Agency and power in classroom names and naming practices

Abstract

Names are used every day in classrooms across the world as an important marker of personal and social identity but educators will, from time to time, encounter names that are unfamiliar or perceived as difficult to pronounce. The present study explores teachers’ and students’ language dispositions towards names and how naming practices impact learners and the social space of the classroom. It presents a collection of vignettes collected in an Australian primary school through critical ethnography. The vignettes illustrate the significance of naming for teacher and learner identities. Using analytical insights from Pierre Bourdieu and Jim Cummins, the discussion identifies naming as a pedagogical practice for empowering learners and it challenges the currently held notion of teachers as non-agential in naming practices. The study urges teachers to learn how to properly pronounce their students’ real names and it offers recommendations for future research on naming practices and learner identities.

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