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Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Classroom

Walker, Albertina Louise
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1148304061

Abstract Details

2006, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : Interdisciplinary Studies.
Current approaches in composition and literacy research reflect a desire to better understand and serve the increasingly diverse student bodies comprising U.S. colleges and universities. Many such approaches challenge longstanding pedagogical assumptions that re-inscribe traditional notions of autonomous literacy and educational standards, yet leave whiteness as a racial identity transparent. The present study contributes to this turn in research by considering the role of race in the experiences and performances of students in an English composition class. A clearer understanding of what occurs relationally among diverse student writers may offer insights into why student performance differences persist nationally along racial lines. The immediate value of this study is its connection to an on-going investigation of critical pedagogies at the university in which it is situated. The study focuses on a section of English 102 at a large, urban university in the Midwest. Without forcing students to address race or other cultural elements, course readings and writing assignments accommodate critiques of these subjects. Thus, writings generated by these assignments along with data on classroom dynamics are used to explore how students experience race as discursive practices. Management and analysis of data proceeded according to standard qualitative research protocols for grounded theory. Distinct categories within data sets were identified and repackaged as observational and textual data. Coded data were reduced to feature key relationships and textual discourse features. Linkages in the data to the study’s theory framework were identified and grouped for interpretation. Of the twenty students who form the investigation’s base, nine are featured in case studies: four of the five black students and five of the fifteen white students in the class. Tentative findings within each case study were cross-checked towards the construction of an explanatory framework. Findings suggest that students perform race as discursive social practices in their classroom interactions and texts that can both enhance and confound literacy learning. They underscore a vital role of the composition classroom as a site for productive collisions of culture, literacy, and ideology toward enhanced racial tolerance and knowledge. Findings also suggest that students write to and against prevailing social narratives, employing discursive enactment and recognition work toward authorizing new narratives, re-authorizing some, and transforming others to create space for new, developing ideologies on race. Transformative gestures suggest the development of a critical understanding of the racial self and racial other as discursive social constructions, an understanding that might be called racial literacy.
Dr. Russel Durst (Advisor)
282 p.
Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Composition theory; New Literacy Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Walker, A. L. (2006). Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Classroom [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1148304061

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Walker, Albertina. Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Classroom. 2006. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1148304061.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Walker, Albertina. "Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Classroom." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1148304061

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1148304061
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© 2006, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.