Roxana Ng

Anti-racism, feminism, and critical approaches to education

Series Foreword by Henry A. Giroux Introduction Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education: Comparative and Critical Perspectives Multicultural Education: Anti-Racist Education and Critical Pedagogy Reflections on Everyday Practice by Goli Rezai-Rashti Multicultural Policy Discourses on Racial Inequality in American Education by Cameron McCarthy Multicultural and Anti-Racist Teacher Education: A Comparison of Canadian and British Experiences in the 1970s and 1980s by Jon Young Reflections on Critical Approaches to Education Warrior as Pedagogue, Pedagogue as Warrior: Reflections on Aboriginal Anti-Racist Pedagogy by Robert Regnier Connecting Racism and Sexism: The Dilemma of Working with Minority Female Students by Goli Rezai-Rashti Aboriginal Teachers as Organic Intellectuals by Rick Hesch Teaching Against the Grain: Contradictions and Possibilities by Roxana Ng References Index

Class Borders: Chinese and South Asian Canadian Professional Women Navigating the Labor Market*

This paper discusses some of the results of a study aimed at exploring how highly skilled professional immigrant women from China and India, two of the top source countries of immigration to Canada since 1998, learned to reorient and reshape their skills, experiences, and aspirations in order to secure employment. Drawing on Bourdieus notion of class as relational space, his differentiation of forms of capital and his concept of habitus, we explore ways in which these women mobilize the resources they have at their disposal transnationally in order to realign their class position in Canada. Issues of gender and race are also incorporated into the discussion of class.

While No One is Watching: Learning in Social Action Among People who are Excluded from the Labour Market

This chapter profiles non-profit community/trade union organizations run by/for marginalized groups. Under the pressures of a turbulent social and economic context, many have evolved a contradictory practice that blends social and economic development. While breaking with earlier traditions of opposition, they have fostered new traditions that operate “while no one is watching” to transform the lives of individuals facing a rough ride in capitalist societies. Informal learning is a significant part of this shift. The authors of this chapter have been involved for many years in community organizations and/or trade unions. Our argument draws on several years of collaborative research done with three such organizations in Montreal and Toronto, Canada. It documents informal learning arising from practice in three areas: learning to participate; learning to re/connect with others; learning a new definition of self. We view these as core features of what Foley (1999) calls “learning in social action.” For us, this phrase references actions ranging from informal conversation to formal collective process. In aligning ourselves with Foley’s work, we are contributing to a stream of literature on informal learning that could be characterized as “learning power and action in resisting communities” (Adams, 1997). It encompasses the learning struggles of women, First Nations and other racial/ethnic minorities, youth and the elderly. As much as possible, we have written this chapter in plain language with words in common use. We did not want the academic use and histories of words to take precedence over their every day meanings. Also, we have organized the presentation of our findings in generic categories. This strategy arose from our discomfort with the ways in which terminology used in previous drafts, term such as “political learning” or “solidarity learning,” required us to reference and position ourselves with respect to academic debates (Church et al. 2000). Against the grain of academic practice, we chose not to privilege the categories derived from our work over the case descriptions that give them life. Thus, while broadly locating ourselves, we have resisted establishing our legitimacy in this way. Our primary focus is on the community organizations we have studied, and how their participants live