(2019). Evaluation and Training of Executive Functions in Genocide Survivors. The Case of Yazidi Children. Developmental Science, v22 n5 e12839 Sep. Executive Functions (EFs) development is critically affected by stress and trauma, as well as the socioeconomic context in which children grow up (Welsh, Nix, Blair, Bierman, & Nelson, 2010, Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 43-53). Research in this field is surprisingly lacking in relation to war contexts. This study represents a first attempt at addressing this topic by evaluating EFs in Yazidi children. The Yazidi community is an ethnic and religious minority living in Iraq. From August 2014 onwards, the Yazidi community has been the target of several atrocities perpetrated by ISIS and described as genocide by the international community at large. The University of Trieste, thanks to a program financed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, developed a study aimed at (a) evaluating hot and cool EFs in children living in a war context and (b) developing a specific training method to enhance hot and cool EFs in Yazidi children of preschool age (N = 53). Data related to this… [Direct]
(2024). Leading with Cultural Sustainability, Indigenous Kinship, and Ancestral Heritage: A Multisite Case Study Navigating Dine School Leadership in New Mexico. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, New Mexico State University. Indigenous K-12 school leaders contribute to Tribal Nation building by leading schools that recognize and embed student culture. A large body of literature suggests the importance of culturally responsive leadership and recognizing students' cultural strengths within the foundations of the school. Indigenous K-12 school leaders' work toward decolonizing schools is critical considering the context of the Indian boarding school era where schools were used as a weapon of assimilation and genocide. This study examines the mindsets and leadership practices utilized by Dine K-12 school leaders in Northern New Mexico as they embed student and community cultural capital within their schools. This study contributes to the growing literature surrounding the practices of Indigenous K-12 school leaders and their contributions to the self-determination of Tribal Nations through their approaches to leadership. Furthermore, how leaders with a social justice approach acknowledge cultural wealth and… [Direct]
(2021). Open-Mindedness and the (Un)Controversial in Classrooms. Educational Theory, v71 n5 p561-588 Oct. Educational-theoretical discussions of open-mindedness and closed-mindedness focus on the moral benefits and hazards of these dispositions in pedagogical encounters with the new and hitherto alien. Such discussions often employ spatial metaphors of openness and rely on politically safe examples to illustrate ambiguous enactments of open-mindedness and closed-mindedness as epistemic or moral virtues and vices. This article explores how a shift in our metaphors and a change in attention from the new to the "inflammatory (un)controversial" may complicate current outlooks on open-mindedness and politicize it differently. To illustrate this critique of virtue-theoretic approaches to open-mindedness, the article uses fictive classroom exchanges on Holocaust and genocide denialism as (un)controversial material that ignites minds…. [Direct]
(2022). "Black Dreams, Electric Mirror": Cross-Cultural Teaching of State Terrorism and Legitimized Violence. Teaching Sociology, v50 n4 p392-398 Oct. Sci-fi has the power to open dialogue because its alternate world-building enables students to feel far enough from reality to discuss social problems unreservedly. In this essay, I review an assignment I developed using "Black Mirror" and "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" that present episodes in which militarized policing, segregation, and genocide occur with the consent and complicity of populations convinced that these measures enable their safety. Paralleling U.S. carceralism, the fictional communities have been inundated with media and political advertising for greater segregation but have themselves never experienced the criminalized violence that justifies widespread state harms. Through a generative dialogue engaging the media, a discussion question, and the concept of state terrorism, students move to observe their positionality and critically assess state violence. Therefore, I recommend this teaching tool for any critical instructors–especially… [Direct]
(2022). Critical Reflexi√≥n and Pl√°tica~Testimonio/Haki~Shahadat: Enacting Decolonial Praxis of Solidarity from the Mexico-US Borders to Palestine. Curriculum Inquiry, v52 n3 p266-274. In this pl√°tica, we share how we have deployed the methodologies of critical reflexi√≥n and pl√°tica~testimonio/haki~shahadat, which helped us enact a decolonial praxis of solidarity with intentional acts that grounded us in border thinking and opened the possibilities of creating an otherwise of love and harmony. We illustrate a praxis of solidarity stemming from our negotiation of differences, experiences of each other/beside each other in different moments and different sites of resistance inside and outside academia. Part of this praxis is exemplified in our co-femtoring other colleagues, faculty, and graduate students of Color and co-teaching/co-creating digital testimonios in the classroom. We also illustrate an interdependent solidarity collaborating in a US Hispanic Serving Institution on Mexico-US borders and in Cairo, Egypt and co-teaching/co-learning Palestine historically and at another moment of genocide. Inside and outside academia, we do our solidarity expansively, in… [Direct]
(2017). Accounting for Genocide: Transitional Justice, Mass (Re)Education and the Pedagogy of Truth in Present-Day Rwanda. Comparative Education, v53 n3 p396-417. Vigorous debate has recently arisen on the particular contribution of education to transitional justice (TJ). This article, focusing on the case of post-genocide Rwanda, raises the question of the possibilities, limitations and desirability of approaches which seek to impose, through education, top-down forms of reconciliation. The article employs the concepts of "mass (re)education" and "pedagogy of truth" to characterise the approach used by Rwanda's post-genocide government to reshape and reconcile society, and reflects on the extent to which the past thus taught can be employed in furthering TJ goals. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the study evaluates Rwanda-style practices by examining history and civic education programmes alongside young people's utterances on the "truth" of historical wrongs. Concluding, it casts doubt on the transformative and conciliatory value of "pedagogies of truth" that seek to recast identities and inter-group… [Direct]
(2024). Weaponizing Settler Slogans to Mandate Colonial School Policy in the Americas: Transformation through Indigenous Futurity. Policy Futures in Education, v22 n8 p1540-1553. The topic of this academic review is settler slogans that mandate colonial school policy in North America. Also discussed is Indigenous futurity as a strategy for transforming education and countering the educational harm that comes from weaponized language. Beginning in 1887, the US federal government authorized colonial schooling, using the dangerous educational clich√© "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." The purpose of this article was to illuminate this weaponizing rhetoric in education, which served as a guiding principle for imposing Indigenous assimilation that manifested as federal policy in the Americas. Research questions were, How did the kill-and-save slogan shape US and Canadian education and policy? How can the concept of Indigenous futurity improve Indigenous education? Colonial settler efforts to control tribal nations with weaponizing rhetoric leveled at education policy, public perception, and compulsory boarding/residential schools are exposed…. [Direct]
(2025). Reworking the Aesthetics of Language Use: The Multilingual Challenge for NEP 2020. Contemporary Education Dialogue, v22 n1 p75-101. This article focuses on the ever-increasing stress on multilingual education (MLE) in policy documents, especially its pairing with mother tongues in education (MTE). This focus brings into relief the relationship between MTE, the preservation of linguistic diversity and social democracy. We argue that the outcome of this relationship crucially depends on the nature of processes involved in bringing the mother tongues into the premise of education and transforming them into the languages of stage discourse. The challenges before a substantive vision of MLE include adopting a bottom-up, inclusive approach rather than a top-down, authoritarian one, thereby challenging the existing elitist linguistic aesthetics. We contend that it is only through such a challenge that we can move towards an inclusionary multilingual approach to educational practices. These aesthetic principles constitute the bastion of hegemonic practices of the elite through which they determine the citizenship of the… [Direct]
(2022). 'I Feel Like I Can't Do a Lot': Affectivity, Reflection and Action in 'Transformative' Genocide Education. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, v28 n2 p522-539 Nov. Guided tours of memorial museums have sought to have an impact on visitors through an affective learning environment and critical reflection leading to 'action'. However, there is limited work investigating the pedagogical underpinnings of such guided tours in order to understand whether they can facilitate action. This paper presents reflections of 21 students' experiences of educational visits to the former Nazi extermination and concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland between 2017 and 2018. Students identified the guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau as having an affective dimension that enhanced understanding and brought about a perspective transformation but action was ill-defined. In considering ill-defined action, this paper attempts to frame understanding of the guided tour of the memorial museum within the context of Transformative Learning. It concludes that guiding practices should incorporate space for reflection and provide examples of potential 'action' so that… [Direct]
(2024). The Gaza-Israel War Terminology: Implications for Translation Pedagogy. Online Submission, International Journal of Middle Eastern Research v3 n1 p35-43. Student translators at the College of Language Sciences take a Media and Political Translation course in which they translate the latest news stories, media and political texts and terminology. This study proposes a model for integrating Gaza-Israeli war terminology and texts in translation instruction to familiarize the students with terminology such as names of weapons (grenades, mortar, drones, missiles, Merkava, Cornet anti-armor, mortar shells), toponyms(Khan Younis, Maghazi, Sderot, Ashkelon), crossings (Rafah, Erez), Jihadist groups and brigades (Islamic Jihad, Golani), military actions (incursion, bombing, shelling, genocide, displacement) war metaphors (target bank, carpet bombing, scorched earth, fire belt, Philadelphia Axis, Hannibal's plan), (UNRWA, Gaza hospitals, starvation, humanitarian aid) and others. English and Arabic texts can be collected from mainstream media as RT, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Al-Ghad. A class blog can be created for posting translations,… [PDF]
(2020). The Anti-Shibboleth: The Traumatic Character of the Shibboleth as Silence. Applied Linguistics, v41 n3 p334-351 Jun. This article discusses the familiar notion of the shibboleth in situations of exclusion, focusing on the non-use, rather than the use, of language, for which I propose the term the anti-shibboleth. The article begins with an introduction to the concept of the shibboleth, giving examples from situations of violent conflict and suppression such as the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide, and goes on to develop the notion of the anti-shibboleth, using further examples from such contexts. It then considers the situation of Aboriginal Australians in the period up until 1967 in the light of the concept. The article concludes with a discussion of the way in which we may understand the anti-shibboleth theoretically, drawing on insights from poststructuralism…. [Direct]
(2019). Leading Rwandan Primary Schools: Some Deliberations on the Past, Present, and Future. International Journal of Educational Reform, v28 n1 p79-98 Jan. This article is premised on the belief that research on educational leadership should embrace different settings. Accordingly, a Rwandan study is reported informed by three interrelated aims regarding primary school leadership: to understand its historical background from colonial times to 1994 (the genocide year), to understand developments occurring from 1994 to 2014, and to understand perspectives of primary school leaders on their concerns. Data gathering methods comprised interviews, document analysis, and observation. Key outcomes of the study are articulated according to propositions relating to each research aim illuminating the past, present, and future of primary school leadership in Rwanda…. [Direct]
(2014). Twenty Years On: Finding a Place for the Rwandan Genocide in Education. Intercultural Education, v25 n5 p391-404. The Rwandan genocide was perhaps the most paradigmatic human rights catastrophe in the post-Holocaust era, which challenged the mantra of "never again." Yet as we approach the twentieth anniversary, it remains a relatively marginalised entity within mainstream English education. This paper argues that a study of the Rwandan genocide introduces a number of important issues, which are not emphasised within Holocaust education. It also draws upon a small-scale empirical study of 41 teachers' attitudes in England, perceptions and experiences of teaching the genocide in a range of disciplines and demonstrates emerging patterns on how it is integrated into curricula and individual lessons. It concludes by advocating the study of the Rwandan genocide in its own right and the importance of students appreciating its contemporary relevance…. [Direct]
(2019). Ethical Contemporary Art Therapy: Honoring an American Indian Perspective. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, v36 n4 p175-182. As a profession that formed in relation to larger forces within science, psychology, and more, the field of art therapy is not immune to the systems of oppression woven throughout Western culture and has incorporated practices that, even unwittingly, perpetuate the oppression of American Indian peoples today. This article contextualizes the U.S. art therapy field within the larger legacy of historical, systematic efforts to eradicate Native sovereignty in the United States, questions the subordinate position of Indigenous peoples, and critically examines and deconstructs the continued oppression of American Indian peoples today through situated and subjugated knowledge, cultural appropriation, cultural genocide, and colonial amnesia…. [Direct]
(2024). In Defense of a Critical Education. Social Education, v88 n4 p228-233. In Georgia, the recent "Protect Students First Act," or GA HB 1084, states that curricula and training programs should refrain from judging others based on race or advocate for divisive concepts such as "One race is inherently superior to another race," or that "the United States of America is fundamentally racist." In the face of this type of legislation, teachers and teacher educators across the nation are grappling with how to respond. How are teachers and students to discuss the racist origins of the United States? How are they to reckon with the foundations of slavery and Native American genocide at the roots of the country's founding? How are teachers to include discussion of LGBTQ experiences, socioeconomic inequalities, religious persecution, and other topics that might be considered "too political" in the current climate? In the context of divisive concepts legislation, Anthony, a high school social studies teacher who identifies as a… [Direct]