Patriann Smith, Ph.D.

For far too long, the field of literacy in the United States has been content with epistemologies undergirding what it means to be literate and to do literacy, overlooking the knowledges embedded in the languages and languaging of children, youth, and people of Color at large. 

And so, what we tend to refer to as the basic “pillars of literacy” often only represent partial understandings of how literate norms and “best practices” are developed and leveraged for millions of children in the US and across the world, given their largely monoglossic and “English” foundations.

Considering that many of the literacy programs in Minority World countries such as the US tend to often be adopted across schools in Majority World nations, there is every reason to expand our capacity to engage with those knowledges that though currently emerging, remain on the periphery of literacy as a field at large.

In the article, “A Call for Raciolinguistic Epistemologies: Transnational Languaging of Immigrant Literacy Teacher Educators” published by Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, I argue that the field of literacy as a whole suffers from a reliance on partial understandings of what it means to research, teach, practice, and support reading and literacy in and beyond classrooms. https://lnkd.in/eBEEu2dn

What does it look like to think, teach, research beyond partial understandings of literacy?