Liberation pedagogy in an African diaspora studies class and high school senior English class

H. Nzinga Jenkins Sanches, Calderwood Fellow, 2017, will present the results of a study she conducted in her African Diaspora and Global Studies history class where the majority of students are either English L2 learners, recent immigrants from Asian (China and Vietnam) or descendants of Africa (African-American, Latin American and Caribbean).

Her research question was "Does using Liberation Pedagogy (LP) with culturally and linguistically diverse students engage and motivate them to write their counter-narratives in English?". She used Liberation Pedagogy (LP) for the dual purpose of increasing literacy skills alongside the development of critical consciousness. After implementing a curricular unit on intersectionality, she examined the student data of auto-ethnography and other writings, which emerged as counter-arratives to the dominant stereotypical narrative of mainstream U.S. Her study offers implications for academic institutions, teacher in-service, teacher education programs for both English Language Arts at the secondary level (grades 7-12) and English as a Second Language/Structured English Immersion teachers as all have a large role to play in the incorporation of culturally and linguistically sustaining practices.