“I’m supposed to feel like this is my home”. Testing terms of sociopolitical inclusion in an inner-ring suburban high school
| Pages | 519-532 |
| Date | 06 August 2018 |
| Published date | 06 August 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0009 |
| Author | Roozbeh Shirazi |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
“I’m supposed to feel like
this is my home”
Testing terms of sociopolitical inclusion in
an inner-ring suburban high school
Roozbeh Shirazi
Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine how the exercise of administrative authority to suspend
the Muslim Student Association (MSA), an affinity group at a suburban Midwestern high school, was
experienced and perceived by affected students. Notably, it traces the mobilization of the MSA students to
challenge the principal’s authority through formal channels within the district to reopen the affinity group.
In doing so, the students’activism represents an example of dissensus, or mode of political engagement that
challenges top-down models of fostering equity and diversity in schools.
Design/methodology/approach –The data are drawn from a nine-month ethnographic case study at an
inner-ring suburban school in a large Midwestern metropolitan area. Data include participant observation of
classrooms and affinity group meetings, semi-structured individual and group interviews, informal
conversation and analytical memos synthesizing ethnographic fieldnotes.
Findings –Though the school and district have made different investments in strengthening equity and
diversity at the school, transnational and minoritized Muslim students report a school climate that is
characterized by exclusion and racialized surveillance. The principal’s decision to suspend the MSA was
characterized by a narrow understanding of the purpose of the group and the identities of the student
members. The decision to suspend the MSA, however, produced conditions centering the agentive potential of
marginalized and minoritized students.
Originality/value –This paper opens up the tensions challenges of incorporating student voice into
educational decision making. Notably, it highlights important possibilities for political action students when
their voices cannot or will not be heard by those who make decisions on their behalf.
Keywords Immigrants, Decision making, Inclusion, Empowerment, Narratives, Administrators
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This paper engages with the question of how incorporating student voice can increase
equity and belonging in school communities. It begins, however, with the assumption that
the term “incorporation”must be seen as problematic. Incorporation is an act that entails
some form of labor or effort, some certification of what was formerly outside into an inside.
In this way, incorporation becomes political: it is not a given how, or to what effect, or by
what means student voice can be heard, to move from an outside to an inside. The questions
of interest in this paper are which voices count, and how they come to have value. These are
at the heart of understanding the myriad events and relational processes that shape what
equity and belonging look like in urban schools.
As Seashore and Khalifa indicate in their introduction, a growing literature examines
students’sense of belonging in urban educational settings. A related but distinct literature
addresses notions of cultural citizenship, what Renato Rosaldo (1994) described as a lived
expression of the right to be different and the right to belong, in particular the sense of
citizenship and belonging among immigrant and transnational youth (Abu El-Haj, 2009;
Ghaffar-Kucher, 2012; Negrón-Gonzalez, 2015; Shirazi, 2017). Belonging can be understood
as a “feeling-at-home”(Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 10), and in this respect, it is a political concept
that is tied to citizenship, recognition and the right to be heard within schools.
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 56 No. 5, 2018
pp. 519-532
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0009
Received 16 January 2018
Revised 26 April 2018
3 May 2018
8 May 2018
Accepted 10 May 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
519
Testing terms
of sociopolitical
inclusion
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