Storytellin’ by the light of the lantern: A polyvocal dialogue turnin’ towards critical Black curriculum studies

Purpose This study aims to investigate multimodal composition as an exercise or tool for teaching students theory building. To illustrate, an analysis of artifacts comprising a student’s multimodal composition, which was created in response to a multipart literacy assignment on theorizing Blackness, is analyzed. Design/methodology/approach Afrocentricity served as both theoretical moor and research methodology. Qualitative case study, focusing on the case of an individual student, was the research method used. Findings Multimodal composition was an effective exercise for surfacing the multidimensionality of a student’s complex knowledge while simultaneously placing the student in the powerful position of theorist. The process of composing multimodally integrated reading, writing and speaking skills while revealing the focal student’s need for targeted writing intervention. Practical implications The study evidences multimodal composition as a useful exercise for capturing students’ nuanced interpretations or students’ critical theorizing as well as meaningfully incorporating and assessing students’ literacy skills. Originality/value Exposure to preexisting theory alone relegates students to the realm of passive knowledge consumers. This undermines the emancipatory and justice-oriented objectives of critical education, which ideally contributes to social change by challenging dominant power structures and distorted perspectives of marginalized persons. To be empowered agentic learners, students need to be both taught how to theorize and engaged as theorists. This study shows how multimodal composition can be used as a liberatory literacy tool for those intertwined pedagogical purposes.

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Blackness as intervention: Black English outer spaces and the rupturing of antiblackness and/in English education

Coles

Kingsley

2021

ETPC

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Purpose By engaging in critical literacy, participants theorized Blackness and antiblackness. The purpose of this study was to have participants theorize Blackness and antiblackness through their engagements with critical literacy. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a youth-centered and informed Black critical-race grounded methodology. Findings Participants’ unique and varied revelations of Blackness as Vitality, Blackness as Cognizance and Blackness as Expansive Community, served to withstand, confront and transcend encounters with antiblackness in English curricula. Practical implications This paper provides a model for how to engage Black youth as a means to disrupt anti-Black English education spaces. Social implications This study provides a foundation for future research efforts of Black English outer spaces as they relate to English education. Findings in this study may also inform existing English educator practices. Originality/value This study theorized both the role and the flexible nature of Black English outer spaces. It defined the multi-ethnic nature of Blackness. It proposed that affirmations of Blackness sharpened participants’ critical literacies in Black English outer spaces as a transformative intervention to anti-Black English education spaces.

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Storytellin’ by the light of the lantern: A polyvocal dialogue turnin’ towards critical Black curriculum studies

Cited by 4 publications

References 39 publications

“Salt preserves”: A curriculum of salt in The Autobiography of Mary Prince

“Salt preserves”: A curriculum of salt in The Autobiography of Mary Prince

“Blackness is not just a single definition”: multimodal composition as an exercise for surfacing and scaffolding student theorizing in a Black Studies classroom

Blackness as intervention: Black English outer spaces and the rupturing of antiblackness and/in English education

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