This article contributes to research surrounding language education for refugee-background adults by zeroing in on one English as a New Language classroom for refugee-background mothers, embedded within a US-based family literacy programme. By examining the ways the mothers socially positioned themselves when disrupting a well-documented classroom interactional pattern, that is Initiation-Response-Feedback or IRF, I demonstrate how these disruptions opened up opportunities for the women to mediate their own and others' learning as they made intercontextual connections that centred their own questions, experiences, relationships and knowledge, which may render class discourse, content and activities more personally and culturally relevant. Implications include adopting learner-centred pedagogies, such as participatory approaches to language instruction. A new framework for examining power relations in curricula, instruction and educational policy is offered, drawing on the construct of" rights and duties" from social positioning theories.