Critical Affect Literacy: A Call to Action in a Trump Administration

ABSTRACT

Political discourses and practices surrounding the current presidential administration are propagating familiar stereotypes of immigrants as “diseases,” “criminals,” and questionably “American.” Emergent research and the news media are also reporting stories of hostility toward immigrants in schools and broader society that has been incited by such rhetoric and practices. This article proposes teacher educators concerned with social justice for immigrant youth should teach meaningfully about the controversial emotions surrounding immigration. More specifically, the authors hypothesize how critical affect literacy may be instructive for helping pre-service teachers address the polarized and controversial emotions swirling around immigration. After providing a brief overview of the current national context of schools, the authors discuss the literature on teacher education for immigration. They then describe critical affect literacy and highlight its promise for helping pre-service teachers understand and counter-act negative emotions directed at immigrant students in schools. The authors also provide examples of instructional activities that might engage critical affect literacy practices in teacher education classrooms. In doing so, the authors hope to advocate the power of emotion in teaching for social justice in an increasingly uncertain and combative political climate.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• immigration
• critical affect literacy
• pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Jennifer is a former teacher educator of 5.5 years. She recently began a tenure-line appointment in sociology and continues to work with pre-service teachers enrolled in her introductory course as an elective. Brent is a former high school guidance counselor and adjunct instructor in education of 4 years. He recently began two new positions, one as an Associate Professor in teacher education and another as a part-time elementary school guidance counselor. Our collective experiences in this article are drawn from our work in higher education and K-12 schools since the 2016 presidential campaign and election.

2. For unfamiliar readers, the Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe (1982) guarantees all youth, regardless of immigration status, access to K-12 public education. It also prohibits teachers and schools from inquiring into students’ and families’ legal status.

3. While we recognize that immigration impacts many communities, we highlight its disproportionate impact on Latinx communities (Zong, Batalova, & Hallock, 2018).

4. The space of this article allows neither a detailed elucidation of factual knowledge about immigration nor an in-depth discussion of the vast scholarly research on immigration. For entry points into immigration research, we suggest Portes and Rumbaut’s (2014) sociological overview of immigration in the U.S., Immigrant America: A Portrait, and Rong and Priessle’s (2009) guidelines for implementing instructions for immigrant students, Educating Immigrant Students in the 21^st Century. For those interested in conveying content knowledge through K-12 lesson plans, we recommend: Teaching Tolerance’s topic on immigration (https://www.tolerance.org/topics/immigration); the Anti-Defamation League’s resources for educators on immigration, immigrants, and anti-immigrant bias (https://www. adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies/education-resources-on-immigration-immigrants-and-anti); and Re-Imagining Migration (https://reimaginingmigration.org/).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer M. Bondy

Jennifer M. Bondy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia. Her research focuses on gender, race/ethnicity, immigration, and education.

Brent E. Johnson

Brent E. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Education at Gordon State College in Barnesville, GA.