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Literacy Teaching and Publicly Engaged Scholarship in Urban Communities

Mon, April 11, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Marriott Marquis, Floor: Level Four, Archives

Abstract

Objectives. For the last four years, I have collaborated with 85 preK-12 teachers and teacher educators in an urban school district in the U.S. Midwest. They include English language arts, Spanish, STEM, and history teachers, guidance counselors, occupational and speech therapists, social workers, parent coordinators, and principals. I have also engaged in conversations with middle and high school students, and representatives from nonprofit educational organizations. We discuss the academic, social, and community engagements of students attending urban public schools referred to as “marginal” and “underperforming.” In an effort to fix schools, the mayor’s office, local teachers’ union, clergy, and social service organizations supported what came to be known as “Bond Issues 50 & 51.” They believed the issues would have assisted with renovating school buildings, modernizing technology, upgrading computer systems, and replicating high-performing schools. The issues failed, yet the need to work with urban schools remains. Highlighting the multimodal, oral, and print narratives of participants, this presentation inquires: What might the narratives of students, teachers, and community members tell us about literacy teaching, learning, and public engagement? How do urban youth and adults take up publicly engaged scholarship?

Theoretical Framework. Culturally relevant and sustaining perspectives guide this work. Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) recognizes the import of multiculturalism and multilingualism, and seeks “to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). CSP relies on Ladson-Billings’ (1995) formulation of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) to deepen young people’s cultural competences, linguistic variances, and literacy practices. Together, culturally relevant and sustaining perspectives support inquiries into how youth and adults understand the intersection of public engagement, literacy teaching, and learning inside and outside schools.

Modes of Inquiry. Highlighting the theoretical, methodological, and praxis-oriented nature of this work, I examine the current state of literacy activity in the field in order to argue for connections to publicly engaged scholarship. To do this, I rely on ethnographic research methods and humanizing, culturally relevant analytic tools to center the multiple perspectives of participants involved in a publicly engaged initiative. Data sources include conversational interviews, observations, story collection, and research journals. Methods connect localized encounters to broader social processes.

Findings. Findings reveal the types of activities youth participate in—with the support of teachers and community partners—during school and non-school time. Their activities point to how they view public engagement as central to their literacy and community lives. Findings from three scenarios—a middle school (oral), a high school (multimodal), and a community site (oral/print) will be shared.

Significance. This work reveals a need to theorize connections among literacy teaching, learning, and public engagement for youth and adults, especially in relation to their lived experiences, academic and community literacies, and forms of social activism.

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