(White) Abolitionist Literacy Teachers

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Frameworks and Controversial Issues in the Classroom (Table 10)

Abstract

Research on social illiteracy (Rand, 2021) and the demographic imperative (Jupp et al, 2019) convey the urgency of attending to both barriers and possibilities for White literacy teachers. As literacy is inextricably linked with equity, literacy classrooms mark a site of sanctioning or resisting oppressions. Through articulations of critical race and whiteness frameworks, this research aims to explore the practices of White antiracist literacy educators. Rooted in a conceptual framework of "rehumanizing praxis," this inquiry prioritizes humanizing research through interviews, observations, reflections, and a focus group. Situated in critical constructivist grounded theory methodology, I share research devoted to making visible the internal and external barriers and possibilities White abolitionist teachers experience in their endeavors to participate in liberatory education.

Author

• Katie Harlan Eller, Marist University