Binaya Subedi

Theorizing a "Halfie" Researcher's Identity in Transnational Fieldwork.

The topic of how reflexivity ought to be utilized in the global aspect of research is yet to be fully theorized in educational research. Through the use of rigorous reflexivity, this paper examines a ‘halfie’ researcher’s negotiation of insider and outsider identities within his transnational home/field site of Nepal. By examining how identities are reconfigured within transnational spaces, the paper analyzes the intricacies of negotiating legitimacy and reciprocity with participants. Although the literature on reflexivity asks researchers to be ‘open’ about their identities, the author explores how one can be open yet also be complicit in the research process. The article proposes that (halfie) researchers be accountable for their contradictory identities in transnational sites and recognize the sociocultural contexts in which they do fieldwork.

Preservice Teachers' Beliefs and Practices: Religion and Religious Diversity

Discussions about religious aspects of diversity are often absent from research. Similarly, topics such as religious forms of prejudice and religious dimensions of identities have not been fully explored in the context of teacher education. Too often, in the schooling context, what religion is and what constitutes an authentic religious identity operates in European American epistemologies. By examining the beliefs and practices of preservice teachers, this article argues for the need to emphasize topics of religious diversity in teacher education programs since teachers will undoubtedly teach those who come from diverse religious backgrounds. In particular, the article explores how various students in the study negotiated and resisted recognizing structural discourses on religion, especially when religious issues interconnected with race and gender topics. Overall, the author proposes that teacher educators include religion when teaching about social differences, particularly how religious dimensions of prejudice operate in schools.

The possibilities of postcolonial praxis in education

This introduction to the special issue explores the possibilities of postcolonial praxis in the field of education. The local/global focus of postcolonial perspectives invites alternative ways of theorizing question of pedagogy, curriculum and research. Postcolonial praxis similarly highlights how questions of differences and identity need to be critically reexamined and how cross racial/ethnic solidarity against dominant ways of being requires new ways of theorizing anti‐oppressive struggles. By critically highlighting issues of gender, we examine three themes relevant in postcolonial praxis: (1) discrepant identities; (2) critical global perspectives; and (3) racialization and ethnic postcolonial discourse.

Negotiating Collaboration Across Differences

Through auto-ethnographic approach, this article extends contemporary debates on the need to further conceptualize and practice collaborative approaches to research. By exploring the complex dimensions of collaboration, this discussion traces the challenges of researching communities one affiliates with, particularly in relation to ethnic, cultural, and “unusual” researcher-researched positional differences. Also, by describing the dilemmas faced in translating languages spoken by respondents, the authors explain how the issues of language and representation complicate the collaborative relationships of research. This discussion proposes that investigators reexamine how they have interacted with participants in everyday contexts and aims to help researchers redefine the meaning of collaborative research across differences.

Contesting racialization: Asian immigrant teachers' critiques and claims of teacher authenticity

Research on how racialization operates in immigrant context, particularly in relation to immigrant teachers, is marginalized as an area of inquiry in US educational research. This paper examines how immigrant teachers negotiated ideological and resistant notions of teacher authenticity in US school settings. In particular, the author examines how female South Asian teachers contested dominant interpretations on what counted as teacher legitimacy and authority. Along with racial, ethnic and gender identities, the paper argues for the need to recognize how religious, linguistic identities and ones academic disciplinary affiliation shape how one is constructed as an authentic or less‐authentic teacher. The author argues for the need to critique the narrow ways in which identities are conceptualized in schools and advocates for the need to consider heterogeneous and contradictory notions of cultural identity.

Recognizing respondents’ ways of being and knowing: lessons un/learned in researching Asian immigrant and Asian‐American teachers

This paper examines the productive challenges of researching communities one identifies with and calls for the need to consider race/ethnic interpretations of research methods. By examining participants’ perspectives on research, the author argues for the need to further consider culturally appropriate ways of researching communities of color. Drawing on his research with Asian immigrant and Asian‐American teachers, the author describes the challenges he faced in negotiating access and conducting interviews with participants. This discussion proposes that researchers consider the multiple ways they are positioned in fieldwork. It similarly argues that by fully recognizing respondents’ ways of being, researchers can engage in ethical research practices.

Fostering Critical Dialogue Across Cultural Differences: A Study of Immigrant Teachers' Interventions in Diverse Schools

There is limited research in the field of social studies that documents how immigrant teachers are working to make social studies classrooms a space for critical dialogue, especially within settings where immigrant and nonimmigrant students interact. By using data from a yearlong qualitative study in which interviews and observations were conducted, the author examines the ways in which two immigrant teachers created a climate for critical dialogue to teach about cultural differences. The findings demonstrate how the teachers emphasized the need to critique stereotypes and discriminatory acts and valued the need to engage in cross-cultural interactions. The findings also illustrate the need to examine how teaching about differences is complex and messy. The author argues that social studies teachers need to be more accountable to how honest dialogue takes place in classrooms and how teachers need to recognize and validate the subject position of diverse learners.

Colonizing and Decolonizing Projects of Re/Covering Spirituality

In this postcolonial inquiry, we analyze how spirituality has been simultaneously appropriated/re-covered and re-appropriated/recovered for the purpose of (re)colonizing as well as decolonizing projects. By drawing from discrete yet interconnected literatures of decolonizing, (post)(anti)colonial, Indigenous, and ethnic studies based theories, we discuss the concept of transformative spirituality as a useful analytic lens. This project intersects with larger questions of neo/colonial historical and social structures and conditions of life such as empire, nation-state, race, gender, etc. Transformative aspects of spirituality not only critique how spirituality of the Others has been appropriated within the neo/colonial and neoliberal imagination for the salvation of the Western/neoliberal Self but also speaks about how spirituality can be a space of possibility or recovery for different marginalized communities. While providing decolonizing critiques on the current popularity of spirituality in Western societies as Orientalism and (re)colonization of the Others, we present how transformative spirituality can be mobilized to open up a space beyond Western-modern-colonial-scientific knowledge/truth/power regimes to serve political emancipatory goals. Despite historically situated different approaches toward decolonizing across variously colonized communities, our analysis on spirituality demonstrates how marginalized communities have always critiqued Orientalist spirituality and developed alternative spaces of spirituality that seek social change and transformative politics.

Examining Noddings’ “Educational Malpractice” Assertion: Serious Considerations for Local-Global Issues in Social Studies Education

The article utilizes a decolonizing theoretical lens to advocate for the need to engage in a more nuanced approach to conceptualizing local/global aspect of social justice discussions within social studies education. The article engages with questions of social justice by utilizing Noddings’s (2006) argument that “educational malpractice” (p. 250) is a daily occurrence in US classrooms because students are expected to reproduce textbook answers, rather than generate their own questions and reasoned research and deliberation. Kumashiro’s (2004) writings on antioppressive education speak of how the repetition of mainstream narratives normalize what ought to be taught and learned in schools. We propose that educators cannot avoid questions of racism and Islamophobia as critically important issues within social studies classrooms. Therefore, through engaging in critical inquiry on the prevalence of racism and Islamophobia, educators can disrupt the continued educational malpractice within the social studies.

Activism as/in/for Global Citizenship: Putting Un-Learning to Work Towards Educating the Future

This chapter explores activism as/in/for global citizenship theoretically, historically, and in practice. We argue one necessarily learns hierarchical violences that disconnect the world and self from the so-called Other. Therefore, to think and act more relationally, and outside of regimes of truth, requires a radically different way of knowing that does not simply follow our usual habits, but unlearns them (Foucault in Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Pantheon Books, New York, 1980; Spivak in An aesthetic education in the era of globalization. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012). Thus, we focus on the long-term project of ‘decolonising the mind’ (wa Thiongʼo in Decolonizing the mind. James Currey, London, 1986). To do this, we explicitly connect theory to practice and we draw on contemporary events and materials, such as Black Lives Matter and Marjane Satrapi’s (Persepolis. Pantheon, New York, 2003). We also provide examples, questions, and materials that educators, teachers, practitioners, and students can access and ponder.