International Journal of Multicultural Education

Connecting Through Mapping

Noah Borrero — 2024-04-29

In this introduction to the special issue of IJME, we highlight the tensions and possibilities of maps and mapping as scholarly pursuits in critical, justice-oriented education. We discuss the potential for maps to portray deeply personal stories and perspectives of the world while also acknowledging their sometimes fixed and hierarchical attributes. Through this discussion, we show how maps can be potent forces of connection or separation. The authors in this special issue showcase the challenges and opportunities of mapping scholarship and reveal its promise to inspire connection and collective action towards theory-building, advocacy, and social transformation in education.

Walking the Map

Kimberly Powell — 2024-04-29

In this article, I discuss how walking as mapping serves as a method for observing and disrupting spatial geopolitics, opening possibilities for alternative systems of living. I explore three theoretical perspectives—posthumanism, Indigenous and decolonializing theories of land, and Black geography—that, while distinct, nonetheless share some overlapping characteristics: the recognition and contestation of knowledge systems, the turn toward a relational ethics of living, and a call for critical and creative methods of intervention into existing systems. In the final half of the paper, I consider these orientations and their call for creative and critical methods of intervention as I review my scholarship on walking and how it has served as a form of counterstory mapping.

“A Brief Moment in the Sun”

Amber Neal-Stanley — 2024-04-29

White backlash is the immediate, violent response of some white people to the actual and perceived racial and educational progress of oppressed groups. In this paper, we take a historical detour to map this phenomenon, specifically in the history of K-12 Black education. We demonstrate that the current state of education is not an exceptional moment, but part of a long genealogy of anti-Black educational violence and white backlash. Yet, we suggest that operating from an understanding of the inevitability and imminence of white backlash offers necessary tools in the continued fight for liberatory Black educational futures.

Seeing the Unseen

Racheal Banda — 2024-04-29

A hyper-standardized and alarmist educational climate in the U.S. propagates deficit discourses about students and creates a roadblock for teachers seeking to center their students’ lives through critical and multicultural pedagogies. Scholars have called for attention to mapping as a pedagogical tool to unearth and push back against sociospatial injustice. In line with this, I offer the tool of critical geospatial mapping and provide two examples of how its application allowed preservice and in-service teachers to see the previously unseen strengths and resiliencies of historically-marginalized and multicultural communities. This allowed them to critique and reframe deficit narratives.

Exploring the Identities of Korean Americans Through Identity Journey Mapping in a Study Abroad Program

Hyesun Cho — 2024-04-29

This study explores the identities of Korean American college students through identity journey maps during a faculty-led study abroad program in Korea. Drawing from Asian Critical theory (AsianCrit), this study presents how participants of Korean descent challenged a monolithic and unitary notion of Korean American identity while acknowledging multifaceted, dynamic, and fluid nature of their transnational identity. Furthermore, it suggests that identity journey maps can serve as a pedagogical tool to counter racial stereotypes and discrimination against Asian Americans.

Higher Education Access for Undocumented Students in the United States

Katherine Cumings Mansfield — 2024-04-29

This article focuses on higher education access for undocumented immigrants in the United States. Since individual states develop and govern their own policies, the political landscape around college access is always in a state of flux. This is confusing to school counselors, families, and students. We use cartography to make sense of this increasingly complex policy terrain. In addition to displaying a state-by-state overview of access and funding options for undocumented students, we interrogate the (un)intended consequences of these policies and reveal “sites for change and activism” (Marx, 2023, p. 286).