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Title: "Readin' sistahs after school : counterstories from an all black girl book club"
Creator: Carey, Carleen
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study uses ethnographic tools to analyze one after-school Black girl book club. It addressesthe question, “How do the students construct raced and gendered identities as they engage withtexts?” While some studies highlight the need for teachers to employ culturally relevantcurricula, more studies are required to illuminate how students themselves define which texts areculturally sustaining. Drawing on Gee’s model of discourse as type of toolkit, this studyinvestigates the stories...
Show moreThis study uses ethnographic tools to analyze one after-school Black girl book club. It addressesthe question, “How do the students construct raced and gendered identities as they engage withtexts?” While some studies highlight the need for teachers to employ culturally relevantcurricula, more studies are required to illuminate how students themselves define which texts areculturally sustaining. Drawing on Gee’s model of discourse as type of toolkit, this studyinvestigates the stories narrated by six female African American1 seventh-graders over the courseof one school year in a large Midwestern city. Using critical discourse analysis, this studyillustrates how written and oral story-telling can support students’ critical literacy development.This dissertation expands the literature on identity and literacy. It expands our knowledge aboutan oral narrative in conversational response to text, thus uncovering the potential of narrative andconversational response to text as a tool for both young adult identity development and teachereducation, especially among young women of color studying English in urban settings.
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Title: Necessary knowledge : critical examinations of power, sociopolitical agency, and the identity development of girls of color
Creator: Brown, Tashal
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this case study, I explore how girls of color from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds make sense of their sociopolitical realities and their experience participating in a social justice education course focused on Power, Identity, and Privilege (PIP). Given that course is situated in a community-based educational context specifically for girls of color, I investigate its affordances in shaping how they understand and respond to social injustices that impact their lives. I draw on...
Show moreIn this case study, I explore how girls of color from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds make sense of their sociopolitical realities and their experience participating in a social justice education course focused on Power, Identity, and Privilege (PIP). Given that course is situated in a community-based educational context specifically for girls of color, I investigate its affordances in shaping how they understand and respond to social injustices that impact their lives. I draw on politicizing socialization (Brown, 2007) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) as theoretical frameworks for understanding how girls of color make sense of power and oppression that shape their experiences. I also utilized concepts focused on women of color feminist pedagogy to make connections between instructors' decision-making and the experiences and perspectives the girls gained from participation in PIP. This study relied on qualitative data collection methods that include reflections shared by girls and young women of color in Critical Conversation Spaces (CCSs) as well as interviews with course instructors. I analyzed these data sources using concept and value coding to generate three significant findings. The first finding suggests that girls of color are acutely aware of the white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies and practices that shaped their girlhood. The second finding reveals that participation in PIP bolstered the girls' critical consciousness and sense of agency. The third finding illustrates that the girls utilized their lived experiences and insights from the course to examine, critique, and pursue social action to mitigate institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression within their schools, families, and communities.
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Title: "Hatucheki Na Watu" : Kenyan hip-hop artists' theories of multilingualism, identity and decoloniality
Creator: Milu, Esther
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This is a qualitative research study that constellates several theoretical and methodological approaches to understand why and how three Kenyan Hip-hop artists, Jua Cali, Nazizi Hirji and Abbas Kubbaff, engage in translingual communicative practices."--Abstract.

Title: Cultivating a compositional fluency in the elementary English language arts classroom
Creator: Brownell, Cassie Jo
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Despite how the population of elementary school children continues to grow ever more diverse, elementary literacies classrooms are becoming more standardized due to increasing educational reforms. Thus, few young learners are yet provided space to engage their home, cultural, or linguistic practices because such communicative practices not often accounted for or included in mandated curricula. In turn, the number of educational studies that amplify the voices of children, particularly those...
Show moreDespite how the population of elementary school children continues to grow ever more diverse, elementary literacies classrooms are becoming more standardized due to increasing educational reforms. Thus, few young learners are yet provided space to engage their home, cultural, or linguistic practices because such communicative practices not often accounted for or included in mandated curricula. In turn, the number of educational studies that amplify the voices of children, particularly those from continually marginalized communities (e.g., children of color, children from working-poor or working-class families, multilingual children, etc.) remains relatively low. In response to this paucity of research, this interpretive project interrogates a compositional fluency (Shipka, 2016, p. 255)—an expansive skillset of communicative practices inclusive of multiple cultural, material, and modal ways of knowing—as one avenue to foster and sustain children’s cultural, linguistic, and modal ways of knowing while amplifying how children come to know, to be and to be known in the elementary English language arts classroom. This dissertation builds on contemporary critical sociocultural scholarship centering children’s varied and complex communicative practices and data generated alongside urban third grade learners during the 2016-2017 academic year. By nuancing children’s processes and accounting for children’s sophisticated rhetorical moves as writers, findings from this study demonstrate how children flexibly adapted their diverse ways of knowing using a multiplicity of modes in order to create rich and personally meaningful texts.
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Title: Youth as Teacher Educators : Supporting Preservice Teachers in Developing Youth-Centered, Equity-Oriented Science Teaching Practices
Creator: Nazar, Christina Restrepo
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this study, I conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in what ways a science methods course can support PSTs in the critical uptake of youth (and community) knowledge(s) and practice(s) and how classroom...
Show moreIn this study, I conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in what ways a science methods course can support PSTs in the critical uptake of youth (and community) knowledge(s) and practice(s) and how classroom communities in the field can shift/shape these enactments. In this work, I foreground youth counternarratives of the culture of power in science as a critical part of learning to teach of science for PSTs –this study has never been done before. The first study explores how there is a culture of power in science education, particularly in the ways of knowing, doing and being that are legitimized differently from youth’s in-school and out-of-school experiences. This legitimization affects the ways youth feel recognized/positioned and ultimately supported to take-action in their science education. Using counternarratives of the culture of power in science as a framework, in this study, I worked with youth from an after-school green energy program to co-develop digital multimodal cases of science learning. In the second study, I examined the ways seventeen PSTs, in their elementary science methods course, were supported in developing youth-centered, equity-oriented imaginaries for teaching science to diverse learners. Using the framework imaginaries as practice, I wanted to know 1) in what ways do PSTs take up youth knowledge(s) and practice(s) in science/engineering learning and 2) how this up-take inform the development of youth-centered, equity-oriented teaching practice(s) in ways PSTs imagine enacting their future teaching experiences. In the third study, I followed three preservice elementary science teachers in a six-week engineering teaching experience at Liberty Spanish Immersion School in Great Lakes City, Michigan. Using the framework enactments as practice, I aimed to understand 1) in what ways do preservice elementary science teachers enact youth-centered, equity-oriented teaching practice(s) in an engineering unit focused on teaching engineering design for sustainable communities and 2) how are these enactments shaped by local contentious practice. Implications for this dissertation study include designing a methods course alongside field experiences in support of critically engaging PSTs with cultural/historical/social community underpinnings of youth in equitably consequential ways.
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Title: Conceptualizing gender, contextualizing curriculum : a case study of teacher education coursework
Creator: Kean, M. Eli
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study explores and theorizes around issues of transgender curriculum in teacher education courses. Using a conceptual framework informed by both transgender theory and curriculum theory, I propose a Critical Trans Framework to analyze what trans-related curricular materials are currently used in teacher education courses and what factors influence teacher educators’ curricular choices. Gender-expansive syllabi were identified as those that contained required readings utilizing anti...
Show moreThis study explores and theorizes around issues of transgender curriculum in teacher education courses. Using a conceptual framework informed by both transgender theory and curriculum theory, I propose a Critical Trans Framework to analyze what trans-related curricular materials are currently used in teacher education courses and what factors influence teacher educators’ curricular choices. Gender-expansive syllabi were identified as those that contained required readings utilizing anti-oppressive, humanizing, intersectional, or justice-oriented characteristics. Data sources for this study include course syllabi, surveys with Likert-scale and open-ended questions, one-on-one interviews, and a group interview with all participants. Findings explore how participants were understanding or conceptualizing gender, queer, and heteronormativity in relation to trans. Participants had a somewhat similar approach to teaching gender as a concept, but had divergent and multiple understandings of queer. Heteronormativity was understood to be the overarching system of oppression targeting all non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people. In describing how they teach trans, the participants described attempts to complicate dominant trans narratives, establish class norms that created an environment ripe for gender exploration, and represent trans people through first-person narratives. Influential contextual elements outside the classroom include institutional and/or programmatic supports or constraints, the instructor’s own understanding and experience with transgender issues, and state or local policies.
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Title: Literacy experience : towards an ontological view of literacies through youth participatory photoethnography and art-making
Creator: Smith, Amanda Rae
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The trajectory of literacy research has been one of expansion. In each theoretical iteration, established paradigms for what qualifies as "literate" have been rejected in favor of more generous and inclusive conceptions. In recent work scholars have moved toward considering literacies themselves as participants in social life. In this dissertation I argue that this move necessitates a commensurate change in the unit of analysis of research on literacies and the methodological and theoretical...
Show more"The trajectory of literacy research has been one of expansion. In each theoretical iteration, established paradigms for what qualifies as "literate" have been rejected in favor of more generous and inclusive conceptions. In recent work scholars have moved toward considering literacies themselves as participants in social life. In this dissertation I argue that this move necessitates a commensurate change in the unit of analysis of research on literacies and the methodological and theoretical apparatus used to approach such research." -- Abstract.
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Title: Examining how youth of color engage youth participatory action research to interrogate racism in their science experiences
Creator: Sato, Takumi C.
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: While many researchers have worked to address the unequal educational outcomes between White and non-White students, there are few signs of progress for people of color seeking entry into a STEM career trajectory. Starting from high school, the number of students who persist to complete a STEM bachelor's degree and obtaining a job in science or engineering continues to indicate that people of color are underrepresented. I suggest that research must consider the role of race and racism in the...
Show moreWhile many researchers have worked to address the unequal educational outcomes between White and non-White students, there are few signs of progress for people of color seeking entry into a STEM career trajectory. Starting from high school, the number of students who persist to complete a STEM bachelor's degree and obtaining a job in science or engineering continues to indicate that people of color are underrepresented. I suggest that research must consider the role of race and racism in the education of youth of color. Especially in science education, there is very little work addressing how racism may present barriers that impede progress for students along the STEM trajectory. This study is informed by critical race theory (CRT) that posits racism is endemic in society. White privilege enables the dominant group to maintain inequitable advantages that marginalizes populations of color. CRT also puts forth that counter narratives of the marginalized groups is essential to challenge the institutionalized forms of oppression. Using CRT and youth participatory action research (YPAR), this investigation re-imagines youth as capable of transforming their own social and political condition through research and action.This project asked youth of color to interrogate their own experiences as science learners, engage in research on structural inequities of STEM trajectories, plan strategic moves to challenge power structures, and take action for social justice. The youth started by exploring the concept of race and instances where racism was found in public spaces and in their personal experiences. They examined their experiences in science as a student more generally and then for racism. Then, the focus turned to conducting research with peers, observing science classrooms in another school, and using online information to compare schools. The youth planned strategic action against the racism they found in the analysis of the data that included conference presentations, using social media to communicate with peers, and teaching a science unit for middle grades peers using lessons that incorporated engaging teaching practices lacking in their student experiences. YPAR resulted in counternarratives that exposed youth encounters with systemic racism and their efforts to positively change STEM trajectories for themselves and their peers. Through YPAR, youth gained research tools and skills to critically examine the world and expose racism. While schools are purported to be places of equal opportunity for all students to learn and find success, the youth showed that institutionalized racism in schools created barriers to STEM aspirations. By planning and teaching a food and nutrition unit, the youth took aim at the institutionalized racism by taking on the role of teacher and expert while improving the science learning opportunities for their middle grades peers and themselves. In addition, planning the unit enabled the youth to conduct all of the activities before teaching the unit. Thus, the youth supplemented their own science learning. YPAR provided an empowering opportunity to challenge racism along their STEM trajectories and fight for social justice.
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Title: An American Indian war on drugs : community, culture, care, survivance
Creator: Henry, Kehli Ardis
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The work presented here is the story of an American Indian Tribe in the United States as told to me in pieces by community members, Elders and employees of the Tribal government. I am responsible for taking up the stories shared with me in a good way. While this story includes sadness, trauma, and continuing oppression that are hallmarks of systemic settler colonialism, it is a story of survivance. In Gerald Vizenor's (1999) words, "Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance...
Show moreThe work presented here is the story of an American Indian Tribe in the United States as told to me in pieces by community members, Elders and employees of the Tribal government. I am responsible for taking up the stories shared with me in a good way. While this story includes sadness, trauma, and continuing oppression that are hallmarks of systemic settler colonialism, it is a story of survivance. In Gerald Vizenor's (1999) words, "Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry." Ethnographic research methods were used in this work, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and one focus group; all centered on drugs, alcohol, addiction, and related service provision. Within this context, the habits, residues, and lingering structures of colonialism emerged as causes of significant problems. I use Brian Noble's (2015) two-pronged definition of coloniality to express these ongoing effects in the contemporary world. In opposition to coloniality, American Indian community members and Elders expressed survivance. Through the framework of survivance in the face of coloniality, I identify key challenges the community confronts, as well as ways they are addressing drugs, alcohol, addiction, and coloniality. I present three related chapters that support this. First, durable racism against American Indians and stigma against drug users compound to perpetuate and justify stereotypes and racism against all American Indians in the area. This shifts blame for perceived disparities in drug use, propagates shame among American Indian drug users, supports racial profiling, and interferes with services. In opposition to false narratives, stories from the community express survivance through community closeness, caring and compassion, and desire to foster these things within service provision. Second, community members, Elders, and employees drew clear connections between Historical Trauma, childhood trauma, and drug and alcohol use. These connections were also used to highlight colonialism and coloniality, counter narratives of personal responsibility/blame for addiction, refute stereotypes, and secure resources for services. These terms have become tools of survivance. One reason these efforts have been successful is because of the association of trauma with western medical/psychological establishments. I term the community redeployment of these ideas as post-medicalization. Finally, operating at the nexus of Tribal Sovereignty, U.S. criminal justice policy, increasingly medicalized ideas of addiction, and the rising influence of MAT (Medication Assisted Treatment), Tribal drug court service provider and participant choices are limited by coloniality. For example, service providers who express exemplary dedication and caring for program participants often resort to putting participants in jail to "save lives." In the face of these limitations and regular setbacks, both service providers and participants express optimism and hope for the future of individual drug users, and for the Tribal community as a whole. This has important implications for the Tribal community, but also for the study and treatment of addiction more generally.
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Title: Subversion and critical distance : black speculative fiction, white pre-service teachers, and anti-racist pedagogy
Creator: Roue, Bevin
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation examines representations of black lives in adolescent speculative fiction and explores what the genre offers to anti-racist teacher education. Situating my study at the intersections of literacy education and children’s literature studies, I interrogate assumptions surrounding genre conventions adopted in multicultural education. I argue that the genre of black speculative fiction offer tools to the anti-racist educator because it tackles difficult issues surrounding...
Show moreThis dissertation examines representations of black lives in adolescent speculative fiction and explores what the genre offers to anti-racist teacher education. Situating my study at the intersections of literacy education and children’s literature studies, I interrogate assumptions surrounding genre conventions adopted in multicultural education. I argue that the genre of black speculative fiction offer tools to the anti-racist educator because it tackles difficult issues surrounding systemic racism and privilege, yet does so in a manner that offers the potential for navigating white resistance strategies through the creation of literary spaces of inquiry. My framework, which theorizes the ability of multicultural speculative literature to critique systemic oppression, is built off two forces of the fantastic—subversion and criticl distance. These competing and complementary forces provide readers with space in which to reflect on systemic oppression and hegemony.My dissertation serves as a bridge between the fields of education and English literature. As such, the body of the text is organized into four discreet yet connected articles. The first two articles are literary analyses of works of black speculative adolescent fiction. In one study, I trace entwined junctures of neoliberal policies and contemporary slavery in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I argue that Butler hails the genre of the parable, unveiled through a series of literary slipstages, to present readers with evidence of contemporary white perpetuation of systemic racism. In the second article, I examine exclusion of transnational black youth from full US citizenship in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch. I argue that Okorafor rewrites US citizenship as a concept now requiring, not simply tolerating, full cultural and racial inclusion. I then place these texts in the hands of readers, examining pre-service teacher discourses around these works of literature. I focus on student talk around race and privilege. In my third article, I report on a case study examining pre-service teacher discourse over Parable of the Sower. This study, based on data from teacher education classroom discussions and writing assignments, indicates that students can maintain rich conversations around risky topics in a way that complicates Haviland’s (2008) notion of White Educational Discourse. The fourth article, based on classroom data from two teacher education courses that discuss Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch, complicates the concept of “safe space” as implemented in classroom discussions surrounding race. I argue that critical distance in black speculative fiction creates not safe spaces, but spaces of inquiry where social justice-minded readers can raise issues and push back again racism with peers. Most anti-racist scholarship that incorporates youth literature rests on the assumption that realistic fiction offers authentic representations of black lives and experiences. I trouble these assumptions through sustained focus on genre conventions and reader engagement with those conventions. My dissertation questions the limited notions of black lives created by overreliance on realistic genres and advocates for education scholarship that recognizes black futures, black imagination(s), and black innovations.
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Title: Sustaining sustainers : moving culturally sustaining pedagogies across classrooms and communities
Creator: Skogsberg, Erik
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This alternative format dissertation explores how four early career teachers and their early career teacher educator practice culturally sustaining pedagogies across classrooms and communities. Using constant comparative methods and multiple lenses on teacher knowledge and learning to teach across identities, literacies, and inequities, it generates three articles for three different potential journal audiences: 1) "Practice-ing A Flow: Moving Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies from Preparation...
Show moreThis alternative format dissertation explores how four early career teachers and their early career teacher educator practice culturally sustaining pedagogies across classrooms and communities. Using constant comparative methods and multiple lenses on teacher knowledge and learning to teach across identities, literacies, and inequities, it generates three articles for three different potential journal audiences: 1) "Practice-ing A Flow: Moving Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies from Preparation to Practice" (e.g. Journal of Teacher Education or Research in the Teaching of English ), 2) "Driving Together: Humanizing Research Toward Mentorship for Justice-Oriented Teaching" (e.g. English Journal, English Education), and 3) "Preparing to Leave: Teachers and Teacher Educators Approaching What Could Be (e.g. The Atlantic, Huffington Post). Each article takes up a different aspect of the research and advances insights and implications of relevant interest for these journal audiences.
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Title: International pre-service teachers' practicum experiences in the U.S : ethnographic case studies
Creator: Kang, Jihea
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Many colleges around the world have been undergoing demographic shifts under the influence of globalization. The population of international students continues to grow dramatically. As such increasing number of international students has been enrolling U.S colleges. Teacher education is not an exception. However, international teacher candidates’ experiences and backgrounds are not always validated in their teacher education program. This means that teacher candidates need to learn to...
Show moreMany colleges around the world have been undergoing demographic shifts under the influence of globalization. The population of international students continues to grow dramatically. As such increasing number of international students has been enrolling U.S colleges. Teacher education is not an exception. However, international teacher candidates’ experiences and backgrounds are not always validated in their teacher education program. This means that teacher candidates need to learn to articulate what they may need as well as what they could bring to the program and their future classroom. Likewise, teacher educators need to find ways to support those teachers’ academic and professional learning. Few studies examined how these teacher candidates experience their learning to teach particularly during their practicum. Also, little is known how they position themselves, or are positioned by others in communities of teaching practice in relation to their social identities, including race/ethnicity, cultures, language, and gender. This study focuses on a Chinese, Chinese-Korean, and Korean female teacher candidates’ practicum experiences in the U.S. Using an ethnographic case approach, this study examines the transnational narratives of the three women and investigates ways in which their practicum experiences gives opportunities them to promote their professional learning and growth, by asking the following questions: (1) What did motivate three international pre-service teachers to study abroad and major education? How do their desires of gaining capital (e.g., social, cultural, economic) and belonging to an imagined community impact their transnational educational migration?; (2) How do the participants navigate internship spaces and professional relationships?; and (3) How do the participants make sense of diversity in the U.S. contexts?By emphasizing the ways in which these candidates navigate their practicum drawing on their social identities, this study argues not only for the acknowledgement of the multiple identities that international teacher candidates bring to the classroom, but also for a counter-space where multifaceted identities are enacted and their counter-stories are heard. This study also suggests recommendations for teacher educators and practicum stakeholders to empower international teacher candidates. Ultimately, it demonstrates that teacher educators and teacher preparation programs need to provide a reflective and transformative (counter-) space for all teachers candidates.
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Title: Powerful voices : exploring the lived experiences & literacies of African American youth
Creator: Gibbs, ThedaMarie
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The voices of all youth have power, value and meaning. However, many spaces in and beyond school struggle to honor the voices and literacy practices of African American youth who live and learn in urban communities. The current case-study explores the lived experiences and literacies of African American high school students in a GEAR-UP pre-college college program. Three questions frame the research study: (1) In what ways, if at all, does GEAR-UP foster African American students’ navigation...
Show moreThe voices of all youth have power, value and meaning. However, many spaces in and beyond school struggle to honor the voices and literacy practices of African American youth who live and learn in urban communities. The current case-study explores the lived experiences and literacies of African American high school students in a GEAR-UP pre-college college program. Three questions frame the research study: (1) In what ways, if at all, does GEAR-UP foster African American students’ navigation of school and the college preparation process (2) What do we learn about African American students’ lived experiences and literacies through their participation in GEAR-UP? (3) More specifically, what do we learn about students’ lived experiences through their engagement in multiple literacies?Data from the study include program observations captured in both video-recordings and fieldnotes; interviews with student participants and staff; students’ writing samples and presentations; and program curricula. Three major theoretical frameworks shape study analysis: Third Space, Community Cultural Wealth and Multiple Worlds Typology and Critical Race Theory. Third Space Theory helps to contextualize the importance of beyond school spaces that honor the voices of culturally and linguistically diverse youth. Community Cultural Wealth acknowledges the significant forms of capital that communities of color possess. Multiple Worlds Typology provides a framework for understanding how students’ multiple worlds impact their academic success and preparation for college. Critical Race Theory provides a framework for providing a space to illuminate the voices, lived experiences and literacies of African American youth. Findings from the study speak to the ways in which GEAR-UP and students’ families formed communities of possibility for students’ academic success. Additional findings illuminate how African American youth utilized literacy as a means for self-exploration and representation and engaging in community change. The findings from the study reinforce the importance of spaces both in and beyond school that allow African American youth to speak and write about their lived experiences, and deem these opportunities as valuable and necessary to their success
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Title: "S.W.A.G. = Style With a Goal" : exploring fashion/style as a critical literacy of Black youth in urban schools
Creator: Hayes, Sherrae M.
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study is a multi-method, qualitative project using Youth Participatory Action Research through ethnographic design to examine the uses of fashion/style by Black youth as a form of critical literacy. Taking place in the setting of an urban, public, Midwestern middle school, the work outlines the ways these students communicated through their fashion sense and thus made sense of their identities and the identities of others as messages critically coded and decoded daily. This work examines...
Show moreThis study is a multi-method, qualitative project using Youth Participatory Action Research through ethnographic design to examine the uses of fashion/style by Black youth as a form of critical literacy. Taking place in the setting of an urban, public, Midwestern middle school, the work outlines the ways these students communicated through their fashion sense and thus made sense of their identities and the identities of others as messages critically coded and decoded daily. This work examines current texts/theories surrounding characteristics of uniform policy, critical literacy, and identity development through fashion/style. Ultimately, through this study’s action-orientation, this work highlights how students participated in student-led development of a uniform/dress code policy that incorporated their own critical fashion literacies. Critical Fashion Literacy, a particular form of critical literacy this work seeks to contribute to literacy studies at large, is centered upon the notion of how we each possibly read and write messages and meanings through fashion/style daily. Essentially, this study works to center youth voices with a potential impact on possibilities for their future as change agents in education in their own right – moving beyond fashion statements to the statements they are making through fashion.
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Title: "You must learn" : a critical language awareness approach towriting instruction for African American language-speaking students in composition courses
Creator: Hankerson, Shenika D.
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The writing of African American students from the African American Language (AAL)-speaking culture has primarily been identified as substandard (Applebee & Langer, 2006; Ball, 1996; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Rickford, 1999; Smitherman, 1994). While hegemonic language attitudes and practices have been pinpointed as a contributing factor for this identification (Ball & Lardner, 2005; Charity-Hudley & Mallinson, 2011; Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003; Baugh, 1999), the...
Show more"The writing of African American students from the African American Language (AAL)-speaking culture has primarily been identified as substandard (Applebee & Langer, 2006; Ball, 1996; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Rickford, 1999; Smitherman, 1994). While hegemonic language attitudes and practices have been pinpointed as a contributing factor for this identification (Ball & Lardner, 2005; Charity-Hudley & Mallinson, 2011; Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003; Baugh, 1999), the larger concern-how to teach writing in ways that lead toward favorable experiences and outcomes for AAL-speaking students remains inadequately addressed; especially in composition. This study aimed to address the preceding concerns by applying critical language awareness (CLA) pedagogy to the design of a series of instructional units which sought to improve AAL-speaking students' critical consciousness of language, writing, and society. The innovative series of instructional units employed African American-centered literature, novels, poetry, hip-hop, and new media in order to teach AAL-speaking students about language, linguistic variation, discourse, and power. To understand the possibilities and accessibility of the CLA approach to writing instruction, one composition instructor participated in a one-day critical language awareness teacher preparation program and subsequently implemented the series of instructional units with several AAL-speaking students in composition courses at a public, urban, research university over a six-week time span. Multiple types of qualitative data (oral, textual and visual) were collected in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the one-day critical language awareness teacher preparation program and the CLA approach to writing instruction. Analyses of essays, questionnaires, and classroom discussions reveal how the: (1) composition instructor was able to become more aware of the social and cultural contexts of AAL and more conscious of her own linguistic prejudices; thus providing the composition instructor with the tools to resocialize her hegemonic and oppressive dispositions toward language into pluralistic and emancipatory dispositions toward language, and (2) AAL-speaking were able to become more aware of writing processes and practices and more conscious of their own writer's identity; thus providing the AAL-speaking students with the tools to work critically within and across a variety of languages, including AAL, mainstream language, and code-meshing language, and enhance their writing in several areas, including ideas, voice, language facility, and conventions. Overall, this study highlights the possibilities (and challenges) of fashioning CLA pedagogy into accessible and relevant writing curricula for culturally and linguistically diverse students."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: Navigating borderlands : gay Latino men in college
Creator: Camacho, Trace
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This study explores the experiences of gay Latino men in college and the barriers and success they encounter." -- Abstract.

Title: "Stop killing my vibe" : a critical language pedagogy for speakers of African American Language
Creator: Baker-Bell, April
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Black and Brown students face an abysmal threat not only in classrooms but in the world because of how they have been trained to understand themselves in and through their language. Within communities and schools, students who communicate in African American Language (AAL) encounter negative messages that suggest that their language is deficient, inferior, wrong, and unintelligent. This study reveals the consequences AAL-speaking students faced when using their language in academic and non...
Show moreBlack and Brown students face an abysmal threat not only in classrooms but in the world because of how they have been trained to understand themselves in and through their language. Within communities and schools, students who communicate in African American Language (AAL) encounter negative messages that suggest that their language is deficient, inferior, wrong, and unintelligent. This study reveals the consequences AAL-speaking students faced when using their language in academic and non-academic contexts. It also reveals how these students responded to a critical language pedagogical innovation. In particular, I explored how AAL-speaking students in two ninth grade English Language Arts classrooms understood themselves linguistically across multiple contexts and to determine if their engagement with a Critical Language Pedagogy (CLP) could transform their unfavorable attitudes toward AAL. Based on findings from this study, I drew the following conclusions: (1) the students understood AAL to be a linguistic resource with associated consequences in their everyday lives, (2) the students resisted and held negative attitudes toward AAL before the CLP innovation, and (3) the students' responses following their engagement with the CLP suggested that the innovation impacted their attitudes in important and dramatic ways.
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Title: "'I'm gone be 'Black on both sides'" : examining the literacy practices and legacy learning within a sustaining urban debate community
Creator: Jones Stanbrough, Raven
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This study explored the lived experiences of Black student-debaters and debate supporters in ACTION Debate (AD), an afterschool debate program dedicated to offering and providing debate opportunities and instruction to high school students in a major Midwestern city." -- Abstract.

Title: A BlackCrit ethnography on the co-creation of textual sanctuary as means to understanding and resisting antiblackness at a U.S. urban high school
Creator: Coles, Justin Avery
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Like racism in U.S. society, antiblackness or the human races necessity for violence against Black people is an immutable fact. The idea that Blackness is inherently problematic in the public imaginary—needing to be marginalized or disposed of—directly frames how urban schools are organized for the education of Black children. This is a problem of public schooling for which my research aims to respond. The tendency to view schools as free of antiblackness (read violence free) undermines...
Show moreLike racism in U.S. society, antiblackness or the human races necessity for violence against Black people is an immutable fact. The idea that Blackness is inherently problematic in the public imaginary—needing to be marginalized or disposed of—directly frames how urban schools are organized for the education of Black children. This is a problem of public schooling for which my research aims to respond. The tendency to view schools as free of antiblackness (read violence free) undermines changes in schooling curriculum, climate, and policy that work toward equity for Black children. Instead, the prevailing belief that schools are free of antiblackness (or the view of not considering antiblackness at all) perpetuate antiblackness and the associated violence that disproportionately impacts Black children. The purpose of my literacy driven BlackCrit Ethnography, was to unearth what Black youth’s critical engagements with literacy reveal about antiblackness as it operationalizes as symbolic violence in their urban schooling and societal experiences. Specifically, I relied on the language and literacy practices Black youth embody as they navigate urban education in ways that pinpoint the criticality of Blackness and antiblackness in their lives. My study was guided by the following questions: (1) What understandings of antiblackness emerge through Black youth’s critical engagements with literacy? (2) How do Black youth’s understandings of antiblackness through critical engagements with literacy function as resistance to antiblackness? Data collection for my project included audio-visual recorded after-school sessions, literacy artifacts, observations, interviews, dialogic journaling, and student academic and disciplinary data. The study took place during the 2016-2017 academic year with nine Black youth (six girls, three boys) at an urban high school in Philadelphia, PA. The Black youth informed me how they operate as texts that are deeply critical of antiblackness. In order to exist in an anti-Black nation-state, the youth demonstrated the ways they individually and collectively operate as critical textual sites or archives of Blackness, that when properly engaged, have the potential to be expressed in ways that oppose and lessen the material and psychic impacts of antiblackness. Moreover, the space we cultivated that was Black-centric, proved to be crucial for affirming and cultivating the development of these textualities. Despite the precarity of Black life resulting from the many ways antiblackness is sustained in U.S. social institutions such as public schools, this research establishes the brilliance of Black youth to center their joy as a radical act of resistance to the symbolic violence of antiblackness. They do this through strategic, purposeful engagements with literacy.
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