The Children Come Full: Toward Cultural Sustenance in Early Literacy Contexts

• In Event: Critical Conversation: What Are the Roles of Sociocultural and Socioemotional Variables in the Science of Reading?

Abstract

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?” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 3). Centering on that question, this presentation focuses on a conceptual cultural sustenance model of culturally sustaining early literacy teaching, illuminated through literacy teaching processes and practices of four early literacy teachers and a principal who strive for cultural sustenance by humanizing and affirming the voices and stories--the ways of knowing, being, reading, writing, and talking--of young People of Color.

Critical sociocultural theory, culturally sustaining and humanizing pedagogies theoretically inform this 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). The goal of humanizing and culturally sustaining theoretical frameworks is to deeply understand and interrogate the perspectives of communities from within.

Our seven year school-based study includes a multiracial community of a white teacher educator, a Black administrator, one Latinx, two Black, and one white high-performing early literacy teachers in two ethnically, linguistically, and racially diverse urban public school contexts. Methodologically, we draw from humanizing approaches (San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017; Paris & Winn, 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” (Paris & Winn, 2011, p. 137). With stories as the unit of analysis, sources of data that were dialogically analyzed include transcripts and notes from dialogic check-ins and in-the-moment conversations, interviews over time, teacher documentation and analysis of culturally sustaining practices, and photo, video, and audio classroom and school artifacts.

We illuminate vivid classroom and school examples of processes and practices that illustrate curricularization and wrestling with culturally sustaining early literacy teaching in the midst of mandated literacy instruction and assessment grounded in the sciences of reading. We ground these examples in a cultural sustenance model that we developed based on our collaborative study. The model, processes, and practices showcase a primary finding and important implication 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.

Currently, popular waves of discourse about effective literacy teaching have focused on scripted, structured approaches. Depending on the school, teacher preparation program, and other contextual factors (e.g. interpretations of state legislation), teachers may implement literacy practices in the current moment in ways that are divorced from the sociocultural and cultural ways of knowing, being, and doing in communities. Our work stands in contrast to dominant narratives, offering refreshing and cutting-edge counterpractices that move toward honoring the fullness of children and their families and communities while offering early literacy instruction that fosters literacy proficiency.

Authors

• Kindel Turner Nash, Appalachian State University

• Bilal Polson, Northern Parkway School

• Roderick Peele, Northern Parkway School

• Erik J. Sumner, Uniondale School District

• Alicia Arce-Boardman, Northern Parkway Elementary

• Kerry Elson, Central Park East II