Literacies of Power: Expanding Youth Advocacy in English Class

• In Event: An Abolitionist Democracy: How Curriculum Serves as a Progenitor to Racial Equity

Abstract

Schools in underserved districts experience pressure to improve achievement outcomes, trapping curricula, teachers, and students in a skills-driven literacy framework, repeatedly reinscribing a racist pedagogy. Although the research community recommends resisting skills-based literacy, researchers often neglect to commit to a research-practice connection, whereby they work closely with teachers in classrooms. Consequently, students have little or no opportunity to engage in research-supported literacies, learning how to advocate for change in their communities. Our study addressed this inequity by forming a research-practice collaboration to design and redesign a unit of instruction implemented in a 12th grade Journalism class. Initial inductive analysis reveals challenges to unit implementation, real-time unit iterations and long-term iterations, designed to expand literacies of power.

Authors

• Valerie Lieberman Marsh, University of Rochester

• Jayne C. Lammers, University of Rochester

• Elizabeth Conroy, Rochester City School District