Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies as a Framework to Decolonize Literacy Instruction in an Urban High School

• In Event: 79.050 - MTCC Roundtable Session 36
  In Roundtable Session: 79.050-2 - Pedagogies That Challenge Norms

Abstract

Increased standardization within adolescent literacy education leads to dehumanization of students who become a demographic label, statistic, or problem to fix. In urban contexts cultural and linguistic diversities can be essentialized, viewed as neutral, or erased from the required curriculum; responses that neglect the impact of culture on language, literacy, and learning. This paper draws from a critical ethnographic study on the adolescent literacy instructional practices at an urban Catholic high school. Using culturally sustaining pedagogies as a framework, this research presents the work of one English educator’s agentive practices to negotiate the dissonance between her students’ cultural and linguistic erasure and damaged representation in the mandated curriculum and literacy instructional practices that are restorative, culturally sustaining, and offer joy.

Author

• Leah Panther, Mercer University