Empowering African American Student Voices in College

• In Event: Critical Dialogic Education: Sustaining Inclusive Discourse Practices in U.S. Schools

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes
Higher education is made more equitable when all students’ voices are given attention and respect in educational environments. These voices must be in dialogue with faculty as well as researchers and educators (Dunstan & Jaeger, 2015). All forms of discrimination, particularly racism, impact African-American student experiences. A comprehensive linguistic understanding of what factors may contribute to educational barriers for African-American students in higher education is best achieved through a dialogue between students and educators. We share a dialogue- and community-based research model that can be adapted by other faculty members with their students.

Theoretical Framework
African-American students often do not have detailed or accurate information about their own language varieties or their linguistic and cultural value, which can negatively affect their educational experiences (Conference on College Composition and Communication, 2014). We use a sociocultural language variation framework in higher education settings with African-American students. We carry out this work with a focus on linguistic justice and to create a conversation model with students about higher education as a system and the place of African-American faculty and students within it. Our students are our co-researchers and co-constructors of the model. We focus on practical materials and ways to share information that linguistically empower students.

Methods and Data Sources
Our primary research questions are: How do speakers of African-American English experience and navigate the collegiate linguistic terrain? What challenges and biases do they face? How can faculty and administrators effectively be in conversation with students about their linguistic and racial experiences as they navigate higher education?

African-American graduate and undergraduate students conducted 100 interviews with African-American undergraduate students at Minority-Serving, Historically Black, and Predominantly White Universities. The interviews were conducted using a community-based participatory research methodology. Our students brought their own academic and personal lived experiences to the work (Cress et al., 2013). We present findings from the interviews that our students conducted with their peers, which lend insight into how African-American students experience the complex and varied linguistic expectations of higher education.

Results
Participant feedback reveals that African-American students frequently face linguistic bias and may benefit from additional support and guidance as they navigate the linguistic terrain of higher education. African-American college students receive conflicting messages surrounding how they should communicate, and faculty have varying approaches to how they address language variation. As a result, throughout the corpus of interviews, African-American undergraduates discussed the issue of linguistic double consciousness—and the accompanying tensions surrounding personal and cultural linguistic and racial authenticity--and spoke at length about competing pressures and expectations surrounding his verbal performance and behavior.

Scholarly Significance
These findings help create a model of dialogical assessment for what linguistic information African-American students need to be successful in higher education and how faculty can accept communicative and educational responsibility for establishing pathways for students to access content about language, culture, and education in ways that connect their personal linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences to empirical, academic knowledge about linguistic and racial inequalities in higher education.

Authors

• Anne Harper Charity-Hudley, University of California Santa Barbara

• Christine L. Mallinson, University of Maryland - Baltimore County