This study speaks to the prominence of ethnocultural difference experienced by six punjabi young girls in Grade 5 at school during non-instructional school times and the extent to which these experiences are playing a role on the self-identity formations for these young girls. This inquiry delves into how these young girls, all born and being raised in Canada, are making sense of their difference and how they are engaged in constructing identities for themselves. A narrative method allowed for linking self-identity to the curriculum of noninstructional school times and how children's experiences of these times plays a role in identity formation. This study reveals some of the complexities and challenges of living as a young girl of a "minority" group brings to identity construction. Complexities and challenges that I attempt to bring to surface with the aid of the in-between space of hydridity, a space Ted Aoki terms Metonymic Space, Trinh Minh-ha's entitles Hybrid Place and Homi Bhabha calls Third Space. Through the framework of poststructuralism, the process of living and constructing identities is illuminated as being multilayered and evolving as it involves negotiations and contestations between how one views oneself and other's perceptions of you. By participating in the co-creating and co-writing of a story titled "A Day in the Life of a Punjabi Girl", the young girls included in this study were provided with an avenue for action and the production of a resource that could inform educators of the educational situation of punjabi girls and help them understand the life-world of these girls at this critical stage in their identity development. This resource may also help educators make changes for future generations of these young girls, and other students from visible minorities, in the school system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/551 |
| Date | 10 April 2008 |
| Creators | Basran, Mandeep Kaur. |
| Contributors | Blades, David W. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Detected Language | English |
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