Affirming Students' Rights to Their Own Language While Promoting Their Acquisition of Dominant Cultural Competence

• In Event: Vice-Presidential Session. The Pursuit of Truth "Turnt Up": Considerations for Advancing Racial Literacy Beyond This Space and Time

Abstract

Author (2022) extension of earlier scholarship surrounding racial literacy (Guinier, 2004 & Sealey-Ruiz, 2011, 2013, 2021) promotes investigating ways that language is (still) used to “race people.” Within schools, such ‘racing’ occurs through perpetuation of the hegemony of Standard English in ways that unnecessarily pathologize youths’ “home languages” and “languages-of-the-heart.” Grounded in racial literacy, this research investigates ways that language is often enacted to ‘race’ ethnolinguistically minoritized youth in schools. This research employs grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 2017; Strauss & Corbin) and the constant comparative method of qualitative analysis (Glaser, 1965) to analyze data captured within classroom artifacts generated by ethnolinguistically diverse 6th grade students in Northern California.

The data analyzed through this research were captured within student-teacher interactive journals, students’ linguistic attitude survey responses, and my practitioner-researcher’s research journals (generated within my former 6th grade classroom in the California Capitol Region). Each of these classroom artifacts center the ethnolinguistic vitality of the nondominant Englishes within students’ linguistic repertoires.


Methods: The data analyzed through this research were captured within student-teacher interactive journals, students’ linguistic attitude survey responses, and my practitioner-researcher’s research journals (generated within my former 6th grade classroom in the California Capitol Region). Each of these classroom artifacts center the ethnolinguistic vitality of the nondominant Englishes within students’ linguistic repertoires.

The present study addresses calls issued by Author (2022), Bloome, et al (2019), Sealey-Ruiz (2021), and others pertaining to the needed theorization surrounding racial literacies and the further interrogation of ways to counter the racialization of marginalized communities. This research also highlights the beliefs expressed by some ethnolinguistically minoritized youths about ways that they are ‘raced’ by language within schools (resulting from the ways that their teachers promote their acquisition of CCSS ELA learning objectives and CA ELD standards).

Author

• BernNadette Thokozile Best-Green, San Joaquin Delta College
  Presenting Author