Communities of Inquiry as Literacy Innovation: The Role of the Imagination and Local Knowledge in a Period of Common Core Standards

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The call for innovative reforms in schools seems to be shared by politicians, educators, and researchers across the political spectrum. Underlying this apparent consensus, however, are questions that draw out important differences in how we conceptualize educational innovation. In this symposium, we offer an alternative approach to literacy innovation: as communities of inquiry that can be a platform for problem-posing, authoring buried histories, and social critique. We unsettle prevalent demarcations in current literacy reforms in order to (1) examine conceptually and empirically how literacy and the arts, when situated within collaborative research, are uniquely suited for learning from subordinated knowledges, and (2) point to locally-constituted inquiry communities as a vehicle for change and for democratizing knowledge (Mignolo, 2011).

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Section 3: Social Context of Multiple Languages and Literacies

Chair

• Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Reconsidering the Location of Innovation: Grassroots Inquiry and Educational Change - Maria Paula Ghiso, Teachers College, Columbia University; Rob Simon, University of Toronto; Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania

• Innovation Behind Bars: The Power of Creative Writing in Prison - Deborah A. Appleman, Carleton College

• Public Murals and Subaltern Histories - Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania; David Eric Low, University of Pennsylvania

• The Dark Fantastic: Emancipating the Imagination Through an Urban Literacy Practitioner-Researcher Partnership - Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Susan L. Lytle, University of Pennsylvania