The Children Come Full: Toward Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Practices in Pre-K–Third-Grade Classrooms

• In Event: Toward a Future of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Early Literacy Classrooms

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework
Culturally sustaining pedagogies answer a fundamental question, “what if the goal of teaching and learning with youth of color was not ultimately to see how closely students could perform White middle-class norms, but rather was to explore, honor, extend, and at times, problematize their cultural practices and investments?” (Authors, 2017, p. 3). This presentation focuses on a conceptual model of culturally sustaining early literacy teaching, illuminated through literacy teaching processes and practices of four early literacy teachers who strive to humanize, affirm, and sustain the voices and stories--the ways of knowing, being, reading, writing, and talking--of young People of Color as full humans. Critical sociocultural theory, culturally sustaining and humanizing pedagogies theoretically inform our work. These perspectives recognize that “education of any kind is inherently political and embedded within power structures that dictate privilege as well as bias and oppression” (Long et al., 2013, p. 422).

Methods, Data Sources and Analysis

This collective presentation shares learnings from a seven year classroom-based study with a multiracial community including a white teacher educator and two Latinx, one Black, and one white high-performing early literacy teachers in two extraordinarily ethnically, linguistically, and racially diverse urban public school contexts. Methodologically, we draw from humanizing approaches (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2017; Author, 2011), which seek answerability in growing to understand phenomena in, and with, and communities. These kinds of methods require “dialogic consciousness‐raising and . . . relationships of dignity and care for both researchers and participants” (Author, 2011, p. 137). Humanizing research methods, or projects in humanization, commit to disrupting systemic inequalities by refusing damage-centered frameworks (Tuck, 2009). With stories as the unit of analysis, sources of data that were dialogically analyzed include recordings and transcripts from biweekly dialogic check-ins, multiple interviews over time, teacher documentation and analysis of culturally sustaining practices, and photo, video, and audio classroom artifacts.


Findings
We share vivid classroom examples that illustrate how the teachers curricularize and wrestle with culturally sustaining early literacy teaching. In addition, we share a conceptual model of culturally sustaining early literacy practices and processes for early literacy contexts. The model and practices showcase a primary finding of this project: early literacy teaching that is culturally sustaining honors and extends children’s and communities' intersecting ways of knowing, ways of being and ways of reading and writing.

Significance
Currently, popular waves of discourse about literacy teaching have focused on scripted, structured phonological and phonemic awareness approaches which are grounded in simple, linear views of reading. In some schools, the rigidity of these approaches, along with corresponding standardized assessments, override critical time for everyday talk, critical questions, and interactive and independent reading and writing, even though talking, questioning, and reading as essential spaces where children’s fullness is sustained as they develop agency, critical thinking skills, and strategic processes for fluent and proficient reading (Duke & Cartwright, 2021). This work stands in contrast to popular early literacy hype, and offers real and refreshing counterpractices that honor the fullness of children and their families and communities.

Authors

• Kindel Turner Nash, Appalachian State University
  Presenting Author

• Alicia Arce-Boardman, Northern Parkway Elementary
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kerry Elson, Central Park East II
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roderick Peele, Northern Parkway School
  Non-Presenting Author

• Haydee Dohrn-Melendez, Central Park East II
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nora Peterman, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author

• Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author