples including Poly Day, Pioneer!, a study-abroad class in Manilla, a course that one of his former students taught on Pacific Islander Studies, and other initiatives that blended academic content with community engagement and critical thinking. High-impact practices did not compete with traditional academic activities but rather...

Discourse Analysis for Intercultural Competence Development

This article aims to explicate the connection between discourse analysis and interculturality in intercultural-communication education. Although communication researchers and students have been using discourse analysis as a method to investigate conversations in intercultural situations for decades, interculturality as a concept has been largely untapped in analysis and applications. Drawing from interdisciplinary insights, this article will discuss how the concept of interculturality and the lens of discourse analysis contribute to the study and teaching of intercultural communication. As examples, two different types of intercultural-communication courses serve to illustrate how educators can apply discourse analysis to facilitate development of intercultural competence. Learning outcomes of the two tested courses indicate that cultural discourse analysis, along with critical discourse analysis and ethnography of speaking, promises to be a useful pedagogical approach for facilitating the development of the competence required for dealing with interculturality.

TOURISM IN THE ANDEAN SPACE: COLONIALISM, SIMULATION AND MEMORY

The Andean world is underexploited for tourism due to both the lack of infrastructure and the lack of its development as a product. Still, tourism exists and is, in some places, overwhelming. As such, it establishes itself in a double market game: 1) it offers hotel infrastructures and tours that are clearly a product for foreign tourists, and 2) it recreates a whole discourse on heritage. The Andean tourism market has three self-contained aspects, which address 1) the indigenous world, either the historical or the present, although without confusing them or making a connection between them, 2) the colonial world, and 3) a high quality natural environment. This work, based on a critical decolonial view and ethnography developed from field work, analyzes the game between discourse and social practice from the point of view of both visitors and locals, thereby recreating some of its paradoxes and contradictions. This analysis, obviously from a decolonial and political view, attempts to recover the epistemology of the south.

A Critical Ethnography of Political Activism: Challenges Arising from Practical, Emotional and Theoretical Closeness to the Field

A Critical Ethnography of Political Activism: Challenges Arising from Practical, Emotional and Theoretical Closeness to the Field

Application of Multiliteracies Pedagogy in Teaching English at Early Grades in Nepal

The purpose of the study was to explore practices of the teachers in teaching English at early grade through multiliteracies pedagogy in Nepal. The study was conducted in a community school in the central hilly district by adopting a critical ethnography research design in order to capture the rich and in-depth ideas of three teachers at early grade through ‘in-depth interviewing’. Interviews were audio-recorded, recorded data were transcribed assigning codes and three main themes were developed in terms of the codes during the data analysis process. The findings exposed that the teachers have engaged in bilingual practice using Nepali and English languages instead of creating multilingual space using students’ home language even if they belong to various ethnic groups such as Majhi, Danuwar, Tamang, Magar, and Newar. They have been adopting print literacy as teaching-learning practice such as reading the textbooks and asking the students to write the exercises of the textbook but they rarely use modern technology based multi-modal literacy. The school administration needs to be conscious to apply multiliteracies pedagogy by strengthening the capacity of the teachers on it. Likewise, the school has to establish a basic ICT lab with an internet facility enhancing teachers’ skills to use it appropriately.

Occupation's Role in Producing Inclusive Spaces: Immigrants' Experiences in Linguistic Minority Communities.

While the "situatedness" of occupation in the context of migration has been explored using various approaches, there remains a need for a holistic and dynamic understanding of the concept of space and the spatiality of occupation. Adopting Lefebvre's theory of the production of space and taking a transactional approach to occupation, we examined the role of immigrants' occupational engagement in the production of Francophone minority community spaces in Metro Vancouver, Canada. We completed a critical ethnography and focus on findings from participant observations and in-depth and go-along interviews with French-speaking immigrants. Findings shed light on the influence of immigrants' occupational engagement on the production of minority spaces. To study the spatiality of occupation comprehensively, we need to move beyond an examination of the immediate environment to address other components of the production of space as well as the interrelation of spaces through occupation.

Dannelse og samskaping av utdanning mellom akademia og sykehjem

Cultivation and co-creation of education between academy and nursing home: A critical ethnography study
 Collaboration between academy and practice in education is emphasized. In this study, we explored and described boundary-crossing spaces, when co-creating an adjusted educational program for nursing students in a nursing home in Norway. How to learn holistic person-centered dementia care, evolved through the participants in a learning community. A critical ethnographic approach and method with observations, field notes, minutes of board, spontaneous meetings, and focus groups particularly with the students were used. Data were analyzed with six-step thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke. There were two main themes: 1) Creating a room for learning communities and 2) The room of the cultivation of students in learning communities. We further suggest, learning communities co-creation in elderly care, might potentiate innovative research- and development methods for the future.

Not Just How Many but Who Is on Shift: The Impact of Workplace Incivility and Bullying on Care Delivery in Nursing Homes.

Background and ObjectivesMuch of the literature examining the staffing–care quality link in long-term care (LTC) homes focuses on staffing ratios; that is, how many staff are on shift. Far less attention is devoted to exploring the impact of staff members’ workplace relationships, or who is on shift. As part of our work exploring workplace incivility and bullying among residential care aides (RCAs), we examined how RCAs’ workplace relationships are shaped by peer incivility and bullying and the impact on care delivery.Research Design and MethodsUsing critical ethnography, we conducted 100 hr of participant observation and 33 semistructured interviews with RCAs, licensed practical nurses, support staff, and management in 2 nonprofit LTC homes in British Columbia, Canada.ResultsThree key themes illustrate the power relations underpinning RCAs’ encounters with incivility and bullying that, in turn, shaped care delivery. Requesting Help highlights how exposure to incivility and bullying made RCAs reluctant to seek help from their coworkers. Receiving Help focuses on how power relations and notions of worthiness and reciprocity impacted RCAs’ receipt of help from coworkers. Resisting Help/ing outlines how workplace relationships imbued with power relations led some RCAs to refuse assistance from their coworkers, led longer-tenured RCAs to resist helping newer RCAs, and dictated the extent to which RCAs provided care to residents for whom another RCA was responsible.Discussion and ImplicationsFindings highlight “who” is on shift warrants as much attention as “how many” are on shift, offering additional insight into the staffing-care quality link.

Yoga and White Public Space

This article connects recent work in critical race studies, museum studies, and performance studies to larger conversations happening across the humanities and social sciences on the role of performance in white public spaces. Specifically, I examine the recent trend of museums such as the Natural History Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name but a few, offering meditation and wellness classes that purport to “mirror the aesthetics or philosophy of their collections.” Through critical ethnography and discursive analysis I examine and unpack this logic, exposing the role of cultural materialism and the residue of European imperialism in the affective economy of the museum. I not only analyze the use of sound and bodily practices packaged as “yoga” but also interrogate how “yoga” cultivates a sense of space and place for museum-goers. I argue that museum yoga programs exhibit a form of somatic orientalism, a sensory mechanism which traces its roots to U.S. American cultural-capitalist formations and other institutionalized forms of racism. By locating yoga in museums within broader and longer processes of racialization I offer a critical race and feminist lens to view these sorts of performances.

Frame analysis in critical ethnography: applications for ELT research

ABSTRACT Critical English language teaching (ELT) research is expanding in scope, covering topics such as linguistic imperialism, native-speakerism, and the intersections between issues of race, class, and gender. With this expansion comes a requirement for robust and rigorous methods of data collection and analysis for researchers to employ. This article puts forward ‘frame analysis’ as a tool for analysing data in critical ethnography, particularly in ELT. Frame analysis is the systematic investigation of the organisational principles which people draw on in interpreting actions and events. After describing the conception of critical theory in which this discussion is situated, the paper gives a theoretical and overview of the concepts of ‘frames’ and ‘framing’, with a focus on social movement research. A step-by-step discussion is provided explaining how frame analysis can help to identify hidden ideologies in a research setting as a part of critical ethnography, before supplying a concrete example of data analysis using this approach. It is suggested that frame analysis may be a useful part of a critical ethnographer’s toolkit, particularly in terms of identifying hidden ideological assumptions in research setting.

“It’s really geniuses that live in the hood”: Black urban youth curricular un/makings and centering Blackness in slavery’s afterlife

Curriculum within the US was birthed in a context of antiblackness and continues to operate as anti-Black through imagining Black youth as less than and uneducable. However, despite the ways educational space has historically worked to image Black children and communities through deficit lenses, the creation of non-traditional Black curricular spaces has long served as a strategy of resistance. In this paper, I examine the ways Black urban youth leveraged a co-created non-traditional curricular space, grounded in centering Blackness to make sense of their educational experiences. I draw from an academic yearlong (2016–2017) critical ethnography, centered in Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit), to examine what is revealed about Black living and learning and curriculum, through centering Blackness in a non-traditional curricular space. Theoretically framed through BlackCrit and Sharpe’s (2016) concept of wake work, I analyze critical literacy artifacts and interview data to examine how centering antiblackness, a strength-based positioning, facilitated Black curricular un/makings that worked to: 1) center Black empowerment and 2) affirm Black knowledge. I use the term curricular un/makings to represent the ways the Black youth leveraged their life-worlds to disrupt or abandon nation-state curriculum (unmake anti-Black curricular space) to compose new ideations of curriculum and curricular space (make curriculum anew by centering Blackness). Black curricular un/makings represent the intentional process of deconstructing anti-Black curriculum through an unapologetic centering of a Black ethos.

“Queríamos algo bueno. . . para nuestros hijos y también para nosotras”

This article focuses on the processes undertaken by Latina mothers to advocate for themselves and their children at the intersections of racial, cultural, gender, anti-immigrant, and sociolinguistic marginalization. In an effort to center the intersectional dimensions of these mujeres y madres (women and mothers) and their organizing efforts, we employed a muxerista framework. Our analysis of data collected from a two-and-a-half-year-long critical ethnography revealed three distinct yet interconnected outcomes of muxerista organizing. First, by applying a muxerista pedagogy, the Latina mothers established a sacred space via (among other things) weekly meetings. Second, through the establishment of a sacred space grounded in love and kinship, these mujeres y madres cultivated their own muxerista consciousness. Finally, together, the sacred space coupled with a muxerista consciousness created an opportunity for them to (re)imagine their own muxerista liderazgo (leadership) identity. Through this work, we argue that it is a result of the muxerista love and activism that the women cultivated transformational and liberatory resistance.

Early grade teachers' awareness and skills on multiliteracies pedagogies

Multiliteracies is a pedagogical approach developed in 1994 by the New London Group (NLG) that aims to make classroom teaching more inclusive by addressing cultural and linguistic diversity, and rapid development in communication channel and technology. The purpose of this study was to explore the early grade teachers' perception on multiliteracies pedagogy and their awareness, skills and proficiency on it. We used critical ethnography research design to obtain rich and in-depth data from five years' experienced three early grade teachers through interviews and participant classroom observation in a community school of Nepal. Interviews and class observation of teachers were audio-recorded, and recorded data were transcribed assigning codes, and main two themes were developed in terms of the codes. Regarding understanding and awareness on multiliteracies pedagogy, the findings reveal that the teachers do not have more clear theoretical concept on it. They perceive multiliteracies as being literate not only through reading and writing but also using pictures, signs, symbols and mimics. They are aware in the use of multiliteracies pedagogy to make teaching learning effective but they do not have sufficient skills and proficiency on it. They can apply multiliteracies pedagogy in early grades effectively if their knowlwdge and skills is developed through training and capacity development programme on it.

(Im)mobility Subcontracted: Nesting Hierarchies, Uneven Distributions and the ‘Roma Inclusion’ Projects in Europe

Abstract This paper explores social mobilities and trajectories in relation to particular mechanisms of subcontracting and of unequal distribution of capitals in the emerging field of EU funded projects for poor and socially excluded populations in Europe. It discusses some of the struggles for possible mobilities and its limits amidst continuing production and reproduction of privileges, disadvantages and structural orders in these project-cum-policy worlds constraints. By examining a particular case of a large-scale and multi-sited project and other similar project schemes, described by some of its proponents as one of the most ‘participatory’ projects for Roma in Europe, the article illustrates particular mechanisms of power and knowledge reproduction that facilitates some kinds of mobilities while also reproducing certain constraints and limits on these possibilities (for some subjects and some social trajectories). It develops an ethnographic critique of situated and nesting hierarchies of management and brokerage leading to reproduction of particular setups, privileges, unequal economic distribution and (mis)recognitions of capitals, which allows for particular emergence of particular kinds of contested ‘expertise’ in the uneven field of so-called ‘Roma inclusion’.

Estimación socioambiental de la hidráulica campesina

Productores campesinos de territorios rurales compiten por el acceso a recursos hídricos con sectores empresariales, privados y gubernamentales; esta disputa no necesariamente ocurre de manera beligerante, sino que también se manifiesta en diseños de tecnología hídrica que reflejan organización, participación social y gestión, pero ¿cuál es la estimación social y ambiental de la tecnología hidráulica que está inserta en sistemas de producción rural? El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar ecosistemas acuáticos artificiales desde una perspectiva que comprenda sus componentes sociales y ambientales a fin de resignificar su diversidad biológica y su importancia socioproductiva. Con el apoyo de la etnografía interpretativa y crítica se registran y analizan interacciones sociales que contribuyen a esbozar criterios de estimación ambiental, productiva y social de la hidráulica rural en la zona metropolitana del Estado de México. El uso de sistemas de información geográfica ayuda a representar la espacialidad de estos hidrosistemas. Los resultados indican que la tecnología hidráulica campesina, que pertenece a espacios influidos por la tasación mercantil del agua, es una alternativa para la continuidad y seguridad de la producción alimentaria. La capacidad organizativa campesina es la base que contribuye a mejorar el panorama de acceso limitado al agua.

Critical ethnography of outreach nurses- perceptions of the clinical issues associated with social disaffiliation and stigma.

The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of how nurses experience their practice with homeless people. More specifically, we wanted to consider the role as it is practised and certain clinical characteristics associated with social disaffiliation and stigma. Previous research has shown the need to implement adapted nursing interventions to address the problems homeless people encounter in obtaining health services. According to the literature, such interventions have positive health outcomes for homeless people, who exhibit complex health needs. We chose critical ethnography as our research method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 nurses who work with people experiencing homelessness in Eastern Canada. They were selected using the convenience sampling method. Recruitment was conducted between June-October 2019. Four categories emerged from the qualitative analysis of the data: (1) the professional role and identity of nurses; (2) the social function of outreach nursing; (3) clinical realities; and (4) disaffiliation and stigmatization. In this article, we will present the findings associated with the fourth category. Nursing practice with this population is conducted in non-traditional settings such as shelters, community groups, camps, and the street. Nurses must be able to gain acceptance in these environments in order to forge trusting relationships with disaffiliated and stigmatized patients. Our analysis of the data also indicates that nurses who care for homeless people may be subject to stigma by association or "courtesy stigma." The results of this critical ethnography are useful in that they highlight the clinical interventions and health policies best suited to a highly marginalized clientele that is poorly served by traditional health services.

Curriculum as a Discursive and Performative Space for Subjectivity and Learning: Understanding Immigrant Adolescents’ Language Use in Classroom Discourse

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between language curriculum and learners’ subjectivity through a poststructuralist perspective. I use performativity theory to highlight the constituting power of language and integrate it with critical race theory to understand the relationships among curriculum, classroom interaction, and subjectivity negotiation of 3 immigrant adolescents in one U.S. secondary multilingual classroom. Drawing on data from a critical ethnography, this classroom discourse study analyzes instructional materials, classroom interactions, and interviews to understand how the teacher‐designed curriculum for one routinized vocabulary activity—namely, the sentence‐starter language practice—constructed subjectivity for students and how the immigrant youths negotiated their racialized, gendered, and schooled subjectivities in relation to the curriculum content. This analysis shows that the sentence starters, designed as scaffolding tools, served an implicit goal of constituting students to become “good learners.” The focal students often appropriated the sentence starters to challenge, subvert, or conform to the prevailing discourses constructed in the curriculum and classroom discourses. This analysis illustrates how curriculum can constitute a discursive and performative space in which students negotiate subjectivity and meaning in relation to power within and beyond classroom discourses. This article concludes with discussions of implications of this poststructuralist theorization of curriculum for research and practice.

The effect of local discourses adapted by teachers on Syrian child refugees’ schooling experiences in Turkey

ABSTRACT This critical ethnography explains how and why refugee children experience schooling in specific ways by examining teachers’ use and interpretation of local refugee accommodation policies. It argues that locals’ understanding of refugee protection framework to host refugees generates discourses such as brotherhood/sisterhood and guest and these discourses have an impact on the schooling practices and teachers’ approaches to educating refugee children. The findings show that teachers pedagogic decisions rely on these discourses, and refugee children are affected by their teachers’ adaptation of these local discourses to their classroom activities. Although teachers claim that they use child-centred and politics-free instructional methods as mandated in refugee education policies, their practices often challenge their claims. As a result, refugee children experience isolation, assimilation and a form of restriction of their critical thinking.