Disrupting Deficit Discourses about Hmong Culture

Dominant discourses persistently portray Hmong Americans as stuck in time and tied to Hmong cultural traditions. This article suggests dominant discourses about the oppression of Hmong culture are mechanisms of White supremacy. It examines research with Hmong Americans on gender and sexuality to disrupt deficit discourses about Hmong culture. It provides recommendations for teachers to counteract dominant discourses that instantiate the values, worldviews, culture and structures of White supremacy.

The relational navigator: a pedagogical reframing of widening educational participation for care-experienced young people

Young people in state care not only lose support, usually at 18 years of age, but also experience unequal participation in post-secondary education. This has raised concern about the importance of widening participation (WP) for care-experienced young people (CEYP). However, CEYP are often institutionally stigmatised and this could be worsened by WP interventions that are framed by deficit discourses. Weaving together social pedagogies and social justice theories, the article aims to reframe WP away from deficit discourses through recognition of the systemic, structural and cultural inequalities that most CEYP must navigate to access formal education. We introduce the concept of the relational navigator, in which a pedagogical relationship enables the navigator to ‘pilot’ through complex systems and transitional processes in collaboration with, and through ‘walking alongside’, the CEYP with respect to their lived contexts and experiences. This article draws from the reflections of WP navigators situated in two small-scale WP projects, one in an English museum and the other in an Australian university. Our analysis of the reflections of the WP project navigators is offered as a preliminary exploration of the potential the relational navigator as a way to shift deficit discourses and work towards a reframing of WP through a social pedagogical perspective.

Tika Tonu: Young Māori Mothers' Experiences of Wellbeing Surrounding the Birth of their First Tamaiti

<p>The wellbeing experiences of young Māori mothers’ (ngā māmā) surrounding the birth of their first tamaiti and the impact of those experiences, often determine outcomes for wāhine Māori, their tamariki and whānau. A greater understanding and nurturing of young Māori mothers has far reaching implications that encompass hapū, iwi, community, Aotearoa and the health experiences and outcomes of Indigenous and other subjugated people in the global community. However, there is little exploration and information about the wellbeing experiences of young Māori mothers, and therefore little is known about their stories, thoughts, and feelings from their experiences. This thesis explores the experiences of young Māori mothers from their perspective, regarding pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Historical misrepresentation, western notions of gender and sexuality, negative statistics and reports have portrayed young Māori mothers as the least capable, least desired and deficient. Dominant western ideologies of motherhood and hegemonic perceptions fail to recognise the essence of wellbeing for young Māori mothers, and instead marginalise and render their aspirations invisible and irrelevant. This thesis brings to the fore the elements that ngā māmā signal as vital to their wellbeing. By utilising a kaupapa Māori approach to methodology, and a theoretical framework of kaupapa Māori and mana wahine, this thesis explores what matters to ngā māmā and their wellbeing, and how te ao Māori is an intrinsic part of those experiences. An integrated kaupapa Māori analytical framework is presented, which was developed for the thesis as a legitimate and authentic approach to research method and design to help make sense of and assemble the codes, symbolism and themes of the data. The findings of this thesis signify the power of the female to influence the wellbeing of ngā māmā through stability, guidance and empowerment. The thesis captures the tamaiti as ‘tohu aroha’, and explicates the journey of ngā māmā to greater rangatiratanga and identity. Furthermore, the vitality and balance of te ao Māori within the lives of ngā māmā contributes to what is significant to their experiences of wellbeing. The thesis emancipates ngā māmā from entrenched stereotypes by epitomising their experiences and thus denouncing deficit discourses, and advances the aspirations of ngā māmā and the lives of their tamariki and whānau. This thesis makes an original and complementary contribution to the growing knowledge around Māori maternal wellbeing, kaupapa Māori methodology and research.</p>

Tika Tonu: Young Māori Mothers' Experiences of Wellbeing Surrounding the Birth of their First Tamaiti

<p>The wellbeing experiences of young Māori mothers’ (ngā māmā) surrounding the birth of their first tamaiti and the impact of those experiences, often determine outcomes for wāhine Māori, their tamariki and whānau. A greater understanding and nurturing of young Māori mothers has far reaching implications that encompass hapū, iwi, community, Aotearoa and the health experiences and outcomes of Indigenous and other subjugated people in the global community. However, there is little exploration and information about the wellbeing experiences of young Māori mothers, and therefore little is known about their stories, thoughts, and feelings from their experiences. This thesis explores the experiences of young Māori mothers from their perspective, regarding pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Historical misrepresentation, western notions of gender and sexuality, negative statistics and reports have portrayed young Māori mothers as the least capable, least desired and deficient. Dominant western ideologies of motherhood and hegemonic perceptions fail to recognise the essence of wellbeing for young Māori mothers, and instead marginalise and render their aspirations invisible and irrelevant. This thesis brings to the fore the elements that ngā māmā signal as vital to their wellbeing. By utilising a kaupapa Māori approach to methodology, and a theoretical framework of kaupapa Māori and mana wahine, this thesis explores what matters to ngā māmā and their wellbeing, and how te ao Māori is an intrinsic part of those experiences. An integrated kaupapa Māori analytical framework is presented, which was developed for the thesis as a legitimate and authentic approach to research method and design to help make sense of and assemble the codes, symbolism and themes of the data. The findings of this thesis signify the power of the female to influence the wellbeing of ngā māmā through stability, guidance and empowerment. The thesis captures the tamaiti as ‘tohu aroha’, and explicates the journey of ngā māmā to greater rangatiratanga and identity. Furthermore, the vitality and balance of te ao Māori within the lives of ngā māmā contributes to what is significant to their experiences of wellbeing. The thesis emancipates ngā māmā from entrenched stereotypes by epitomising their experiences and thus denouncing deficit discourses, and advances the aspirations of ngā māmā and the lives of their tamariki and whānau. This thesis makes an original and complementary contribution to the growing knowledge around Māori maternal wellbeing, kaupapa Māori methodology and research.</p>

¡Los policías! Latinx children’s agency in highly regulated early childhood contexts

This article shows how two Latina bilingual teachers provided opportunities for their Latinx students from immigrant families to enact their agency in a highly regulated Head Start bilingual preschool classroom in ways that aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy. Using video-cued ethnography and data from the Blinded Study, the authors center three- and four-year-old children who engaged in a collaborative, dynamic make-believe game involving a struggle between family members and los policías (“the police”). Using traditional qualitative methods, the authors first identify and name all the different ways in which the children enacted their agency and demonstrated capabilities in their play, particularly the cultural capabilities that challenge deficit discourses about Latinx immigrant communities. They contextualize the children’s play using teacher interview data in which the teachers explained their thinking behind the pedagogical decisions that made this type of learning and play possible. Finally, the authors explore how the teachers’ identities and histories positioned them to engage with their students in culturally sustaining ways. It is argued that with the growing global awakening to white supremacy structures and violence, there is urgency in creating time and space to support young children’s agency and their right to practice the skills they need to contribute to their communities’ well-being and survival now and in the future.

Turning around coast-based schools: An interpretive narrative analysis of a report on school reform in English coastal communities

An interpretive narrative inquiry approach is adopted to shed light on the improvement agendas applied in a specific set of coastal schools. The unifying thread between the focal cases is that they had been designated as failures and made notorious through association with their communities’ tainted reputations. These schools feature in a report published by the Future Leaders Trust, which is used as the resource for this paper. The taken for granted deficit discourses implicit in the accounts of how these schools were reformed are relied upon by the school leaders and other stakeholders to justify why they needed to be turned around. These assumptions that come to the fore through analysis, demonstrate that the socioeconomic contexts found in the jaded English coastal communities are not engaged with. Importing approaches that draw on communities’ resistance to relegation could, potentially, build positive discourses that lead to communities reclaiming educational opportunities in such schools, one clear example being that of Countesthorpe in Leicestershire, UK, in the 1970s.

Agency and pedagogy in literacy education

This longitudinal ethnographic case study examines, from a sociocultural perspective, how a White female English as a second language teacher of immigrant adolescents enacted agency toward culturally sustaining pedagogy in her classroom, school, and community. The teacher demonstrated her agency in her personal and professional spaces by (a) re-contextualizing curriculum and instruction with students, (b) engaging in daily conversations with students, (c) recruiting community members to participate in class, (d) constructing an ELL teacher community, (e) visiting students’ homes and involving herself in refugee communities, and (f) performing community services with students. This study provides significant implications about how teachers, who will be working in classrooms and schools and encountering deficit discourses about immigrant students and standardization forces, can create agentive pedagogical spaces where the linguistic, cultural, and community resources of immigrant students are identified, understood, centered, and can connect those resources with classroom and community practices.