Figured worlds

(link provided) This article presents fashion as a mechanism of domination and political legitimacy, focusing on Soviet-type state socialist regimes. In particular, it documentssome dynamics shaping the politics of fashion in the socio-political context of 1960sCuba arguing that the consolidation of a radically new political order in the country wasbased, in part, on the production of denotative logistics that associated clothes withpolitical values. The article concludes that denotative logistics are activated as mech-anisms of impersonal rule in periods of political transition or regime change, such asafter the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. In those moments, they articulate processesof social engineering oriented toward producing a new society and a new man.

Drawing from Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain’s (1998) identity theory, this study sought to understand how six self-identified lesbian and gay Latina/o college students negotiated their sexual and ethnic identities.  Participants identified two equally flawed dimensions, the hometown and college figured worlds, from which they sought an alternative destigmatizing space for identity negotiation.  Through the senses of freedom, security, and belonging, the participants became self-empowered to create a third figured world I term an "identity buffer"—a space governed by their individual expectations and social norms—where their identities could coexist.

Discourses of achievement often overlook the interdependence of classroom contexts, students’ identities, and academic performance. This narrative analysis explores how high-achieving students of color construct identities-in-practice in a diverse urban middle school. By documenting explicit moments in which students construct identities-in-practice such as being “loud,” which are positioned as incompatible with “being smart,” I argue that high-achieving lower income students of color are disproportionately regulated by achievement discourses that position White middle-class norms as neutral. This article documents tensions between what it takes to achieve academically and students’ raced, classed, and gendered identities in order to reframe educational equity based on a theoretical framing of identities and academic achievement as interrelated and highly contextual.

Cultural differences exist between Western perspectives on humanistic teaching methods and methods developed during the past 100 years in the Arab region based on English and French colonialist systems. Political structures and economic challenges in the region uphold the rigid societal and security structures that limit faculty governance and academic freedom, which impacts teaching and learning perspectives. This study utilized basic qualitative design methods based in constructivist grounded theory. Questionnaires, surveys, and email interviews that invited open-ended, explanatory, and descriptive answers were central to this work. Taking an observer’s approach to this study, I analyzed survey responses of Arab university faculty members about their andragogical practices and teaching perspectives. The findings indicate Arab university faculty have a strong sensibility of humanistic teaching principles rooted in social and intellectual subcategories which reflect narratives of a community and caring for students. Implications are that while faculty members exhibit low-average knowledge of specific andragogical principles their intentions are to create a teaching environment that is similar to andragogical humanistic teaching and learning philosophy. This indicates that further professional development in andragogy and in constructivism would be welcome. However, it is important to allow Arab university faculty members to identify methods that fit within their own societal norms and goals. Instructional designers and facilitators must acknowledge the limited political autonomy of faculty members when designing professional development opportunities.

Identity and agency are key to understanding student learning within classroom contexts. Utilizing figured worlds and local contentious prac- tices as analytical frameworks, identity and agency are theorized as cultural practices that occur as part of the learning process in schools. Specifically, this article discusses self-authorship and the process of self- making as agentic practices in classrooms. History lessons about the Alamo for Mexican-American students and the ways students are posi- tioned in classrooms around concepts of smartness connect theory to practice within the article. Implications are discussed for in-service and pre-service teacher development.

Abstract. This article explores how two elementary school students responded to their teacher’s invitation in a civic classroom to make a difference to the world. We consider how the teacher framed the construct of civic efficacy, and how the students refracted these ideas in their navigation of a civic education project. Closely analyzing these students’ experiences and responses, we question what differences are made when students are encouraged to think of themselves as citizens who can make a difference. Noting dissonances and ambivalences in the students’ responses, the conceptual resources of “figured worlds” (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) enable an analysis of the interplay of discourses, interactions, sensory experiences and material artifacts as civic identities are constituted. The two students’ differing responses are analysed in relation to other figured worlds that students and teachers daily negotiate: of compliant citizenship, productive citizenship and consumer citizenship. The overlaps, dissonances and/or divergences in discourses and artifacts from various figured worlds of citizenship may render some students more recognizable as civically “engaged” and “efficacious” than others.

This study explores smartness as a cultural construct rather than a biological
capacity. The cultural construction of smartness has broad consequences
related to teacher expectations, student academic identity development,
and schooling inequities. This study is based on a 1-year ethnography in
a kindergarten classroom, and the author investigates smartness by first historicizing
the concept of intelligence and then using the theoretical framework
of figured worlds. Through the teachers’ disciplinary and pedagogical practices, students were taught and learned not just whether they were smart themselves, but how other student identities were constructed according to smartness as well. Analysis suggests smartness was used as a mechanism of control and social positioning along racial and class lines. Implications are discussed related to schooling practices and policy.

Tamil Nadu has gained international recognition for reforming its government school classrooms into active, child-centered learning environments. Our exploration of the history of the Activity Based Learning movement suggests that this reform was achieved by social movement actors serving in and through the state’s administration. Participants in people’s movements and progressive education initiatives partnered with state officers to form an influential network, a “figured world” of counterhegemonic education knowledge, that ultimately transformed classrooms in over 37,000 schools.

This study explores the process of using Holland et al. (Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) " figured worlds " identity and agency theory to explore two scholars' transnational experiences. Using poetic inquiry as a data analysis tool, this study seeks to (re)position how identity work is theorized and analyzed across broader contexts. Data collection consisted of online discussions, reflective journals, and biographical artifacts to better contextualize our discussions. These co-constructed discussions were transcribed and analyzed using poetic inquiry to better capture and articulate experiential themes of isolation, vulnerability, adaptation, and survival. This study serves three purposes (1) how both authors analyzed, interpreted and theorized our childhood experiences crossing borders using Holland et al. (Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) " figured worlds " theory, (2) how poetic inquiry was used to capture the isolation, vulnerability, adaptation, and survival of one author's experiences, and (3) how this type of reflexivity explicitly in/transforms theoretical approaches to deconstructing cultural identity and agency in a myriad of contexts, notably teacher education.

AbstractResearch that exclusively focuses on pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty remains scarce. Our aim is to shed light on these rarely documented experiences in an effort to understand their navigation of the world of academia. Using critical ethnographic methodology, we argue that pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty come to understand themselves as academicians through the figured worlds that they participate in. We use the framework of figured worlds to frame these sites of identity production and to describe how they become academicians. Findings reveal that pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty enact agency in seemingly benign, yet critical moments within their professional contexts to assert their identities. We conclude by suggesting that it is within these spaces of authoring that they exercise their limited yet meaningful agency in an effort to make sense of the process of becoming academicians.IntroductionIn the academy, racially underrepresented female faculty (i.e. Black, Asian American, Latina, and Native American) are dually burdened because of their race and gender, constructing a space in which they are doubly minoritized (Berry & Mizelle, 2006; Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012). This intersection of racism and sexism contribute to racially underrepresented female faculty having the lowest tenure rate of all faculty groups (Vargas, 2002). Among female faculty in the United States, White women represent 85% at the full professor rank and 80% at the associate level, whereas non-White women represent 13.5% and 18% respectively (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). On the road to tenure, racially underrepresented female faculty experience structural and interpersonal roadblocks, i.e. identity taxation, that their White male and female colleagues do not face (Ford, 2011; Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012). Tokenism arises when racially underrepresented female faculty are one of "the only" ones in their department (Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012; Turner, 2002). For example, they are often assigned extra duties, such as additional university committee membership, because they dually fulfill the diversity requirement of being both female and racially underrepresented in higher education (Turner, 2002). Furthermore, they typically hold greater student advising responsibilities than their White male and female colleagues as they are often called upon to do "mothering work" (Griffm & Reddick, 2011; Turner, 2002). However, they embrace mentoring as a way in which to support the educational advancement of their self-identified communities (Griffm & Reddick, 2011).Given their hyper-visibility at predominately White institutions (PWIs), racially underrepresented female faculty are intersectionally marked (raced, gendered, and otherwise marked by social identities) and "othered" by colleagues and students (Ford 2011; Turner, 2002). Criticisms are either centered on bodily features, such as hair, skin color, or clothing; or bodily performances, which are institutional/departmental expectations of how faculty should behave or act (Ford, 2012). Similarly, their intellectual credibility is often called into question (Ford, 2011; Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998). Racially underrepresented female faculty members are commonly "othered" because their complex identities contradict what the academy perceives as normal. Consequently, their tenure reviews are often based not on transparent and objective standards but on a "candidate's particularities" (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002, p. 370) or "fit." Finally, they find it challenging to legitimatize their research and find an academic space of their own because they are commonly one of the few or only one in their academic department who conducts research on social justice issues. As a result, they are intellectually segregated and further isolated from their colleagues (Mawhinney, 2011 & 2012).Contrarily, this "otherness" is used as a vehicle for struggle, resistance, legitimacy, assertion of agency, and a space for their own intellectual productivity in their departments (Segura, 2003). …

The aim of the present study was to analyze the interaction between elementary students and a professional design expert. The expert was present in the classroom, facilitating a collaborative lamp designing process together with the teacher. Using the notion of figured worlds (Holland et al. 1998), we explored how learning could be expanded beyond traditional schooling by bridging the world of professional designing and the world of the inquiry-oriented classroom. The data consisted of video-recorded design sessions (N=11) and the “Lamp Designing” view of the project's electronic database. A qualitative content analysis was conducted for categorizing the social settings, the design inquiry phases, and the designer's activities during the sessions. Three distinctive foci of the participants’ activity were identified in the present study: 1) Figuring the rationale for designing, 2) Figuring design practices, and 3) Figuring the community of designing. The results indicate that the designer was able to make his procedural and tacit design knowledge accessible and meaningful for the students. In the interaction between the designer and the students, emerged a hybrid learning environment, which provided new insights and opportunities for design learning. With the designer's support, relatively young students became aware of the rationale directing the design practice, and were able to solve multifaceted, complex design tasks.

This article draws on data from a participatory visual ethnography exploring the identities of two second-generation Iraqi refugee boys living in a southern state of the United States. It describes multiple “figured worlds” ( Holland, et al., 1998 ) as the context of identity negotiation in the lives of these children. Findings also reveal multi-layered fluidity among figured worlds, children’s authoring in negotiating figured worlds, and the possible influence of the family’s pre-migration trauma on identity. The article argues that to support the well-being of second-generation refugee children and their families, we need to understand the multiplicity of refugee children’s identity and how children construct their figured worlds using resources from their multiple communities.

This narrative analysis case study challenges the education reform movement’s fascination with “grit,” the notion that a non-cognitive trait like persistence is at the core of disparate educational outcomes and the answer to our inequitable education system. Through analysis of the narratives and meaning-making processes of Elijah, a 20-year-old African American seeking his High School Equivalency diploma, this case study explores linkages among dominant discourses on meritocracy, opportunity, personal responsibility, and group blame. Specifically, exposition of the figured worlds present in Elijah’s narratives points to the attempted obfuscation of social inequities present in the current educational reform movement and our broader society. This obfuscation present in the grit discourse and pedagogy aims to diminish the critical bifocality that is needed to understand and improve educational opportunity and outcomes.

The world is figured and arranged by imagination, organized and delineated by language. This project was an attempt to understand the structure of the participant's internal world by analyzing the language she used to represent that world. In particular, I attended to the participant's pronoun selection, presuming an indication of membership in or exclusion from the various groups and communities that populate her world.

Based on data collected from a year-and-a-half-long qualitative research project, this case study examines the early college experiences and identity nego- tiations of one urban-schooled Latino participant as he navigated a predominately White state university in his hometown. Recognizing the university as a figured world, this study highlights two emblematic personal encounters that positioned him in inferior ways. It also offers a counter-example of a rhetoric professor who positioned him in positive ways and contributed to his academic success. Impli- cations are framed in an argument for the inclusion of identity studies and posi- tioning theory in order to better contextualize urban-schooled Latina/os’ early college experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex nature of identity construction of one adolescent Mexican-American immigrant English Learner (EL) through the frame of figured world theory (Holland et al. Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998). We use case study methodology to explore the question: How does one adolescent Mexican-American immigrant EL, Mario, construct his identity, as he invokes different subject positions in relation to diverse social contexts? We highlight how Mario performs different identities within the diverse contexts in Mexico and in the U.S.: (1) a retornado (one who has returned) in Mexico, and then variously in his ESL classroom as (2) a model student, (3) a student of color challenging his white teacher's authority, and yet other times, (4) a disruptive and uncooperative student, who missed class regularly, because he did not want to "miss out on life." We underscore the importance for educators to understand adolescent identity construction, not as a linear set of stages, but as a shifting, complex, and multifaceted process, especially that of adolescent immigrants and the diverse geopolitical contexts from which they and their families originate.

This article focuses on sartorial visions put forth by institutions and representatives of the Cuban regime throughout the 1960s to the 1980s, in particular the visions of modernity produced by and circulated through the institutions of fashion and clothing production of the Cuban state. It presents these visions as oriented to put forth a figured world of power aimed at persuading individuals to participate in the construction of the communist future by catering to the aspirational dreams of the middle class. The article concludes that such an imaginary helped in the short term to consolidate and legitimize the Cuban state socialist regime, allowing the new socialist middle classes to reinvent themselves as consumers and to participate in the construction of socialism. Yet, at the same time, for many people these visions were mostly a mirage, as they were unable to buy anything fashionable at all.

The purpose of the present article was to analyze the interaction between elementary students and a professional design expert. The expert was present in the classroom, facilitating a collaborative lamp designing process together with the teacher. Using the notion of figured worlds (Holland et al. 1998), we explored how learning could be expanded beyond traditional schooling by bridging the world of professional designing and the world of the inquiry-oriented classroom. The data consisted of video-recorded design sessions (N = 11) and the “Lamp Designing” view of the project’s electronic database. A qualitative content analysis was conducted for categorizing the social settings, the design inquiry phases, and the designer’s activities during the sessions. Three distinctive foci of the participants’ activity were identified in the present study: (1) Design rationale, (2) Design practices, and (3) Design community. The results indicate that, with the designer’s support, relatively young students became aware of the rationale directing the design practice, and were able to solve multifaceted, complex design tasks. The figured world of designing was collaboratively created in the classroom during the continuous interaction between the designer and the students. This enabled the students to recognize the meaning of the diverse design activities and practices they were learning. The figured world of designing was perceived as a world of possibility for the students, providing them new insights for learning within the world of schooling.