Segregation by Experience - by Jennifer Keys Adair (Paperback)

About the Book

"Early childhood can be a time of immense discovery, and educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination toward learning. And some teachers do, engaging with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative. In Segregation by Experience, the authors set out to study how Latinx children exercise agency in their classrooms-children who don't often have access to these kinds of learning environments. The authors filmed a classroom in which an elementary school teacher, Ms. Bailey, made her students active participants. But when the authors showed videos of these black and brown children wandering around the classroom, being consulted for their ideas, observing and participating by their own initiative, reading snuggled up, shouting out ideas and stories without raising their hands, and influencing what they learned about, the response was surprising. Teachers admired Ms. Bailey but didn't think her practices would work with their black and brown students. Parents of color-many of them immigrants-liked many of the practices, but worried that they would endanger or compromise their children. Young children thought they were terrible, telling the authors that learning was about being quiet, still, and compliant. The children in the film were behaving badly. Segregation by Experience asks us to consider which children's unique voices are encouraged-and which are being disciplined through educational experience"--

Book Synopsis

Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments.

In Segregation by Experience, the authors filmed and studied a a first-grade classroom led by a Black immigrant teacher who encouraged her diverse group of students to exercise their agency. When the researchers showed the film to other schools, everyone struggled. Educators admired the teacher but didn't think her practices would work with their own Black and brown students. Parents of color-many of them immigrants-liked many of the practices, but worried that they would compromise their children. And the young children who viewed the film thought that the kids in the film were terrible, loud, and badly behaved; they told the authors that learning was supposed to be quiet, still, and obedient. In Segregation by Experience Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove show us just how much our expectations of children of color affect what and how they learn at school, and they ask us to consider which children get to have sophisticated, dynamic learning experiences at school and which children are denied such experiences because of our continued racist assumptions about them.

Review Quotes

"A brilliant, timely demonstration of the power of early childhood classrooms to perpetuate class and race--or to open to children learning through respect for their agency. Eye-opening!"--Barbara Rogoff, University of California-Santa Cruz

"This book delivers powerful and richly textured evidence of the racialization of children's opportunities for enacting agency within their own learning. It uncovers the 'segregation by experience' that is normalized for young children of color and unapologetically confronts these enduring inequities. Incisively challenging and theoretically persuasive, this book will inspire and motivate a reconceptualization of practices in the early grades."--Norma Gonzalez, University of Arizona

"This book offers rich ethnographic insights into Black and brown children's agentic activity in a project-based classroom, both from direct observation and from seeing how their activities are viewed by teachers, parents, and other children. It raises provocative questions for teachers who want to challenge limiting racist ideologies and engage in culturally-respectful, transformative pedagogies that cultivate creativity."--Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, author of Mindful Ethnography: Mind, Heart and Activity for Transformative Social Research

About the Author

Jennifer Keys Adair is associate professor of early childhood education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the director of Agency and Young Children Research Collective. Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove is assistant professor of bilingual bicultural education at Texas State University.