This book draws on applied linguistics and literary studies to offer concrete means of engaging with vernacular language and literature in secondary and college classrooms. The authors embrace a language-as-resource orientation, countering the popular narrative of vernaculars as problems in schools. The book is divided into two parts, with the first half of the book providing linguistic and pedagogical background, and the second half offering literary case studies for teaching. Part I examines the historical and continued devaluing of vernaculars in schools, incorporating clear, usable explanations of relevant theories. This section also outlines the central myths and paradoxes surrounding vernacular languages and literatures, includes productive ways for teachers to address those myths and paradoxes, and explores challenges and possibilities for vernacular language pedagogy. In Part II, the authors provide pedagogical case studies using literary texts written in vernacular Englishes from around the world. Each chapter examines a vernacular-related topic, and concludes with discussion questions and writing assignments; an appendix contains the poems and short stories discussed, and other teaching resources. The book provides a model of interdisciplinary inquiry that can be beneficial to scholars and practitioners in composition, literature, and applied linguistics, as well as students of all linguistic backgrounds.

A novel approach to STEAM learning that engages students from historically marginalized communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education. The growing maker movement in education has become an integral part of both STEM and STEAM learning, tapping into the natural DIY inclinations of creative people as well as the educational power of inventing or making things. And yet African American, Latino/a American, and Indigenous people are underrepresented in maker culture and education. In this book, Nettrice Gaskins proposes a novel approach to STEAM learning that engages students from historically marginalized communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education. Techno-vernacular creativity (TVC) connects technical literacy, equity, and culture, encompassing creative innovations produced by ethnic groups that are often overlooked. TVC uses three main modes of activity: reappropriation, remixing, and improvisation. Gaskins looks at each of the three modes in turn, guiding readers from research into practice. Drawing on real-world examples, she shows how TVC creates dynamic learning environments where underrepresented ethnic students feel that they belong. Students who remix computationally, for instance, have larger toolkits of computational skills with which to connect cultural practices to STEAM subjects; reappropriation offers a way to navigate cultural repertoires; improvisation is firmly rooted in cultural and creative practices. Finally, Gaskins explores an equity-oriented approach that makes a distinction between conventional or dominant pedagogical approaches and culturally relevant or responsive making methods and practices. She describes TVC habits of mind and suggests methods of instructions and projects.

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Osnabrück, language: English, abstract: The United States is characterized by a notedly broad linguistic diversity. One part of this diversity in American English has always been at the center of scholarly research and publications: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is one of the most influential varieties of English that is spoken across the US. This paper will shortly present the most distinctive featuring AAVE. Further, the main differences between AAVE and Standard American English, which can be largely found in grammar, phonology and semantics will be explained. History, discussions and hypotheses about AAVE, as well as the scorching criticism it received in recent attempts to implement it into the curriculum will also be included. Having elaborated on that, the question arises whether AAVE should be integrated into the educational system these days. Although African-American Vernacular English has been chosen as the standard term in linguistics it is important to note that there are many labels referring to AAVE. It is also known as African American English, Black English Vernacular, Black Vernacular English, Black Vernacular, Black English or Ebonics. These terms are most common amongst linguists today and all refer to the same variety.

This pioneering study of African American students in the composition classroom lays the groundwork for reversing the cycle of underachievement that plagues linguistically diverse students. African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom approaches the issue of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in terms of teacher knowledge and prevailing attitudes, and it attempts to change current pedagogical approaches with a highly readable combination of traditional academic discourse and personal narratives. Realizing that composition is a particular form of social practice that validates some students and excludes others, Arnetha Ball and Ted Lardner acknowledge that many African American students come to writing and composition classrooms with talents that are not appreciated. To empower and inform practitioners, administrators, teacher educators, and researchers, Ball and Lardner provide knowledge and strategies that will help unleash the potential of African American students and help them imagine new possibilities for their successes as writers. African American Literacies Unleashed asserts that necessary changes in theory and practice can be addressed by refocusing attention from teachers’ knowledge deficits to the processes through which teachers engage information relevant to culturally informed pedagogy. Providing strategies for unlearning racism in the classroom and changing the status quo, this volume stresses the development and maintenance of a real sense of teaching efficacy—teachers’ beliefs in their abilities to connect with and work effectively with all students—and reflective optimism—teachers’ informed expectations that all students have the potential to succeed.

"This multi-authored volume draws on the collective experiences of a team of researcher-practitioners, from three Oceanic universities, in an aid-funded intervention program for enhancing literacy learning in Pacific Islands primary education schools. The interventions explored here-in Solomon Islands and Tonga-were implemented via a four-year collaboration which adopted a design-based research approach to bringing about sustainable improvements in teacher and student learning, and in the delivery and evaluation of educational aid. This approach demanded that learning from the context of practice should be determining of both content and process; that all involved in the interventions should see themselves as learners. Essential to the trusting and respectful relationships required for this approach was the program's acknowledgement of relationality as central to indigenous Oceanic societies, and of education as a relational activity. Relationality and Learning in Oceania: Contextualizing Education for Development addresses debates current in both comparative education and international aid. Argued strongly is that relational research-practice approaches (south-south, south-north) which center the importance of context and culture, and the significance of indigenous epistemologies, are required to strengthen education within the post-colonial relational space of Oceania, and to inform the various agencies and actors involved in 'education for development' in Oceania and globally. Maintained is that the development of education structures and processes within the contexts explored through the chapters comprising this volume, continues to be a negotiation between the complexity of historically developed local 'traditions' and understandings and the 'global' imperatives shaped by dominant development discourses"--

This comprehensive bibliography provides more than 1600 references to publications from the past half century on education in relation to African American Vernacular English, English-based pidgins and creoles and other vernacula Englishes, with accompanying abstracts for many.