Different Approaches to a Shared Dilemma: Challenging Racism Through Anti-Oppressive Literacy Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium showcases three studies that investigate different approaches for supporting K-12 teachers in using language and literacy instruction as a vehicle for explicitly engaging with and challenging racism. The studies were conducted by researchers from four universities spanning a variety of contexts in the United States: rural and urban, midwestern and northern, as well as racially homogeneous and heterogeneous communities. Each study interrogates a different approach to a shared dilemma: In order to challenge racism through anti-oppressive literacy education, what do teachers need to be supported in seeing? What can teachers be supported in doing? And how can this support be provided to teachers?

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Sakeena Everett, University of Georgia - Athens

Papers

• Black Textualities as a Tool for Literacy Educators' Explorations of Blackness and Antiblackness - Justin Avery Coles, UMass Amherst College of Education

• English Teachers' Inclusion of Race in Teaching About Language Variation - Mike Metz, Univeristy of Missouri

• Supporting Language and Literacy Educators to Wrestle With Race in Text-Based Discussions - Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, University of Pennsylvania; Katie Danielson, University of Portland; Chenelle Boatswain, University of Pennsylvania; Elizabeth Gotwalt, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, University of Pennsylvania