Poster #53 - "These Kids Have Stuff to Say": A Multicase Study of English Language Arts Teachers' Critical Dialogues With Students About Racial Injustice Through Literature

• In Event: 21.063 - MTCC Poster Session Three
  In Poster Session: 21.063-4 - Division K Section 4 Poster Session

Abstract

This paper discusses a qualitative exploratory multi-case study that explored how three different teachers chose to talk about racism, police brutality, and racial violence through literature in their English classrooms with their students, and how the novel All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely (2012) mediates these discussions as a tool for critical literacy. This study is framed through Paulo Freire's notions of critical literacy and Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theory of language. In our presentation we share the stories embedded within our three case studies of Lauren, Erin, and Doris' classrooms and how they navigated the tensions inherent with discussing and "reading the world and reading the word" (Friere, 1985) around police brutality and racial injustice.

Authors

• Michelle Falter, North Carolina State University

• Nina Radakovic Schoonover, North Carolina State University