Berrill, Deborah
The Lie We Tell: Educational Barriers of Refugee Students
This study examines the lived experiences of refugee students in the Canadian education system and how the barriers they face have influenced their learning and identity. This qualitative study employs critical discourse analysis to bring visibility to the educational experiences of five participants who completed high school in Canada and explores their experiences with resettlement and what would have made their lives better at that time. DisAbility Critical Race Theory informs the researcher on deconstructing and dismantling the deeply entrenched discourses in Canadian schools; to make the implied relationships between language, Western norms, power, whiteness, and race clear. This study is motivated by the researcher's own identity as a newcomer with challenges navigating the Canadian education system, positionalities that have led to the question: Are refugees truly welcome here? Information gathered from this study can support Canadian schools to create just, critically informed, and supportive educational environments for refugee students.
Author Keywords: discourses, identity, power, race, refugees, whiteness
Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Globality: A Rhizo-Narrative Journey into the Global Self of the Teacher
In this thesis, I use "Trump's Wall" between Mexico and the US to resist Eurocentrism and the challenges Eurocentric pedagogy poses to the research-practitioner. In my method, I reimagine C. Alejandra Elenes' borderlands theory as a zone of empowerment within a multicultural Canadian classroom, and braid it in a hybrid assemblage with the rhizome.
The "rhizo-borderlands" assemblage uses selected field notes gleaned from my teaching practice to develop themes of a critical pedagogy of globality in personal, local and international dimensions. These are further braided with a "day-in-the-life" narrative of a fictionalized student (Ellie) who navigates her way towards a world literature classroom where the focus is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
This assemblage affirms my belief that teaching and learning provides a context where students become "border crossers" and navigate points of intersection between their local and global selves, in order to develop intercultural competencies.
Author Keywords: Action Narrative, Critical Pedagogy, Rhizomes