“In A Position I See Myself in:” (Re)Positioning Identities and Culturally-Responsive Pedagogies

ABSTRACT

Culturally-responsive pedagogies require moving beyond blanket assumptions about learners to focus deeply on local meaning-makings. This narrative analysis case study examines the ways a 20-year-old African American man challenges the negative educational identity with which he is forced to contend as he navigates a large and complex urban public school system. The ways in which Jamahl, a seeker of a High School Equivalency, refuses interpellation as an uneducated learner destined to be “nothin'” provides insight as to how formal education might be more responsive to learners' negotiation of deficiency discourses. Embracing agency, specifically through awareness of the ways Jamahl employs (re)positioning practices, this narrative analysis case study highlights paths for researchers and practitioners to tap into learners' resources to recognize and foster powerful learning identities.

Notes

1. All names, including the names of educational institutions and programs, are pseudonyms.

2. I say “minoritized” as opposed to “minorities” to call attention to the social processes that privilege some people at the expense of others. In other words, no one is born a “minority;” social arrangements position and produce majority and minority communities. “Minoritized” describes people marginalized due to their linguistic or cultural practice, ethnic or racial affiliation, gender, or class, among other aspects of identity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Noah Asher Golden

Noah Asher Golden is an assistant professor in the Attallah College of Educational Studies at Chapman University. His scholarship investigates the identity enactments and (re)positioning practices of minoritized youth, and is situated within critical and sociocultural approaches to literacies research and teaching/learning practice.