Story-ing Possibility Space: Becoming With/in Refugee/(Im)migrant Education

Abstract

This dissertation is a story—one among many intra-active (Barad, 2007) stories in a web of differing versions (Gómez, 2019)—that is being told about refugee/(im)migrant education. Theoretical, methodological, and practical in its goals and applications, the project described in this dissertation brought together fourteen teachers/learners/leaders across the United States to discuss, explore, and (re)imagine refugee/(im)migrant education through co-created and co-creative story-ing processes and diffractive methodologies. As a research community, we didn’t start with an end in mind but rather followed our stories where they took us, stepping into curiosity and making knowledge “otherwise—as a mode of wondering and wandering, as a matter of what happens if?” (Taylor, 2021, p. 32). The project articulated in this dissertation, including through three co-written texts that comprise chapter five, shares methodological entanglements and theoretical weavings that may allow for different ethico-onto-epistemological engagements in refugee/(im)migrant education policy, practice, and research. Through story-ing and space making—intra-activity rooted in love and of an intimacy often forgotten in education leadership and policy research—possibility space is forming, becoming with (Haraway, 2016) and in refugee/(im)migrant education.