This article examines the significance of the "struggling reader" identity on students' classroom experiences. Drawing upon sociocultural theories of literacy, performance theories of education, and psychosocial qualities of identity, I argue that such an identity is felt, lived, and embodied throughout students' daily…

This article discusses emerging research on youth and Indigenous languages. Based on a comparative and international Indigenous education study in Peru and the United States, the intersection between Indigenous community spaces, schools, and languages is examined. Given global trends of Indigenous language loss, comparative research provides the…

In this address, I ask: What do we bring as anthropologists and educators to our work? Two projects frame my arguments: my work with teachers in Aceh, Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami and my term on a school board in an impoverished U.S. city. I conclude that at a time when challenges are simultaneously local and global, immediate and long term,…

This response to Katherine Schultz's Presidential Address to the Council on Anthropology and Education explores the themes of temporality and reflexivity in activist scholarship, with Schultz's research as prime example. The need to take action to address a crisis, juxtaposed to the counter need to take time for scholarly reflection and…

When anthropologists of education, who embrace an activist or action-focused orientation, locate their work within community-based settings, they bear a responsibility to act in ways that not only produce new knowledge but that are also responsive to the immediate circumstances. Katherine Schultz's Presidential Address evokes two related…

This article draws on practice theory to examine aspiring youths' pursuit of higher education in Afghanistan. It finds that plans and actions are mediated through youths' families, communities, and solidarity networks. As a result, the personal improvement and enhanced reputational status that aspiring youth seek is structurally…

Few studies explore teachers' involvement in school feeding, questioning gendered implications within a feminine and feminized profession. Ethnographic data from one public high school in Metropolitan Buenos Aires suggest that teachers' efforts to address student hunger added new work roles: food advocates/activists, food managers, and…

Boys' underachievement and oppositional behavior in school has for a long time been the target of various public debates. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in two Swedish secondary schools, this article explores how the influential theory of boys' anti-school culture can be interpreted as a master narrative that is reproduced,…

This article explores young people's home literacy practices drawing on an ethnographic study of writing in the home of a British Asian family living in northern England. The theoretical framework comes from the New Literacy Studies, and aesthetic and literary theory. It applies an ethnographic methodology together with an engaged approach to…

Brazil has recently enacted sweeping policies against racial inequality, including a mandate to teach African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture in schools across the country. This article analyzes Afro-Brazilian activists' heteroglossic engagement with recent legal and social changes while leading teacher-training courses. I demonstrate…

This article explores the role of profanity and graphic humor in the bilingual wordplay of Latin@ middle school students. We highlight the creativity, skill, and communicative competence embedded in this transgressive wordplay, revealing how these youth employed profanity and graphic humor to index ethnic solidarity and construct bilingual…

Restorative justice has gained ascendancy within both judicial systems and educational settings through which court-involved youth are resocialized as part of reintegration intervention. This article explores the conflict over collective representation at the intersections among public education, criminal justice, and restorative intervention. The…

This article presents a critical race theory analysis of teachers' and students' language policy negotiation. It draws on an ethnographic study in a high-school English as a Second Language (ESL) program. Results demonstrate how race-language processes create conditions that traumatize immigrant and bilingual youth of color through…

This paper describes the perceptions and actions of working-class Latina family leaders as they promote their epistemological values during the community organizing of a "huerta" (vegetable garden) in an urban bilingual school. I focus on how their racial counternarratives are embedded in the intersected oppression of their local context…

There is an ample scholarly and popular literature describing the rise in "anxiety" among middle-class parents. This paper draws from a study of urban middle-class parents who were considering sending their children to public school. Focusing on one neighborhood and its school, it describes the impact of anxiety on the choice process. It further…