Acting ”Cool” and ”Appropriate”: Toward a Framework for considering Literacy Classroom Interactions When Race is a Factor

Abstract

In this article I draw on 3 incidents to investigate how teachers and students purposefully negotiate to manage incipient conflict when race is a confounding factor. I do so to propose a methodology and theoretical framework for researching multiracial classroom teaching and learning that could inform White literacy teachers' pedagogy with students of color. The approach construes race as a dynamic part of classroom social life in which expressions of race are affected by and affect teachers' and students' classroom norms of conduct. Race is observed in discursive practices that interactively and in fluentially construct social relationships, personal identity, and academic knowledge. I demonstrate the approach by illustrating how students manage problems and boundaries within commonplace classroom interactions. The language experience of the African diaspora is enmeshed with issues of culture, identity, memory, and citizenship. (Morgan, 1994, p. 339) For the sake of all children, it is time to act in ways that reflect genuine valuation of language diversity and to implement policies fostering multilingualism and dialect awareness. (Smitherman, 2004, p. 186)