Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
Harvard Educational Review, 2023
In this historical inquiry, Belén Hernando-Lloréns uses the case of one young Spanish woman who w... more In this historical inquiry, Belén Hernando-Lloréns uses the case of one young Spanish woman who was suspended for wearing a hijab to school to argue that norms of convivencia in culturally and racially diverse educational spaces work as a practice of abject ion that excludes in the name of inclusion. She examines three strategies that made this girl’s veiling an issue of pub lic safety: problematizing Muslim girls’ veiled
bodies, normalizing what the responsible female citizen’s body looks like, and pathologizing the desire to veil. This inquiry, which is based on the analysis of policy and law, media, and educational research, cont ends that norms of convivencia in education carry embedded notions of a salvationist agenda that other and exclude those who deviate from normative, liberal images of a responsible personhood.
Conviviality in Education and the Making of Difference
“Conviviality in education and the making of difference” aims to feature the work of established ... more “Conviviality in education and the making of difference” aims to feature the work of established and emerging scholars worldwide from a variety of academic fields and disciplines that explore critical approaches to understand the colonial legacies of conviviality in education today using a wide range of methodological and theoretical frameworks. Conviviality tends to denote an ideal where individuals and groups from different political, racial, or cultural experiences come to live together in harmony, leaving conflict behind (Itçaina, 2006). This interdisciplinary special issue aims to theorize and critique the cultural thesis of conviviality and how it may attempt to order lives and societies and the resistances to such order. We are interested in the epistemes that produce conviviality within various cultural/historical spaces, and its role in the fabrication of “human genres” (Wynter, 2006), in the production of colonial modes of governance (Mbembe, 2001), in the construction of notions of humanness (Fanon, 1967; Wynter, 2003), and as a technology of modern governmentality (Hernando-Lloréns, 2019a; 2019b).
This special issue aims to disentangle the multiplicity of meanings that conviviality takes up as a practice of modern governmentality and how it has been thought and practiced historically as it relates to race, ethnicity, gender or religion. Thus, we are interested in bringing together critical scholarship that expands, complicates, and interrogates the discourse of conviviality in education beyond harmonious coexistence or conflict resolution in diverse societies to probe the interrelationship of conviviality with the production of difference and (in)equality. We invite works from scholar worldwide that focus on the production of categories of difference, questions of the human, educative practice, historization of conviviality, law and legal definitions, or the performativity of conviviality. We welcome post/decolonial, post-foundational, womanist, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, critical race theory, antiblackness, indigenous, afrofuturistic, and/or queer perspectives engaging with conviviality in and out of education and in relationship to difference. Rather than starting from pre-given categories of difference, this special issue seeks contributions that can extend Achille Mbembe’s (2001) call for inquiries of how “ordinary people” engage conviviality within post/decolonial modes of governance and inquiry: “the myriad ways ordinary people guide, deceive, and toy with power instead of confronting it directly” (p. 128).
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2020
This article examines the way a group of Latina girls responded to instances of sexual harassment... more This article examines the way a group of Latina girls responded to instances of sexual harassment in a public high school in Madrid (Spain). I begin with a current event: educational reforms seeking to address the ‘problem’ of youth democratic disengagement. Drawing on ethnographic and genealogical modes of inquiry, I examine the subjective capacities (technologies of the body) that were being developed by these girls in the attempt to respond to instances of sexual harassment—silencing and under-sexualizing their bodies. This study steps back from any straightforward truth-claim about education, citizenship, and responsibility in democratic societies in favour of taking a longer view of how citizens are produced within its situated democratic culture—here, regime of conviviality. This article concludes that these girls’ bodily response to instances of sexual harassment in school cannot be dissociated from the historical production of the logics of conviviality that grounds this educational reform, where dissent is displaced from democratic culture. Ultimately, this article transcends notions of the political in human agency that parallels responsible citizenship with resisting social norms to conclude that notions of the political in human agency cannot be dislocated from the historically contingent discursive traditions in which they are located.
The Handbook of Critical Theoretical Research Methods in Education, 2021
This chapter is the story of my ontological and epistemological journey as a researcher in a stud... more This chapter is the story of my ontological and epistemological journey as a researcher in a study on convivencia —the ideal of living together in harmony in diverse societies—as a technology of modern governmentality in the making of the other in contemporary education in Spain (Hernando-Llorens, 2019). It is the story of learning to do what I was told “good” research was about: letting your data “speak” to theory (Denzin, 2009). This chapter is situated in the “empirical turn” in the postfoundational methodologies in education, without lapsing into empiricism and within the postfoundational and feminist tradition in educational research (Britzman, 1997; Koro-Ljungberg, 2015; Lather, 2009; St Pierre & Pillow, 2000). My research contributes to the call of Elizabeth St. Pierre and Wanda S. Pillow’s (2000) to “work the ruins” after the postmodern and postfoundational shift in educational research in the 1980s and 1990s. I do so by depicting how I got my hands dirty, so to speak, with archival and ethnographic data (interviews, participant observation, focus groups, and so on), a task that was placed in the postmodernism’s empirical turn, “where theoretical concerns increasingly have become expressed in investigations of an empirical kind” (Seidman & Alexander, 2020, p. 23).
Curriculum Inquiry, 2019
This article traces the conditions that made possible the legislation of police surveillance of s... more This article traces the conditions that made possible the legislation of police surveillance of schools as a “solution” to the “problems” of convivencia in school, during a period of social and racial diversification of Spanish society. During the 1980s and 1990s, convivencia—the ideal of living together in harmony–served as a discourse for producing a new imaginary of conviviality in a new liberal-democratic political culture after a long dictatorship. However, since 2000, the “problem” of convivencia reassembled in Spain’s public sphere as a “problem” of diversity, violence, and public safety. But what is it about convivencia in diverse schools and society that has made it seem reasonable to have police surveil schools and students as a solution to the “problems” of convivencia? Through the critical encounter of historical and ethnographic analysis of educational policy and printed media, I interrogate the notion of convivencia by tracing the ways in which “problems” of convivencia have been deployed in Spain’s cultural politics to produce and differentiate citizens both within and outside the educational field. I argue that convivencia has functioned as a moving target in forming the ideal citizen and has embedded a division that differentiates human bodies by gendering and racializing their attributes through a civilizing agenda.
Bilingual Research Journal, 2017
Through two qualitative case studies conducted over two years, this research examines the educati... more Through two qualitative case studies conducted over two years, this research examines the educational practices and perceptions of two working-class Mexican transnational families currently living in a Midwestern city in the United States. Findings indicate that for transnational families and their children, educational inclusion is about successfully developing the languages and language repertoires that children will need in their translocal educational institutions “here” and “there.” Understanding Mexican transnational parents’ perceptions of their children’s educational needs may provide new insights into the ways in which their schooling experiences could be improved in more inclusive terms.
Recent Conference Presentations by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
This presentation is the story of an ontological and epistemological journey as a researcher. It ... more This presentation is the story of an ontological and epistemological journey as a researcher. It contributes to conversations surrounding the “politics and ethics of evidence” and the value of qualitative work in addressing matters of equity and social justice (Lather, 2006). It subscribes to a postfoundational and a decolonial tradition that interrogates the complicity between, on the one hand, the faith in theory, truth, and evidence and, on the other, the fact that the racial Other has been described as incapable of truth telling, of giving—precisely—evidence (Spivak, 1998, p. 214). Specifically, it interrogates the category of experience in a study with a group of immigrant Latina girls in a high school in Madrid, Spain. It excavates the paradox generated by two axioms in educational research: 1) the importance of reclaiming the place of providing evidence (of telling truths), even the importance of truth; and 2) upholding the “vanguardism of truth-evidence-theory” that can generate oppression in its name (p. 38).
AERA 2020 (Cancelled)
This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bil... more This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bilingual children as more and less “effective” in the US. Specifically, it inquires the specific strategies of “effective” language teaching (diagnosis, planning, instruction, and assessment) that makes some teachers more successful in the education of bilingual children. I propose that the talking about the “effective” teacher of bilingual children, as in current educational policy and scholarship, generates cultural assumptions about who is the bilingual child and engenders differences among bilingual children that the teacher is to notice and act on them. This presentation is part of a larger study that historicizes the logics that made possible, in the 2000s, the reassembly of the bilingual child as a quantitative object of federal and state scrutiny in the name of equity and justice.
AERA 2020 (cancelled)
The purpose of this presentation is to explore how convivencia in education works as a strategy o... more The purpose of this presentation is to explore how convivencia in education works as a strategy of modern governmentality in the production and differentiation of citizens through the mobilization of “norms of convivencia”. I depict how the legislation and implementation of norms in convivencia in school policy serves as a technology to exclude diverse children, in the name of exclusion—what I call technologies of abjection (Kowalczyk & Popkewitz, 2005). I approach this analysis through the case of Najwa, a young Muslim immigrant girl, who was suspended from a public high school in Madrid (Spain) for wearing the hijab in class. As prescribed in her high school’s norms of convivencia, students could not wear caps or other head-coverings at school. Because Najwa refused to uncover her head, she was suspended from class and remained in a room in the administration office doing homework. When her parents enrolled her in another local high school without a head-covering ban, the School Board changed its convivencia policy to prohibit the use of any form of head-covering. When Najwa’s parents took the issue to court, both the local court and the Supreme Court in Madrid ruled against veiling in public schools in the name of “public safety.” The judicial ruling resolved that the school’s decision had not violated Najwa’s right of freedom of religion, and that her suspension from school had been a necessary decision because her veiled body posed a threat to society and could have an “improper proselytizing effect”. Drawing on Najwa’s case, I ask: How have norms of convivencia contributed to the making and unmaking of citizens in uneven ways? What specific strategies assembled in the logics that made possible suspend Najwa from school in the name of public safety?
Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, 2019
This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bil... more This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bilingual children as more and less “effective” in the United States. Specifically, it inquires the specific strategies of “effective” language teaching (diagnosis, planning, instruction, and assessment) that makes some teachers as more successful in the education of bilingual children. I propose that the talking about the “effective” teacher of bilingual children, as in current educational policy and education research, generates cultural assumptions about who is the bilingual child and engenders differences among bilingual children that the teacher is to notice and act on them. This presentation is part of a larger scholarship that traces ethnographically and genealogically the logics that made possible, in the 2000s, the reassemble of the bilingual child as a quantitative object of federal and state scrutiny in the name of equity and justice.
This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bil... more This presentation traces the production of the rationale that ranks the practices of teaching bilingual children as more and less “effective” in the United States. Specifically, it inquires the specific strategies of “effective” language teaching (diagnosis, planning, instruction, and assessment) that makes some teachers as more successful in the education of bilingual children. I propose that the talking about the “effective” teacher of bilingual children, as in current educational policy and education research, generates cultural assumptions about who is the bilingual child and engenders differences among bilingual children that the teacher is to notice and act on them. This presentation is part of a larger scholarship that traces ethnographically and genealogically the logics that made possible, in the 2000s, the reassemble of the bilingual child as a quantitative object of federal and state scrutiny in the name of equity and justice.
I view teaching as the practice of making particular kinds of bilingual children (Hacking, 2006; Popkewitz, 2010). This assumption begins with a historical note, that the teacher of bilingual students is not born, but rather made through practices that order and classify its performance. These practices are given intelligibility through the assemblage and connections of language-in-education policies, theories of (language) learning, curriculum models, and classroom practices. In order to examine discourses and practices of “effective” bilingual teaching, I group my analysis into four genres: language-in-education policy documents, bilingual teacher education textbooks, educational language policy reform literature, and educational science research. From this perspective, I emphasize two federal curriculum reforms pertaining to bilingual students in the U.S., beginning in the 2000s, No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act, and the policy materials that stem from those reforms at the state level WIDA English Language Development standards—adopted in 37 states—and the California ELD standards.
The significance of this study lies in the need to investigate in what ways bilingual children continue to be excluded from education, even under language-in-education policies and practices that aim to be "inclusive."
AERA , 2018
I start this presentation by bringing up front the epistemological and ontological journey that b... more I start this presentation by bringing up front the epistemological and ontological journey that becomes the foundation of my research on immigrant youth construction and differentiation as citizens through the mobilization of discourses of convivencia in education in Spain in the present. I start by clarifying how I made out of the tensions and contradictions in this study an object of epistemological and ontological inquiry. Patty Lather’s (2007) metaphor of “getting lost” serves as a theoretical/methodological foundation of this study. Despite its disorienting connotation, the metaphor of “getting lost” is of less about not knowing what to do, and more about deconstructing the categories that we know and we are certain and familiar with.
Other Publications by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
Guia de Cinema e Migrações Transnacionais, 2018
En esta entrevista realizada durante la conferencia Contested Modernities: Indigenous and Afro-De... more En esta entrevista realizada durante la conferencia Contested Modernities: Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Experiences in Latin-America, auspiciada por la Universidad de Texas en Austin el pasado febrero, Boaventura de Sousa Santos explica la relación entre los movimientos sociales y la academia. Se apoya en la idea de la traducción intercultural como una forma de establecer relaciones significativas entre distintos grupos étnicos, raciales y culturales. Además, critica la necesidad de los cánones literarios y propone la inclusión de nuevos textos en las universidades.
Papers by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Journal of Curriculum Studies, Jun 16, 2020
Proceedings of the 2022 AERA Annual Meeting, 2022
Proceedings of the 2022 AERA Annual Meeting, 2022
Curriculum Inquiry, Dec 28, 2018
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Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
bodies, normalizing what the responsible female citizen’s body looks like, and pathologizing the desire to veil. This inquiry, which is based on the analysis of policy and law, media, and educational research, cont ends that norms of convivencia in education carry embedded notions of a salvationist agenda that other and exclude those who deviate from normative, liberal images of a responsible personhood.
This special issue aims to disentangle the multiplicity of meanings that conviviality takes up as a practice of modern governmentality and how it has been thought and practiced historically as it relates to race, ethnicity, gender or religion. Thus, we are interested in bringing together critical scholarship that expands, complicates, and interrogates the discourse of conviviality in education beyond harmonious coexistence or conflict resolution in diverse societies to probe the interrelationship of conviviality with the production of difference and (in)equality. We invite works from scholar worldwide that focus on the production of categories of difference, questions of the human, educative practice, historization of conviviality, law and legal definitions, or the performativity of conviviality. We welcome post/decolonial, post-foundational, womanist, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, critical race theory, antiblackness, indigenous, afrofuturistic, and/or queer perspectives engaging with conviviality in and out of education and in relationship to difference. Rather than starting from pre-given categories of difference, this special issue seeks contributions that can extend Achille Mbembe’s (2001) call for inquiries of how “ordinary people” engage conviviality within post/decolonial modes of governance and inquiry: “the myriad ways ordinary people guide, deceive, and toy with power instead of confronting it directly” (p. 128).
Recent Conference Presentations by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
I view teaching as the practice of making particular kinds of bilingual children (Hacking, 2006; Popkewitz, 2010). This assumption begins with a historical note, that the teacher of bilingual students is not born, but rather made through practices that order and classify its performance. These practices are given intelligibility through the assemblage and connections of language-in-education policies, theories of (language) learning, curriculum models, and classroom practices. In order to examine discourses and practices of “effective” bilingual teaching, I group my analysis into four genres: language-in-education policy documents, bilingual teacher education textbooks, educational language policy reform literature, and educational science research. From this perspective, I emphasize two federal curriculum reforms pertaining to bilingual students in the U.S., beginning in the 2000s, No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act, and the policy materials that stem from those reforms at the state level WIDA English Language Development standards—adopted in 37 states—and the California ELD standards.
The significance of this study lies in the need to investigate in what ways bilingual children continue to be excluded from education, even under language-in-education policies and practices that aim to be "inclusive."
Other Publications by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
Papers by Belén Hernando-Lloréns, PhD
bodies, normalizing what the responsible female citizen’s body looks like, and pathologizing the desire to veil. This inquiry, which is based on the analysis of policy and law, media, and educational research, cont ends that norms of convivencia in education carry embedded notions of a salvationist agenda that other and exclude those who deviate from normative, liberal images of a responsible personhood.
This special issue aims to disentangle the multiplicity of meanings that conviviality takes up as a practice of modern governmentality and how it has been thought and practiced historically as it relates to race, ethnicity, gender or religion. Thus, we are interested in bringing together critical scholarship that expands, complicates, and interrogates the discourse of conviviality in education beyond harmonious coexistence or conflict resolution in diverse societies to probe the interrelationship of conviviality with the production of difference and (in)equality. We invite works from scholar worldwide that focus on the production of categories of difference, questions of the human, educative practice, historization of conviviality, law and legal definitions, or the performativity of conviviality. We welcome post/decolonial, post-foundational, womanist, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, critical race theory, antiblackness, indigenous, afrofuturistic, and/or queer perspectives engaging with conviviality in and out of education and in relationship to difference. Rather than starting from pre-given categories of difference, this special issue seeks contributions that can extend Achille Mbembe’s (2001) call for inquiries of how “ordinary people” engage conviviality within post/decolonial modes of governance and inquiry: “the myriad ways ordinary people guide, deceive, and toy with power instead of confronting it directly” (p. 128).
I view teaching as the practice of making particular kinds of bilingual children (Hacking, 2006; Popkewitz, 2010). This assumption begins with a historical note, that the teacher of bilingual students is not born, but rather made through practices that order and classify its performance. These practices are given intelligibility through the assemblage and connections of language-in-education policies, theories of (language) learning, curriculum models, and classroom practices. In order to examine discourses and practices of “effective” bilingual teaching, I group my analysis into four genres: language-in-education policy documents, bilingual teacher education textbooks, educational language policy reform literature, and educational science research. From this perspective, I emphasize two federal curriculum reforms pertaining to bilingual students in the U.S., beginning in the 2000s, No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act, and the policy materials that stem from those reforms at the state level WIDA English Language Development standards—adopted in 37 states—and the California ELD standards.
The significance of this study lies in the need to investigate in what ways bilingual children continue to be excluded from education, even under language-in-education policies and practices that aim to be "inclusive."