Historical Counterstorying and Literacy Education: Situating Race, Class, and Rurality in a Texas "Turnaround" District

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: On Storying Equitable Literacies Education

Abstract

This paper interrogates the way literacies emerge from, act on, and are shaped by their surroundings. It focuses on the contingencies of school turnaround on literacy instruction of rural youth. The conceptual framework is rooted within socio-cultural literacy theories Rodney’s (1973) meticulous historicizing of African underdevelopment, Glissant’s (1989) “poetics of landscape,” and Sharpe’s (2016) “wake work.” We use oral history underpinned by the assumptions of black feminist modalities of counter-storytelling. Our findings point to the multivalent pressures that constrain students, teachers, and administrators – many originating from current state “turnover” and “takeover” initiatives, but also deeper histories of the district’s geography and politics. The paper will interest AERA attendees focused on literacy, unsettled place stories, “hauntings,” and school turnaround.

Authors

• Karynecia E. Conner, Baylor University

• T. Philip Nichols, Baylor University