Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education : Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces

2022 Recipient of the NCTE David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English

2022 Recipient of the Literacy Research Association's Edward B. Fry Book Award

2023 Recipient of the Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research

Today’s students use their digital expertise and the power of their voice to respond to issues of inequity in society. It is essential that teacher educators develop their own racial literacies and those of their preservice and classroom teachers to support student digital activism. From talking about race and racism to resisting the harmful narratives that circulate online but impact face-to-face interactions in the classroom, teacher educators must navigate sociotechnical spaces with a critical lens and develop strategies to help their preservice teachers do the same. This book is designed to increase educators’ capacity and agency to respond to inequities that plague our educational system. The authors provide a framework to help readers rethink how curriculum and pedagogy impact classroom instruction. In Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education, Price-Dennis and Sealey-Ruiz provide theoretical and practical entry points into a conversation about race in the digital age that aim to increase equity in schools and better prepare teachers entering the U.S. school system.

Book Features:

• Provides examples of how racial literacy can be fostered in teacher education programs.
• Offers reflection questions designed to assess the status of racial literacy in both teacher education programs and K–12 classrooms. 
• Helps educators develop curricula that leverage multimodal ways of cultivating racial literacy.
• Offers a conceptual model of racial literacy for the digital age that advances civic engagement for equity in education.
• Focuses on pedagogical practices that support racial literacy development in teacher education.
• Includes a Foreword by Jabari Mahiri and an Afterword by Rebecca Rogers, leading scholars in the field of racial literacy.

Detra Price-Dennis is an associate professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an associate professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University.