Teachers' Sense-Making About Black Language and Linguistic Justice Pedagogy

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Black students are marginalized by multiple facets of schools, and language can be a key site for this marginalization (Ortiz, 2022). Although scholarship suggests the importance of Black students’ language to emancipatory efforts in education, and consequently the importance of teachers’ ability to honor Black students’ language as an asset, teachers’ sensemaking about Black language remains under-examined. This symposium brings together studies that analyze teachers’ thinking and learning about Black language and linguistic justice pedagogy across multiple content areas and levels of teacher education. Together, these papers offer critical insights in an understudied area, highlighting the nuances of both Black and non-Black teachers’ sensemaking about supporting Black-language-speaking students and offering important implications for supporting teacher learning toward linguistic justice.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• Samantha Marshall, North Carolina State University

Papers

• Black Mathematics Teachers' Flexible Language Use and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy - Amelia Q. Rivera, North Carolina State University; Valencia Hicks-Harris, Empower All, Inc.; Samantha Marshall, North Carolina State University

• I Teach_U (Un)Learn: Centering Black Educators' Experience Integrating Africana Vernacular English in Classroom Instruction - Monisha W. Atkinson, East Carolina University

• Why Would I Not? Exploring the Sense-Making Around African American Language Among Two STEM Teachers - Nickolaus A. Ortiz, Georgia State University; Quentin Sedlacek, Southern Methodist University

Discussant

• April D. Baker-Bell, University of Michigan