ERIC Number: EJ1435314
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Apr
Pages: 33
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0161-4681
EISSN: EISSN-1467-9620
Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching about African American Language in College Classrooms
Quentin C. Sedlacek; Maricela León; Ian Grey; Jordan McLarty; Shanae Neal; Shanea Neal
Teachers College Record, v126 n4-5 p187-219 2024
Background: African American Language (AAL) refers to a rich, widely used, and extensively researched language variety. Despite its importance, AAL remains widely stigmatized in the United States due to anti-Black linguistic racism. Many colleges offer courses with AAL content, and these courses have the potential to help disrupt anti-Black linguistic racism by promoting understanding and respect for this language. Purpose: Simply increasing students' knowledge about AAL is unlikely to disrupt anti-Black linguistic racism. College instructors must also attend to a wide range of challenges involved in teaching this content. Instructors' knowledge of such challenges, as well as strategies for addressing them, constitutes a form of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study contributes to the emerging scholarship on PCK for teaching and learning about AAL. Research Design: In this qualitative study, we analyze open-ended survey data from college instructors to identify challenges faced when teaching AAL content. We also add depth and nuance to discussion of these challenges by analyzing qualitative interview data and qualitative survey responses from college students enrolled in courses with AAL content. Finally, we outline pedagogical recommendations that could potentially address these challenges. Conclusions: We identify three major categories of pedagogical challenges that commonly arise when teaching AAL content: protecting Black or AAL-using students from harm; managing other students' knowledge, ideologies, and/or resistance; and addressing instructor positionality. We present six research-based recommendations to help instructors address these challenges, and identify key directions for future research on the teaching and learning of AAL.
Descriptors: Higher Education, Language Teachers, Black Dialects, Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Racism, Student Attitudes, Teacher Attitudes
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2993
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF), Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Science Foundation (NSF), Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE); National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1820886; 175765; 2126405; 2126414; 2210011