What is it about?

This qualitative case study in an urban middle school highlights students’ critical meta-awareness of their identities-in-practice in the figured world of their classroom via a narrative analysis of students’ writing, interviews, and focus group discussions. The author focuses on students’ internalization and/or resistance of the curriculum as a basis for developing culturally sustaining stances toward curriculum, pedagogy, and research that actively disrupt cultural, ethnic, racial, and epistemological hierarchies of power in academic contexts and beyond.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Students’ academic experiences are often shaped by normalized conceptions of literacy that do not honor the interrelatedness of multiple identities, languages, and literacies. These conceptions of literacy contribute to a narrowed view of what "counts" as literacy in school and in society, and perpetuates the dominance of mainstream and hegemonic perspectives on curriculum and education. This leads to the marginalization of students (and their literacies) who would otherwise make important contributions to society, and be successful in school.

Perspectives

Limarys Caraballo is Assistant Professor of Secondary English Education at Queens College - CUNY, and a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College. Her scholarship on students’ multiple identities and literacies, youth participatory action research, and preparing teachers for diverse sociocultural contexts has been published in journals such as English Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, and Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, as well as in the Sage Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education. Recognition of her research includes a National Council of Teachers of English - Cultivating New Voices among Researchers of Color Fellowship, and an American Education Research Association Curriculum Studies Dissertation Award.

Dr Limarys Caraballo
Queens College

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Students Critical Meta-Awareness in a Figured World of Achievement: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Stance in Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Research, Urban Education, January 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0042085915623344.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page