Phoebe Quaynor

Phoebe Quaynor completed her Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction at the Pennsylvania State University in 2024, focusing on multilingualism and coloniality in a Ghanaian classroom. Her dissertation explored the complexities of how teachers and students navigate linguistic identity and agency in the face of lingering colonial pedagogies.

As a transdisciplinary researcher from the global south, she is focused on research and practices aimed at promoting self-determination for formerly colonized peoples. For the past decade, she has pursued pedagogies of consciousness, after encountering African theological perspectives that advocated for indigenous spirituality and self-determination. Through these perspectives and critical pedagogies, she began to interrogate inherited notions of cultural inferiority and seeks to reconcile the fractures caused by colonialism, beginning from the classroom.

She plans to use the post-doctoral fellowship to publish journal articles about the relationship between teachers’ linguistic beliefs, their pedagogical approaches, and the implementation of language instruction in Ghanaian classrooms. Her long-term goal is to cultivate learning communities within the global South that are conscious of their agency both inside and outside the classroom. She plans to achieve this through research, program development, and opportunities that promote self-determination and foster inclusive learning environments.

Her recent co-authored publications includes a journal article, The scholarship of African Children’s literature: issues of representation of critical voices in the conversation with The International Encyclopedia of Education and book chapter, “Language-in-education policy in Ghana: decentering colonial epistemologies and re-envisioning alternative forms of policy” in Severo, C.G, Bernando, E. & Nhampoca, E. (Eds.) Educational Language Policy in African and Diasporic Contexts.