NAVIGATING THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY: THE STRUGGLE FOR CULTURAL PRESERVATION IN AN ESOL CLASSROOM

Abstract

Navigating the social fields of identity on the playground, in the classroom and in the community is a complex and intricate set of networks, each of which may simultaneously support or restrict certain individuals. For students in an American English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) reception class, and an ESOL pull-out program, these navigations are perhaps the most important and far reaching negotiations they enter into. Content-based study, knowledge of English, and cultural competency (all of these very important skills and understandings) pale in comparison to the social identity survival games played out by students and staff in the school yard. Over the course of 15 months in an American elementary school, the conflicts between non-discriminatory policy and discriminatory practice were examined.

Citation

Greathouse, L.D. (2003), "NAVIGATING THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY: THE STRUGGLE FOR CULTURAL PRESERVATION IN AN ESOL CLASSROOM", walford, G. (Ed.) Investigating Educational Policy Through Ethnography (Studies in Educational Ethnography, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-210X(03)08011-2