Imagining Identities

Abstract

This article uses a critical sociohistorical lens to discuss and explain examples of the ways in which young people reflect, refract, and contribute to discourses of gentrification, displacement, and racial, ethnic, and geographic community identity building in a rapidly changing urban neighborhood. The article explores examples from open-ended dialogic conversations in one seventh-grade classroom. In their conversations, youth imagine themselves and their communities as sociohistorically yet dynamically situated. We argue that such spaces allow for schools and students to bridge in and out of school worlds, amplifying young people's relationships to enduring struggles in changing urban contexts.

Book Review: Talking Black and White: An intercultural exploration of twenty-first-century racism, prejudice, and perception

“…Urban education scholars and teachers would benefit from Bell’s work as it will provide hope that with researched methods, applied frameworks, and practice of proper intercultural communication, individuals of different races can live, work, and function alongside each other without the strain of discrimination and power controls. Her work aligns with Tucker-Raymond and Rosario (2017) in that exploration on how students communicate their identities in classrooms and their communities, and how the importance of both creates cultural ways of being through historical communication which builds identity. I highly recommend this book as a very useful resource for educators, researchers, and others who are interested in examining intercultural communication.…”

“You Can Only Choose From the Things You Know”: Engaging With Students’ Dark and Politicized Funds of Knowledge in the Music Classroom

“…It is in these spaces that knowledges may be recognized as far more complex than the labels of good/bad or light/dark that are often ascribed to them. Through analysis, connections can be made between knowledges and experiences, structures and narratives, producing “powerful learning and identity-building opportunities” for middle school students (Tucker-Raymond & Rosario, 2017, p. 54).…”

Unraveling the (Uneven) Linkage? A Reflection on Population Aging and Suburbanization in a Mediterranean Perspective

“…While young people who want to create a family prefer suburban locations, younger people-students, early workers-demand urban locations (Christie et al, 2017; Tucker-Raymond and Rosario, 2017), being mostly flat sharers [81][82][83][84][85]. This phenomenon has been more recently observed in Southern Europe than in Western and Northern Europe, occurring primarily in 'university' cities [86].…”