Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts examines how social agents construct autonomous spaces in the context of neoliberal education. The contributors to this edited collection consider the ways that educators, students, and families assert agency, claim space, and thereby reshape the constraints imposed by the durability of the academic institutions of which they are a part.
Aprille Phillips is assistant professor of education at Southern Oregon University Tricia Gray is assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Introduction: Taking Up Space in Anthropology and Education Chapter 1: "I Am Their Teacher": How a Latina Paraeducator 'Remakes the Rules' of School by Being There Chapter 2: Teacher Identity in Heritage Language Spaces: Explorations of Embodied Sociospatial Understandings in Teacher-Student Relationships Chapter 3: I'm Here Anyway: School Choice in Indian Country Chapter 4: Enacting Identity in the Constrained Academic Space of a Boarding School for Indigenous Students Chapter 5: A Collaborative Exploration of Power, Access, and Resource Distribution in Higher Education Chapter 6: I wanna Get Out of Here and Never Come Back': Lines of Flight in a Remedial Reading Classroom Chapter 7: The Impact of Community within Teacher Professional Development Webinars
With its original and compelling theorization of space, this volume is on the leading edge of current work in educational anthropology. Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts shows how students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders are able to draw on their own 'spatial agency' to develop and employ specific local tactics to overcome the constraints of educational institutions. With contributions from a stellar lineup of anthropologists of education who examine these processes in a variety of global locations, and written to appeal to a wide audience, this book shows how new theory and research from educational anthropology can point the way to more liberating and humane educational practice and policy. -- Peter Demerath, University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota; former president, Council on Anthropology and Education Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the power and paradoxes inherent within all education spaces. This edited volume scrutinizes debates regarding the theorization of space, power, inequality, exclusion, and agency in relation to their sociohistorical and socio-political contexts. The contributors bring to life these debates via an anthropological spotlight on the power education has to conserve and constrain, but also, perhaps more importantly, on its ability to challenge hegemonic practices and transform the world we live in. -- Lisa Russell, University of Huddersfield
