Liberatory praxis in preservice teacher education: claiming Afrocentricity as foundational in critical language and literacy teaching

Abstract

Four teacher educators describe their work to establish Afrocentric foundations through integrating literacy and linguistic pluralism courses. We build on realities that teachers and children “do not learn, systematically and deeply, about Black genius and worth” (Baines, Tisdale, & Long, 2018, p. 20) in schools or universities nor do they learn a critical consciousness, impacting their abilities to dismantle Eurocratic systems. We share challenges and outcomes (including university and PreK-3 teaching examples) in building liberatory praxis focused on the African cradle of civilization, anti-colonialism, African/African American erasure in schooling today, African and Diaspora languages, and the multilingualism of AAL speakers.