Politically agentive communicative silence in adult newcomer education

Note: Registration link sent to all OISE Community members via email.

We are pleased to invite you to our online Focus on Research lecture series for 2023-24 with “from research to practice and back again” as the theme. All OISE community members are welcome to attend. 

Newcomers have historically been both included and excluded in Canadian society, valued as future economic participants but often portrayed as passive, grateful recipients with knowledge deficits to be corrected. This tension appears in adult education, even in the context of non-profit and community-based organizations, which reflect market logics based on precarity, hyperindividualism and competition. In such spaces, newcomer students’ active contributions to learning may be disregarded, including in how they respond to offensive or harmful teaching practices. 

In her talk, Professor Entigar will present theoretical and empirical insights regarding adult newcomers’ use of politically agentive communicative silence (PACS) as a strategy to object to problematic teaching practices while maintaining their safety and membership as students. This cross-disciplinary work has vital implications for teaching and research with adult newcomers and other culturally and linguistically dynamic people, suggesting new thinking in terms of pedagogical practice as well as what “counts” as data.