Pedagogical and Methodological Approaches to Facilitating Critical Conversations With Elementary-Aged Children in Literacy-Rich Contexts

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this symposium, five literacy scholars from diverse backgrounds will present papers that were each guided by the need to discover the possibilities for how educators can facilitate critical conversations, specifically centered on contemporary issues of race, with elementary-aged students. Each paper offers a unique context and methodological approach, and together the research findings will present a range of structures (e.g., writing conferences, literacy circles, interactive read alouds) and approaches that offer both affordances and constraints to the depth and breadth of critical conversations that can occur with students within and outside literacy classrooms. In each of these qualitative research projects, the scholars’ work centers the lives of children and their experiential knowledge in and about the world.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Language and Social Processes

Chair

• Susi Long, University of South Carolina

Papers

• A Space for Critical Conversations: Reimagining the Possibilities of Interactive Read-Aloud - Saba Khan Vlach, The University of Iowa

• Critical Race Literature Circles as Nuanced Methodology: Examining Young African American Children's Sociopolitical Knowledge and Racial Awareness - Wintre Foxworth Johnson, University of Virginia

• Culturally Relevant Interactive Read-Alouds: Examining Pedagogical Practices in a Latinx Space - María G. Leija, University of Texas at San Antonio

• Within and Beyond the Text: Multiple Readings of a Second-Grade Conversation About Slavery - Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College

• Mentor Texts for Contextualizing Figured Worlds: Negotiating Meaning Through Literary Studies of Biographical Narrative Texts - Brenda Ayala Lewis, University of Texas - Austin