Theorizing Identities in a “Just(ly)” Contested Terrain: Practice Theories of Identity amid Critical-Poststructural Debates on Curriculum and Achievement

Professional Resources

“…In consonance with research and scholarship on students' negotiation of multiple identities and literacies in academic contexts (e.g., Caraballo, ; Kinloch, ; Martinez, 2009), College Ready serves to support the framing of college‐going literacies as part of a broader social justice agenda in education. As Moje () explains in her review of social justice literacy pedagogies, a controversial distinction exists between pedagogies that are socially just and social justice pedagogies .…”

Being “Loud”: Identities-in-Practice in a Figured World of Achievement

“…In academic contexts, and schools in particular, identities are informed within/among performances and associations based on ethnicity, race, class, gender, among others, as well as public discourse about achievement and accountability. Previously, I presented an identities-in-practice framework that conceptualizes students as actors operating among the cultural forces that inform their construction of identities and positionalities in academic contexts (Caraballo, 2011). This framework is grounded in Holland et al’s (1998) seminal practice theory of identity and agency, which draws from sociocultural theory as well as cultural studies to frame identities as agentic as well as discursively produced.…”

“…Similarly, McCarthey and Moje (2002) argue that “identity can be complex, shifting” constructed by students based on their “multiple experiences and relationships that are enacted within particular places and spaces” (p. 231), such as schools and classrooms. Grounded in this practice theory framework and building on the research described below, I approach the figured world of a classroom as the context in which students’ experiences of the enacted curriculum and identities-in-practice are negotiated (Caraballo, 2011).…”

“…In this article, I use an identities-in-practice lens to examine how minoritized 2 students constructed multiple identities in their academic context, where such a context represented a very particular cultural world—what Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998) conceptualize as a figured world, a context that is discursively and culturally produced, and therefore infused with expectations and understandings that students may take up, resist, or remix as their own (Caraballo, 2011). While the social, epistemological, and institutional marginalization of students of color in educational contexts is unfortunately not new, my research highlights frequently invisible points of intersection in which multiple discourses, identities, and literacy practices inform what students experienced at in their academic context and how they authored selves-in-practice.…”

Students’ Critical Meta-Awareness in a Figured World of Achievement: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Stance in Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Research

“…According to McLaren, critical literacy has the potential to “create a citizenry critical enough to both analyze and challenge the oppressive characteristics of the larger society so that a more just, equitable, and democratic society can be created” (Carlson, 1993 p. 238). Rather than perpetuating theoretical and ideological binaries that can overlook relations within and among overlapping and shifting identities and positionalities in multiple figured worlds (Caraballo, 2011), scholars, researchers, and educators might support and sustain students’ multiple identity and literacy construction by deliberately nurturing their negotiation of a broad range of discursive spaces and figured worlds as part of the enacted curriculum. As Guerra (2011) theorizes, framing minoritized students’ lives in multiple worlds as negotiating life in the neither/nor, a rhizomatic conceptualization of the third space (Gutierrez, 2008) between students’ institutional and local contexts, “awakens within each of us a nomadic consciousness that requires a dynamic set of nimble, self-reflexive, and tactical capabilities” (Guerra, 2011, p. 10).…”