We explore how the concept of abstraction, which is central to mathematical activity, can lead to detachment or attachment to land, nature, culture, language, and heritage in Indigenous contexts. We wonder if students detach themselves from mathematics because they feel mathematics asking them to detach themselves from people and places to whom…

Exploring the Yiddish language of my father, grandmother, her grandmother, and beyond, this autobiographical article frames language as an ever-changing space where identities are negotiated, formed, and contested. Placing the history of Yiddish alongside my own familial relationship to the language, I explore how the stories of individual lives…

In this essay, Polly Graham addresses a current instantiation of what might be called self-loss within education in the United States. Graham observes that, in her experience, many students and educators, whether decidedly or without reflection, conform to superficial schooling practices that circumscribe the possibility of receiving affirmations…

Recent research on stakeholders' emotions in English-medium instruction (EMI) higher education settings has demonstrated the importance of engaging students with their emotions about the impact of EMI on their lives. This article presents a pedagogical intervention bridging emotions, creativity, and translingual pedagogy with EMI students in…

Reflecting on my experience as a teacher and a lesbian in a second-level school in Ireland in the early 1990s, I use an auto-ethnographic approach first to explore some of the ways dominant narratives can silence, constrain and marginalise some people. Projecting forward to an imagined future, I draw on creative writing to "re-frame" how…

Academic literacy practices can be alienating for new undergraduates, yet academic success depends on writing in ways that the academy deems acceptable and is related to the identity positions available to students. I describe an intervention in which aspects of academic practice were made visible and students participated collaboratively in…

This paper begins with a premise that each person's musical education is made of multiple and diverse experiences that occur in settings both in and out of school (Campbell 2002, 2003, 2008; Green 2002, 2005; Jaffurs 2004, 2006). Nevertheless, when speaking and writing about music education, one often restricts the kinds of music, ways of…

This article uses data from life-history interviews with English language teachers in Chile and California to illustrate methodological processes in teacher identity research through narrative analysis. To this end, the author describes the steps she took in identifying an issue to be examined, selecting particular narratives as representative of…

Every February, schools celebrate Black History Month and teachers teach the grand narrative of famous African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr. While the stories communicate bravery, they are also about racism and violence. Here, through narrative inquiry, a teacher deconstructs Black History Month, inviting student responses to stories…

This article explores effective approaches against racism in work with young people, and the relevance of new policy agendas in the UK. Since the 2001 disturbances, the UK has controversially prioritised "Community Cohesion", with the accusation that this new direction represents the "death of multiculturalism". Drawing on…

The article draws on postcolonial and feminist theories, combined with critical reflection and autobiography, and argues for generating decolonizing texts as one way to write and reclaim home in a postcolonial world. Colonizers leave home to seek power and control elsewhere, and the colonized suffer loss of home as they know it. This dislocation…

Faced with a racialized political crisis that threatened to derail his campaign to become the first African American president of the United States, Barack Obama delivered a speech on race titled "A More Perfect Union." He begins by portraying himself as an embodiment of double consciousness, but then invites his audience to share his…

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as "Producing Success" makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban…

Adolescents in a technological society are shown to be ignored and abandoned. While in transition and defining their identity, death may be an escape from the failure of finding self-worth. A guarantee of adolescents' place in society is needed; types of psychopathology leading to suicide need to be understood. (CM)

In the mid-twentieth century many Aboriginal Australians moved to live in Australian cities in search of life opportunities that were not available to them in rural areas. This article explores the life history narratives of three Indigenous people who were brought to live in Sydney as children during this period. It considers the processes by…