Online Lightning Talks
Listening to Students: Transforming Lives and Learning for All at the Institution
Virtual Lightning Talk Donna Knifong
Listening to Students brings the voices of diverse students directly to those who serve them in education. This presentation will describe a project done in the college setting that uses the power of student voices to expand minds, touch hearts, and contribute in profound and meaningful ways to inclusivity, student success, and institutional transformation in a diverse world. This work is very likely the first of its kind anywhere, and may be seen at the California State University, Sacramento, Office of Student Academic Success and Educational Equity Programs website at: www.csus.edu/saseep/listeningtostudents.html. The presentation will offer step-by-step guidance for how to do this type of work and discuss the positive outcomes of doing so. This talk will be beneficial to anyone who wants to learn more about myriad diverse groups in education and do more to make their entire campus community more appreciative of and adaptable to differences between people. You will find (1) a resource on how to better understand, interact with, and serve diverse groups of people in the realm of higher education and (2) a significant way to achieve a more equitable, empowering, and engaging educational environment for all at the institution.
Summoning the Cultural Heritage and Power of Mexican Parents’ Voices via Code Switching
Virtual Lightning Talk Gilbert Duenas
Over a one-year period on Friday evenings, a household served as the venue for a bilingual researcher to meet with parents of three Mexican families to offer English language instruction and explore the effect of four strategies to summon the power of their voices in their native language and the English language. Over multiple sessions, the strategies intentionally tapped the richness of their cultural knowledge and life experiences. The chosen methods encompassed napkin notes at the kitchen table, graphic organizer focused on a central theme, mix of auditory messages sent via text message before the session followed by casual conversations and writings, and the researcher’s modeling of paragraph writing in the Spanish language focused on a central concept followed by the parents’ own practice writings. What started as household visits to offer instruction in the English language subtly evolved into rich conversations about family memories—both here and in their native land, cultural traditions, and sentiments about their lives in a new country. This study demonstrated the significance for educators to forge parent-teacher connections as a pathway for valuing the parents’ native language and emergent acquisition of the English language—as resources for empowering the voices of culturally diverse families.
Western Australian Community Discourses Concerning News Media Representations of People Seeking Asylum in Australia: Implications for Communications and Social Policy
Virtual Lightning Talk Ashleigh L Haw
In Australia, the issue of people seeking asylum has received widespread media attention, attracting considerable debate at both the political and community level. For people who support refugee resettlement in Australia, discourses of humanity and compassion are commonly voiced (Peterie, 2017; Fozdar and Pedersen, 2013). Conversely, those who oppose asylum seekers coming to Australia have routinely constructed them as illegal immigrants (Every and Augoustinos, 2008; Pedersen, et al, 2006; Clyne, 2005; Klocker 2004; Pickering, 2001), queue-jumpers (Markus and Dharmalingam, 2014; Augoustinos and Every, 2007; Pedersen, et al, 2005), and economic migrants (Saxton, 2003; Pickering, 2001). There is some empirical evidence to suggest that similar negative discourses are pervasive in Australian news content about asylum seekers, often mirroring political discourses that serve to justify punitive policies for managing asylum seekers (e.g. McKay, et al, 2011; Saxton, 2003). While some Australian research has explored media representations of people seeking asylum, no prior studies have focused on community perspectives regarding these news discourses. In the present study, Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) was combined with Audience Reception Theory (Hall, 1993) to examine the perspectives of a sample Western Australians concerning news representations of people seeking asylum. Discussions of negativity, reliability, sensationalism, and transparency in Australian news constructions of asylum seekers were observed. These discourses are discussed with emphasis on the wider implications from both a research and policy perspective.
Research Approach as Community Capacity Building : Afrocentric Research with Black African Youth in Waterloo, Canada
Virtual Lightning Talk Olufunke Oba
Liberalization of Canadian immigration policies led to a rapid influx of Africans to predominantly White small Canadian communities. This qualitative study explored experiences of alienation among Black African youth in one of such communities in Ontario, Canada. Framed by critical race and Afrocentric theory, the study centered African realities by utilizing an innovative cultural research approach. The Elder Facilitated Youth Dialogue (EFYD) combines focus group’s structural analysis with African cultural imagery and uses African elders as dialogue facilitators. This community dialogue method enabled in-depth exploration of the meaning seventeen Black African youth to ascribe to their experiences of being Black in Waterloo region. The paper discusses how EFYD enabled illumination of complex interactions between race, gender, class and youth experiences of acceptance, belonging, inclusion, and disenfranchisement. By resisting artificial binaries between elders and youth, EFYD promotes intergenerational healing and community capacity building by resisting co-option into mainstreaming hegemonic discourses that subjugate vulnerable populations. Involving elders as group facilitators honoured cultural capital, promotes youth agency, representation and broadens imagination. The features of EFYD (town hall dialogues, African food, ambiance, Diaspora music, and elders) highlight its promise as a viable research methodology for further large studies with Black populations. Its effectiveness in promoting structural analysis of complex issues through a cultural renaissance, Afrocentric epistemology and African orality are highlighted. Recommendations are proffered for adopting the EFYD as a social transformation tool for combating race denial and deception in Canada during the current UN decade for people of African descent.
