This talk is organized by the Research Network of Multilingualism, Education and Epistemic Justice together with a Special Interest group around Multilingualism, Teaching and Learning from a Critical perspective at Stockholm University.

Abstract

Who knows? Negotiating epistemic legitimacy in an adult basic education context

In my talk I introduce my 5-year study “Who knows?” (2020-2025, Finnish Research Council), which examined epistemic resources, norms, and negotiations in an adult basic education (ABE) center in rural Finland. The school serves adult learners with forced migration background, most of whom resettled to Finland from West Asian and African countries.

We (a team of 1-5 researchers) worked with 55 students and 12 teachers and gathered data from about 110 hours of participant observations, 10 unstructured and 35 semi-structured interviews, 88 hours of classroom recordings, and 12 hours of teacher workshops. Drawing on decolonial work around epistemic in/justice (e.g., Cusicanqui, 2012; Dotson, 2014; Mitova, 2020; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018, 2021), we analyzed and theorized our data in several different ways, mostly making use of thematic and discourse analysis.

I offer some examples of the main conceptual take-aways (so far): 1) Transknowledging: Focusing in on two students, I show how they brought together a variety of epistemic resources (languages, use of classroom materials, phone apps, relationships, artistic skills, etc.) to complete underscaffolded tasks and/or enact knowing-as-belonging.

As I discuss these instances that reveal rich epistemic resources in the margins of schooling, I wonder about the possibilities of a pedagogy of “belonging-to-know” (i.e. belonging first). 2) Intertwined epistemic legitimacies: Based on data from teacher workshops, I show how epistemic lines are drawn and blurred (in relation to knowledge of Finnish and math), and how the legitimacy of student and teacher knowledges is intertwined. With these snapshots of the study, I argue that we need sustained spaces for revisiting our epistemic values.

Bio
Johanna Ennser-Kananen (she/her) is Associate Professor of English and Academy Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä’s Department of Language and Communication Studies. Her work focuses on linguistically and culturally sustaining language and teacher education, particularly on epistemic justice in educational contexts. This entails the deconstructing of white, Eurocentric, and anthropocentric norms and the search for more sustainable and community-guided ways of being an academic.

Other areas of her interest and expertise include critical whiteness, intersections of environmental and language justice, and decolonial approaches to migration studies.

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