Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy across Communities: Studies with Teachers of African American, Latina/o, and Indigenous Youth

Django Paris

In this study I seek to build a contemporary empirical base for and further conceptualize what I have recently termed culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Paris, 2012). To do so, I will trace the pedagogical practices of teachers who have a core commitment to sustaining the languages, literacies, and other valued cultural practices of African American, Latina/o, and Indigenous youth. To draw out the tenets of such teaching toward a theory of CSP, I will engage in a series of humanizing qualitative case studies of language and literacy pedagogy with teachers of youth of color in urban Michigan. Such a multiple case study design allows for both within case findings and across case comparison, so I can look for similarities and distinctions in culturally sustaining teaching practices with African American, Latina/o, and Indigenous students. The findings resulting from this study can extend existing knowledge for teachers and teacher educators about how to support and foster cultural pluralism with youth of color in urban classrooms.

About Django Paris

Django Paris is an associate professor of language and literacy in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. He is also a core faculty member in the African American and African Studies Program and affiliated faculty in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and the Native American Institute. His teaching and research focus on understanding and sustaining languages, literacies, and literatures among youth of color in changing urban schools and communities. He is particularly concerned with educational and cultural justice as outcomes of inquiry and pedagogy. Paris is author of Language across Difference: Ethnicity, Communication, and Youth Identities in Changing Urban Schools (2011), co-editor of Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (2014), and has published in many academic journals, including the Harvard Educational Review and Educational Researcher. He is chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standing Committee on Research. Paris is also the associate director of the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer graduate program of Middlebury College.