Laura Valdiviezo

Prof. Valdiviezo’s interest is in re-conceptualizing and reforming schools as loci of change for social justice. Schools can be sites for reforming education as much as for re-conceptualizing what is valued and disseminated as knowledge. In her work, Prof. Valdiviezo examines diversity, pluralism, and knowledge production in institutional policy as a way to understand how inequality is reproduced but also how it can be contested. She draws on sociocultural, sociohistorical and comparative perspectives applied to discourse and ideology in language policy, intercultural/multicultural education, bilingual/multilingual and Indigenous education. She frames her comparative analysis in epistemologies from the south, alternative knowledges and cultural practices.

As an education ethnographer Prof. Valdiviezo conducts participant observation in the context of public schools serving culturally, linguistically and racially diverse students. Prof. Valdiviezo's field work has taken place in international rural/urban contexts including Indigenous and Afro-Latin American communities in the Americas as well as urban schools serving recent immigrant and refugee families in the United States. Her recent projects and partnerships concern the work of educators and youth in Ethnic Studies programs. In these contexts, she pays attention to the role educators and youth can play as political actors. She studies how actors understand diversity, how they enact language policy and how they transform inequity through pedagogy. 

Prof. Valdiviezo’s research has been published in the Review of Research in Education, the International Journal for the Sociology of Language, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Intercultural Education, Cultural Studies of Science Education, Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, and the Revista Peruana de Investigación Educativa among others. Her editorial and board service includes the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, the International Journal of Multicultural Education, Race, Ethnicity and Education. For two terms, 2014-2019, with Sally Campbell Galman, Prof. Valdiviezo served as Editor-in-Chief of Anthropology and Education Quarterly. Recently, she became the editor of the award winning education book series Language, Culture and Teaching, founded by Sonia Nieto.

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