BIRKBECK INSTITUTE FOR LIFELONG LEARNING
and
THE CENTRE FOR MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL RESEARCH
present a COLLOQUIUM
LEARNING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM:
GENDERED AND ETHNICISED C ONSTRUCTIONS OF LEARNER IDENTITIES
Friday 26th February 2010
at Birkbeck, University of London,
Room B04 Main Building, (Torrington Square entrance)
Whilst identities are fluid, multiple and contradictory there are also structures in place that reinforce gendered, classed and racialised social divisions, and challenge assumptions around learner identities. Minority ethnic women and children often need to find alternative ways to develop identities if they are to move beyond accepting pre-determined gendered and racialised identifications. This colloquium will identify ways in which identities are tied to social inequalities as well as cultural misrecognitions, developing understandings of ways in which learning beyond the formal site of the (compulsory and post-compulsory) classroom for minority ethnic women and children can positively contribute to constructions of learner identities.
10.30 Coffee and registration
11.00 Introduction to the day
11.15 Panel 1: Chair – Professor Sue Jackson
Professor Becky Francis, Roehampton University, Language, learning and identities: perspectives of British Chinese pupils on their complementary schooling
Dr Roxy Harris, King’s College, Urban Multilingualism and London School Students: A framework for research
Professor David Block, Institute of Education, Where is ‘social class’ in ethnolinguistic identity research?
12.45 Lunch
1.30 Panel 2: Chair – Professor Li Wei
Linda Morrice, University of Sussex, Refugees and asylum seekers: Constructed and transitional identities
Professor Sue Jackson, Birkbeck, Encounters, intersections and multiplicity: women’s learner identities in post-colonial London
Dr Paul Bagguley and Dr Yasmin Hussain, University of Leeds, Insurgent Identities: How South Asian women’s identities enable them to enter university
3.00 Conclusions to the day
Professor Li Wei, Gendered and ethnicised constructions of learner identities
3.30 Tea and depart
The colloquium is free of charge, but registration is essential.
Please contact [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> to register
Map and Location details www.bbk.ac.uk/maps<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps>
Abstracts
Professor Becky Francis, Roehampton University
Language, learning and identities: perspectives of British Chinese pupils on their complementary schooling
Abstract: Pupils' experiences and perceptions of complementary education provides understanding of complementary schools and their impact on pupils' educational and social identities. The paper will explore British-Chinese pupils' discursive constructions of the purposes and benefits of Chinese complementary schools, drawing on data from an ESRC-funded study of six Chinese schools in England, including interviews with 60 of their British-Chinese pupils. Findings demonstrate that British-Chinese pupils overwhelmingly see the purpose of these schools as perpetuating the Mother-Tongue. They produced a variety of explanations for the benefit of this perpetuation: the paper will explore these explanations as relating to two themes: instrumental benefits, and identity. Analysis will focus particularly on the ways in which language was constructed as identity by respondents, and theoretical implications for thinking around identity and 'culture'.
Dr Roxy Harris, King's College, London
Urban Multilingualism and London School Students: A framework for research
Abstract: This presentation offers a suggestive framework for researching and understanding the ethnicities and multilingualism of young people of migrant families who are born and brought up in urban areas. This interpretive framework transcends simple binaries organised on the basis of insider/outsider perspectives. It will propose, as an alternative, an enhanced notion of the relationship between local practices and diaspora influences.
Professor David Block, Institute of Education, University of London Where is 'social class' in ethnolinguistic identity research?
Abstract: Claims of cultural identity (e.g. ethnolinguistic identity), intimate in their origins, are all too often co-opted by market forces, such that they become commodities and bargaining chips in social markets such as schools and other social networks. In addition, the emphasis on and celebration of diversity lead to an emphasis on and eventual reinforcement of how we are different. And the latter divides us across cultural lines which are deemed to be equal, although in different markets different cultures rise to trump all others. Meanwhile, what unifies human beings, the fact of being positioned in an increasingly economically stratified world, only attracts attention if it can be framed in terms of identity inscriptions such as ethnicity, race, gender and ethnolinguistic identity. In this paper, I will examine how what is generally termed 'social class' (a perhaps infelicitous term in need of reworking) might be placed more centrally in discussions of ethnolinguistic identities and articulated with an ongoing interest in ethnicity, race and gender.
Linda Morrice, University of Sussex
Refugees and asylum seekers: Constructed and transitional identities
Abstract: For refugees managing the transition to life in the UK involves a process of profound learning as they negotiate new identities, a new place in the social world and a new way of being. In Bourdieu’s terms the habitus that they were born into, and the cultural and social capital which they had acquired and which had enabled them to move quite smoothly through their social world, has no purchase or value in the new and unfamiliar context. Habitus is ‘divided against itself, in constant negotiation with itself and its ambivalences…’ (Bourdieu 1999: 511). Drawing on a longitudinal and empirical study I will consider the learning processes triggered by this disruption and the strategies adopted as refugees negotiate, resist and claim identities for themselves in exile.
Professor Li Wei, PhD
Chair, Department of Applied Linguistics & Communication
Assistant Dean for Postgraduate Research, School of Social
Sciences, History and Philosophy
University of London, Birkbeck College
43 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
London WC1H 0PD, UK
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