A Call for Raciolinguistic Epistemologies: Transnational Languaging of Immigrant Literacy Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

Twenty-first century literacy teacher education in and beyond the United States continues to reinforce standardized languages – often English, and knowledges based on these languages in their preparation of literacy teachers. Despite literacy research informed by a largely white monolingual population of teacher educators, most of whom are predominantly English-speaking and rely very often on best practices in literacy research largely and historically conducted with monolingual (i.e., standard-English speaking) students, there is an expectation that research on diversity in literacy will change the practices of teachers amidst a concomitant failure to examine intentionally, the racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity of language and literacy teacher educators who have been deemed so central to changing teachers, ideologies and practices toward languaging. To address these concerns, this conceptual essay argues that immigrant teacher educators (of Color) possess epistemologies critical to teaching literacy and language to prospective and practicing teachers in teacher education programs within the United States. I present and discuss three epistemological bases of immigrant literacy teacher educators of Color racialized epistemologies – steeped in their racialized languaging, as a paradigmatic shift from Minority World to Majority World knowledges in literacy and language research, policy, and education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).