Identity Artefacts and Memory as Pedagogy

Mary-Rose is currently writing up her doctoral research: ‘Reimagining family literacy: exploring the pedagogies of migrating mothers in third sector spaces’. This two-year pedagogical ethnographic study took place in two third-sector organisations in the West Midlands, with an experimental pedagogical space established in each. Three perspectives were explored: the researcher/teacher; third sector practitioners; and refugee and asylumseeking mothers from Somalia, Afghanistan and Kurdistan. The research is underpinned by a postcolonial feminist framework, and approaches literacy from a social practice perspective, that is the being and doing of literacies. The mothers’ presented visual, sensory, and oral methods to represent their socially and historically situated experiences of motherhood, migrancy and literacies. This included using symbolic objects as 'identity artefacts'. The research aims to understand the experiences of migrating mothers in third sector spaces and to expand ways of knowing about teaching and learning beyond government-funded contexts.