Educating African Immigrant Youth

Book excerpt: "Black African immigrant youth and young adults from countries south of the Sahara, among the most rapidly growing immigrant groups in the US given immigration, resettlement, and asylum programs, have long demonstrated varied racial, ethnic, gendered, cultural, linguistic, religious, and transnational identities in their diverse schooling and education practices. Moreover, African immigrant youth enacting complex, embodied practices within and across varied schooling and educational contexts, and at the interplay of language, literacy, and civic learning and action taking, complicate urgent questions of which students may engage civically in schools and communities, and how they may do so. Thus, transformative education research to support diverse schooling, education, and civic engagement experiences for African immigrant and refugee students will increasingly depend on enacting generative research frameworks, teaching approaches, and innovative methodologies. Such research and teaching hold possibilities for assisting and preparing researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and community-based educators to identify key schooling, education and civic engagement practices associated with student's varied identities, and / or taking up research approaches and learning contexts that affirm and extend the identified practices"--