Debunking Deficit Ideologies and Recruiting Diverse Students’ Repertoires for Reading and Other Literate Engagements
Year: 2025
Type: editorial
Abstract: Multilingual children and youth of color develop rich linguistic and cultural repertoires due to their participation in their families and cultural communities, and their lived experiences in broader sociopolitical worlds.The articles in this issue collectively illustrate that although deficit ideologies often thwart students' efforts to draw upon these repertoires for literacy attainment, possibilities for transformative literacy teaching and learning exist in recruiting these resources for literacy education.All of the articles argue that literacy education, including reading instruction, is ideologically and sociopolitically charged, and they call for revisioning educational policy and practices to advance equitable literacy teaching and learning.In "Assessing Diversity: A Case of Black English and Running Records," JaNiece Elzy examines the complex interplay between language ideologies, race, and oral reading assessments for Black English-speaking students within Reading Recovery, a literacy intervention for first graders.Running records, recorded interpretations, and interviews were analyzed to examine how Reading Recovery teachers perceive, interpret, and respond to oral reading assessments for Black English-speaking students.Guided by theoretical frameworks of language ideologies, raciolinguistic ideologies, and translanguaging, Elzy's analysis reveals that teachers often misinterpreted Black English features as reading deficiencies, leading to instructional decisions focused on correction rather than leveraging students' linguistic strengths.The study highlights the need for linguistically responsive teacher preparation and reading assessment reforms to support equitable literacy assessment and instructional practices that value students' full linguistic repertoires.Further, by positioning Black English speakers as multilingual learners, the study calls for reimagining oral reading assessments that frame Black English as a resource for Black students' reading development.Jessica E. Masterson further argues that despite the proliferation of literacy research suggesting that student-centered, culturally responsive instruction can improve literacy outcomes for racially and socioeconomically minoritized youth, one-size-fits-all literacy curricula and methods still dominate K-12 schools.In "'Is It Gonna Reach You in Time?' Figured Worlds and Reading Intervention," Masterson's collective case study offers a glimpse into this disparity by analyzing the figured worlds of two high school reading intervention classes through participant interviews and observations of two teachers and five of their students.Findings indicate that the competing figured worlds of reading is a struggle and reading is a reward were both present in these classrooms, and that the prevailing frame of reading as faith was a foundational theme across both sites.As such, the varying levels of faith in the curriculum Editorial
Source: Journal of Literacy Research
Authors: Christina L. Dobbs, Bong Gee Jang, Seth A. Parsons, Allison Skerrett, Earl Aguilera, Bessie P. Dernikos
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4408930074