Bridging Epistemologies: Unforgetting the Past to Imagine Plural Futures in Literacy Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Assemblages, Realities And Tensions In Decolonizing Education

Abstract

This presentation invites stakeholders interested in language use and literacy research to examine the positionality of the metalanguage of analysis that is often employed when the field makes sense of data. Which voices dominate those conversations, and which are peripheralized typically ends up determining what counts as knowledge. Through an interepistemic synergy approach that employs indexicality, interactional sociolinguistics, and Afrocentric methodology, I analyze data produced in a grades 9/5 literacy collaboration in Nairobi, Kenya to illustrate how a pursuit of epistemic justice might yield comprehensive insights on language and literacy while harkening calls for research “as an intentional process and practice of futuring” (AERA 2026 c.f.p.) inquiry for the 21st century and beyond.

Author

• David Bwire, The College of New Jersey