TY - JOUR
T1 - When things come undone
T2 - the promise of dissembling education policy
AU - Koyama, Jill
N1 - Funding Information:
The SIOP Model, which was developed in a national research center funded by the US Department of Education, is an instructional model aimed at addressing the academic needs of ELLs. Teachers trained in SIOP integrate eight inter-related components – lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/ application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment – into their teaching. SIOP has become known as an instructional model that uses English to extend time for language support while still providing subject content.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2015/8/8
Y1 - 2015/8/8
N2 - This article focuses on the enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the USA's broad sweeping federal education policy, in a persistently low-achieving school in which the majority of students are refugees and immigrants. Drawing on a 26-month ethnography, I reveal the ways in which a NCLB-guided school turnaround plan is enacted variably, especially for refugees. I utilize assemblage, a term often associated with actor network perspectives, to study how people, their material objects, and their discursive practices are brought together to implement the plan. Assemblage analysis reveals the struggles and contestations between various entities as they aim to establish the authority and legitimacy of ideas and practices of schooling refugees – most of whom speak languages other than English and have had several prolonged interruptions in their formal education. I trace how certain ideas come to cohere as a more-or-less durable curriculum assemblage, and how they are mobilized, defended, and challenged. The findings reveal that even under the constraints of assessments and sanctions, the assemblage is disrupted and comes apart as new actors, including refugee parents and community leaders, bring unexpected elements into play, introducing emotion, challenging expertise, questioning motives, and resisting the practices produced by the authorized policy actors.
AB - This article focuses on the enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the USA's broad sweeping federal education policy, in a persistently low-achieving school in which the majority of students are refugees and immigrants. Drawing on a 26-month ethnography, I reveal the ways in which a NCLB-guided school turnaround plan is enacted variably, especially for refugees. I utilize assemblage, a term often associated with actor network perspectives, to study how people, their material objects, and their discursive practices are brought together to implement the plan. Assemblage analysis reveals the struggles and contestations between various entities as they aim to establish the authority and legitimacy of ideas and practices of schooling refugees – most of whom speak languages other than English and have had several prolonged interruptions in their formal education. I trace how certain ideas come to cohere as a more-or-less durable curriculum assemblage, and how they are mobilized, defended, and challenged. The findings reveal that even under the constraints of assessments and sanctions, the assemblage is disrupted and comes apart as new actors, including refugee parents and community leaders, bring unexpected elements into play, introducing emotion, challenging expertise, questioning motives, and resisting the practices produced by the authorized policy actors.
KW - ANT
KW - assemblage
KW - policy
KW - refugees
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U2 - 10.1080/01596306.2015.977012
DO - 10.1080/01596306.2015.977012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84929843716
VL - 36
SP - 548
EP - 559
JO - Discourse
JF - Discourse
SN - 0159-6306
IS - 4
ER -