Post 9/11 trauma: A mother’s concern about her adolescent daughter in a Canadian public-school

Amidst of the Islamophobic discourse in a post 9/11 context, this study reflects on my experiences of educating my 11-year old daughter as she constructs her ELL (English Language Learner) identity by hiding her Muslim identity in a Canadian public-school language classroom. The study suggests that the negative image of Muslims as well as the rising hypothesis, “All Muslims are terrorists”, restricts her from expressing her individual experience, opinion and commitment in her L2 (English as a Second/Additional Language) classroom. To write my reflection I have taken into account one particular incident of her classroom practice and the process of making meaning of that incident. My reflective analysis (Dewey, 1910) helps me gain a better understanding of my journey as a mother and strengthens my identity as a Muslim L2 teacher. My daughter attempts to accommodate her expressions along the discourses preferred by her classroom community that gives rise to her multiple, shifted, conflicted, contradictory, and hidden identities (Norton, 1998). It is her awareness of the representation or misrepresentation of her religion by the dominant Western culture that impacts her social and educational trajectories as a learner. Her classroom experiences illustrate how Muslim students may continually negotiate/construct their identity positions and how the affordances and constraints of their religious identity can lead to divergent learning outcomes (Sowden, 2007). I draw on the notions of Language socialization (Duff, 2007) and identity and investment (Norton, 2005) to examine how language intersects with other social categories such as religion. This paper concludes with a call for increased attention to a learner’s religious identity, which may closely relate to successful acquisition of English as an additional language

Chitosan Coating Improves Postharvest Shelf-Life of Mango (<i>Mangifera indica</i> L.)

Mango is an extremely perishable fruit with a short postharvest time, and a considerable proportion of harvested mangoes become spoiled due to the postharvest decay in mango-producing areas of the world. The current study was designed to evaluate the effects of chitosan on the storage life of mango. Mango samples were coated with 750, 1000, and 1500 ppm chitosan solution, before storing them in the open or zip-bags under ambient and refrigeration conditions for different storage periods. Changes in different physical and chemical parameters were recorded to evaluate the treatments’ effectiveness in extending fruit shelf-life and sustaining postharvest quality of mangoes. The results showed that chitosan coating was able to reduce weight loss up to 65% in comparison to the uncoated control. Total mold and bacterial counts were also significantly lower in postharvest mangos when they were coated with chitosan compared to the uncoated samples. In addition, different fruit quality attributes, such as vitamin C content, titratable acidity, sugar content, ash, and protein content were also retained to a considerable extent by the chitosan coatings. Chitosan at refrigeration temperature (4 °C) with zip-bag packaging had a greater positive effect on fruit shelf-life, weight maintenance, and quality attributes than ambient temperature. Among the different coating concentrations, 1000 ppm chitosan solutions could provide better performance to extend the shelf-life of mango fruit while maintaining quality attributes. Altogether, our findings suggest that chitosan coating effectively prolongs the storage life of mango fruit and maintains fruit quality during storage, and offers promising potential for successful commercialization of this edible coating for mango growers and the industry