Once Upon an Anti-Black Time: Unpacking the Counter Fairy Tales Framework to Engage Black Girls in Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Honoring Black Youth Living: Dismantling Anti-Black Literacy Education Systems and Imagining Futures

Abstract

This classroom exploratory case study focuses on using the Counter-fairy tale (CFT) framework to capture Black adolescent girls' literacy interests while simultaneously disrupting antiblackness in literacy instruction. We argue that culturally responsive approaches to literacy instruction must expose, challenge, and disrupt antiblackness in English education (Baker-Bell et al., 2017). Unfortunately, culturally responsive practices to Black girl literacy often fall short of this goal, as often Black girls are celebrated rather than liberated by these efforts. One commonly cited rationale for this trend is the overwhelming lack of theoretically grounded practical applications of Black girl culturally responsive literacy. We offer a description of the conceptualization of the CFT framework (Author, 2018) and a thematic analysis of the reflection of teachers’ (N = 6) exploration of the framework with Black girls. The CFT framework places value on Black girls’ ways of knowing and gives precedence to their voice and unique experiences through culturally responsive literacy (Gist, 2014), based on the student’s perceptions of accounts from traditional fairytales derived from the construction of a counter-narrative. The emerging themes derived from the teacher reflections indicate that the participating teachers observed increased participation, engagement, and critical self-expression from the Black girls in their classrooms. However, there were many seemingly stereotypical depictions of the Black experience that require further investigation. No one, to our knowledge, has investigated critical self-expression as an essential output of literacy, thus we hope that this work will break new ground. This framework provides a bridge between theory and practice, which we accomplish through examples of how researchers can work with teachers to use CFTs to facilitate Black girls’ experiential and communal ways of knowing to support culturally responsive literacy instruction and identity development and social justice.

Author

• Jemimah L Young, Texas A&M University