Dismantling the Colonial Legacies of Metalinguistic Awareness for Black Language and Spanish speaking Children

• In Event: Advocating for Agentive Literacy Practices

Abstract

This paper offers the notion of metalinguistic dismantling as means for pushing back against cognitive/psychological conceptualizations of Metalinguistic Awareness (MA). We highlight conflicting histories of MA and how it has been taken up in language and literacy learning in ways that further colonial projects of language standardization. We then offer pedagogical frameworks and instructional examples from our previous research to illustrate how metalinguistic dismantling can inform classroom literacy instruction for young Black Language and Spanish-speakers.

Authors

• Alice Y Lee, University of California, Riverside

• Lara Handsfield, Illinois State University

• Sofia Lisseth Rivas, University of California, Riverside