The act of challenging the “pervading hegemonic monolingual” norms and policies is also a direct counter to the colonial matrix of power shaped through geopolitics and imposed by English imperialism, which can be reinforced through STEM learning environments (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 105). The work of Takeuchi (2021) titled Geopolitical configuration of identities and learning: Othering through the institutionalized categorization of “English language learners” argues that classrooms are spaces “nested in macro-level geopolitical configuration of identities” and the “institutionalized label of “English language learners,” is one medium which “shape[s] and constrain[s] localized experiences for learners” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 85). Takeuchi (2021) begins this piece with a critical analysis of the institutional categorization of ‘ELL’—recognizing its use for system resource allocation and support while seeing its heavy rootedness in a deficit framing of students and implicit beliefs stemming from colonial representation of the ‘Other’ (Said, 1978). The construction of the ‘Other’ is often “configured through media portrayals and local language policies” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 85) but takes shape in our learning contexts which are “coloured by migration and refuge” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 87). While recognizing the lack of empirical work around the label ‘ELL’ and mathematical learner experience, Takeuchi (2021) draws from literature at the intersection of learner identities, mathematics learning and power.
This study takes place in a Canadian fourth-grade mathematics classroom where the mathematics curriculum was intentionally mobilized to design a unit tasking children with transforming their recess experiences. All children were to become “agents of change”. For the purpose of this article, four multilingual children were focally observed, two of which, Daniel and Karim, were categorized as ‘ELLs'. The overarching research question asks: “How did the multi-layered identities intersect with learner experiences during the transforming recess mathematics unit?” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 85). The two children marked in this way were evidently stripped of their intellectual membership, dignity and agency in the space through various means, including deficit-framed and othering interactions with peers and the educator. She employs the lens of multilayered identities to see learner identity geographically, politically, and historically, emphasizing the need to attend “to the layer of the geopolitical configuration of identities” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 105). “These layers of identity are inextricably woven together; one’s becoming emerges from the interactions among these layers of identities” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 88). This work notably illustrates the painful realities associated with accessing agentive identities, influenced by the institutionalized label that inscribes dehumanization and silencing across scales. The author outlines that such labelling holds profound implications for students’ agentive figurative identity formation within teaching and learning spaces and how such labels are thickened and reinforced interactionally. This is an area of research I have been engaging in. I feel called to continue my commitment as a person whose own non-dominant stories, languages, and knowledges are often designed to be left at the peripheries of learning spaces. I have experienced various enactments of colonial linguistic institutional silencing that Takeuchi has written about in this work, but not all. Sitting with this reading has affirmed my commitment to these lines of thinking as I see this work holding implications in and beyond the context of our classrooms for our learners.
It is important to note that she states that the mere act of reframing such language labels alone cannot unsettle the deeply entrenched geopolitical and colonial matrices, and she calls for the reimagining of the rigid institutional praxis. Takeuchi (2021) offers that “designing a curriculum and learning environment to embrace such critical mathematical literacy and to interrogate the media portrayal in the West could be a potentially promising way to rehumanize learners whose experiences, movement, and access are constrained through the colonial historicity we inherit (Ahmed, 2007)” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 107). In line with these calls, additional calls for linguistic design in the Learning Sciences were made indicating the need for learning spaces which critically examine dominant ideologies, “epistemic, linguistic, and disciplinary hegemony and development of decolonial relationships” (Takeuchi, 2021, p. 107) which center historically silenced learners’ voices as agents of change to reimagine institutional practices anew.
References
Ahmed, S. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 149–168. doi:10.1177/1464700107078139
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism: Western concepts of the Orient. Pantheon.
Takeuchi, M. A. (2021). Geopolitical configuration of identities and learning: Othering through the institutionalized categorization of “English language learners.” Cognition and Instruction, 39(1), 85-112.
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