Overview

The purpose of the Intercultural and Classroom Culture (ICC) research lab is to uncover how the daily life of the early childhood classroom is guided by shared routines, rituals, norms, values, and beliefs. This includes examining how teachers and children socially construct a peer and school culture as they act and react to one another. This also includes understanding how power, language, and ideologies influence the subject positions of children, families, and teachers. Moreover, the ICC research lab aims to explore teacher candidates’ (i.e., preservice teachers) understanding and development of intercultural competence. Intercultural competence is the willingness and ability to respond effectively with young children and families whose backgrounds, ways of thinking, communicating, and behaving are significantly different from the teacher candidates’ norms (Cushner, 2018).

Objectives of the ICC

The objectives of the ICC are to provoke questions that will challenge normative assumptions about children, families, and teachers in various social and cultural contexts.  Such questions would include the following: 

• What role do teacher preparation programs have in enhancing the intercultural competence of teacher candidates?
• How can we create college curricula that will prepare interculturally competent teacher candidates?
• How can we produce pedagogies that are grounded in contextually appropriate practices and indigenous ways of knowing, feeling, and being in classroom spaces?
• How are peer and school cultures grounded in micro and macro level discourses of childhood and teaching?
• Who has the power to create and change the local and global discourses about early childhood education?
• How can we produce and sustain culturally relevant and inclusive classroom spaces?

Current Graduate Students

Mandeep Singh Brar, MS Student

Mandeep (MANDY) is an international student from Punjab (India) with a strong background in Sociology & Education. His research interests revolve around abuse (at homes or in schools), the relationship between the abuser & the abused, childhood memories & related trauma, and the like. He works as a Graduate Research/Teaching Assistant at the “Intercultural and Classroom Culture Lab” under the supervision of Dr. Samara Madrid Akpovo and is the lead GRA for COLAB

Nagham Abou Zeid, MS Student

Nagham is an international student and Fulbright Foreign Scholar from Lebanon. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from the Lebanese American University. She works as a Teaching and Research Assistant in the Intercultural and Classroom Culture Lab under the supervision of Dr. Samara Madrid Akpovo. Nagham’s research interests are centered around prenatal, infancy, and early childhood development throughout adverse environments, especially poverty, and how that affects early onset behavioral disorders, social development, and mental health.

Snigdha Rampal, MS Student

Snigdha is an international student from India. She is a trained graduate teacher (Certified) in English language and Social Sciences with two years of teaching experience in middle and high school. Given her graduate background in political science, she is interested in research regarding policy-making in education, multicultural classroom settings, socio-economic minorities, and the impact of globalization on post-colonial nations.

Selected Publications

(*Denotes graduate student or teacher practitioner)

Madrid Akpovo, S., Kambutu, J. Thapa, S., Nganga, L., & *Mwangi, A (under review). Datafication or high-stakes standardized testing? Exploring the effects of World Bank, neocolonial, and neoliberal educational policies in the Global South. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

Nganga, L., Sisson, J., Thapa, S., Kambutu, J. Madrid Akpovo, S.,  & *Mwangi, A (revise and resubmit). A collaborative cross-cultural approach to compare the 2022 National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards with national early childhood policies in Australia, Kenya, and Nepal. International Journal of Early Years

*Sorrells, C., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2024). Ethic of care and agonist conflict in the toddler classroom. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/146394912412292

*Sorrells, C., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2024). Time for slow care: Bringing slow pedagogy into conversation with care in the infant/toddler classroom. Policy Futures in Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/147821032412

 Nganga, L., Madrid Akpovo, S., Kambutu, J., Thapa, S. & *Mwangi, A. (2023). Educational policies in early childhood education programs in Kenya and Nepal: Challenging unjust binary mindset around curricula policies. Policy Futures in Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103231176587

*Sorrells, C., Madrid Akpovo, S., & *Leclerc, M. (2023). The infant/toddler teacher as willful subject: A critical narrative analysis of gendered discursive regimes in US-based early care and education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491221148754

Thapa, S., & Nganga, L., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2022). Early childhood teachers’ understandings of children’s emotional lives Nepal and Kenya: A majority world perspective. Early Education and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2022.2054258

 *Sorrells, C. & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2022) “You can hold two things to be true at the same time”: The emotional duality of early childhood teachers’ experiences during COVID-19. Journal of Research in Childhood Education DOI:10.1080/02568543.2022.2044415

Madrid Akpovo, S., *Neessen, S., Nganga, L., & *Sorrells, C. (2021). Staying with discomfort: Early childhood teachers’ emotional themes to children’s peer culture aggression. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491211042376

Arndt, S., Madrid Akpovo, S., Tesar, M., Han, T. K., *Huang, F. & *Halladay, M. (2021). Collaborative Online Learning Across Borders (COLAB): Examining the intercultural understandings of preservice-teachers’ using a virtual cross-cultural university-based program. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2021.1880994

Thapa, S., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2020). Cultural humility in an intercultural mentor-mentee relationship: Overcoming emotional “borders and borderlands” of Nepal-mentors and US-mentees. Asia Pacific Journal of Education. DOI/pdf/10.1080/02188791.2020.1848798?needAccess=true

 Madrid Akpovo, S., Thapa, S., & *Halladay, M. (2020). Learning to see teaching as a cultural activity: US preservice-teachers’ significant experiences with Nepali mentor-teachers during an international field experience. Journal of Research in Childhood Education,34(1), 59-7, DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2019.1692107

Thapa, S., & Nganga, L., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2022). Early childhood teachers’ understandings of children’s emotional lives Nepal and Kenya: A majority world perspective. Early Education and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2022.2054258 

*Sorrells, C. & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2022) “You can hold two things to be true at the same time”: The emotional duality of early childhood teachers’ experiences during COVID-19. Journal of Research in Childhood Education DOI:10.1080/02568543.2022.2044415

Madrid Akpovo, S., *Neessen, S., Nganga, L., & *Sorrells, C. (2021). Staying with discomfort: Early childhood teachers’ emotional themes to children’s peer culture aggression. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491211042376

Arndt, S., Madrid Akpovo, S., Tesar, M., Han, T. K., *Huang, F. & *Halladay, M. (2021). Collaborative Online Learning Across Borders (COLAB): Examining the intercultural understandings of preservice-teachers’ using a virtual cross-cultural university-based program. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2021.1880994 

Madrid Akpovo, S., Thapa, S., & *Halladay, M. (2020). Learning to see teaching as a cultural activity: US preservice-teachers’ significant experiences with Nepali mentor-teachers during an international field experience. Journal of Research in Childhood Education,34(1), 59-7, DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2019.1692107

Thapa, S., & Madrid Akpovo, S. (2020). Cultural humility in an intercultural mentor-mentee relationship: Overcoming Emotional “borders and borderlands” of Nepal-mentors and US-mentees. Asia Pacific Journal of Education. DOI/pdf/10.1080/02188791.2020.1848798?needAccess=true

Lash, M., Madrid Akpovo, S. & Cushner, K. (2020). Developing the intercultural competency of early childhood preservice teachers: Preparing teachers for diverse classrooms. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education. DOI.org/10.1080/10901027.2020.1832631 

Nganga, L., Madrid Akpovo, S., Thapa, S., & *Mwangi, A. (2020). How neocolonialism and globalization affects the early childhood workforce in Nepal and Kenya. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, DOI: 10.1177/1463949120929471

Kambutu, J., Madrid Akpovo, S., Nganga, L., Thapa, S., & *Mwangi, A. (2020). Privatization of early childhood education (ECE): Implications for social justice in Kenya and Nepal. Policy Futures in Education,  DOI:10.1177/1478210320922111

Grants Funded

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Choice Neighborhood Grant, Transforming Western Heights, Parents and Caregivers as Educational Partners Collaborative, 2023- present, (199,515)

• Samara Madrid Akpovo as Principal Investigator with Knoxville Community Action Committee (CAC) as Sponsor of “People Plan.”

Tennessee Opportunity Pilot Initiative: Planning Partnership: Low-income families and wrap-around services in the East Knoxville Community: Listening Sessions using a Family-led Research Framework, 2022 (75,613.99).

• Samara Madrid Akpovo as Principal Investigator on UTK subcontract with Knoxville Community Development Center (KCDC), Knoxville Community Action Committee (CAC), & Knoxville Knox-County Head Start.

Online and Hybrid Teaching Support Awards Program, The University of Tennessee, Teaching & Learning Innovation Center, 2020 – (2,250).

 Global Catalyst Program, UTK Center for International Education, The University of Tennessee, 2019 – (29,997).

• In collaboration with The University of Auckland, New Zealand, The University of Melbourne, Australia and The University of Wyoming, USA.

Office of Community Engagement and Outreach 2019-20 Incentive Grant Funding, The University of Tennessee, 2019 – (1,983.47).

• In collaboration with Sarah Neessen, Head Start Teacher, Knoxville-Knox County Head Start.

Teaching Support Awards Program, The University of Tennessee, Teaching & Learning Innovation Center, 2019 – (3,279.84).

 Faculty Senate Research Council Summer Graduate Research Assistantship, The University of Tennessee, Office of Research and Engagement, 2018 – (3,600)

Books

Madrid Akpovo, S., Moran, M.J., Brookshire, R. (Eds) (2018). Collaborative cross-cultural research methodologies in early care and education contexts. New York, NY: Routledge Press.

Madrid, S., Fernie, D., & Kantor, R. (Eds). (2015). Reframing the emotional worlds of the early childhood classroom. New York, NY: Routledge Press.

Fernie, D., Madrid, S., & Kantor, R. (Eds). (2011). Educating toddlers to teachers:  Learning to see and influence the school and peer cultures of classrooms. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.