A Path to Literacy: Mapping the Literacy Practices of Young Black Men

David E. Kirkland

The proposed study seeks to map the literacy practices of young Black men by analyzing original and published data from eleven well-respected interpretive studies and two recent national surveys on Black males and literacy. Using critical discourse and traditional interpretive approaches, I seek to examine the ideologies of Black male language and literacy performance in order to generate a picture of how literacy looks in the lives of Black males both within and outside school borders. In doing so, I will examine data with regards to post-feminist conceptions of complex masculinities, postmodern and pluralistic formulations of Blackness, critical geographic notions of space and human expression, and Foucauldian understandings of language and literacy artifacts as indigenous to particular moments in history. Given these foci, the study aims to update current perspectives on literacy at various developmental points as depicted in the lives of contemporary young Black men and provide helpful insights for future research, teaching, and assessments around the topics of language, literacy, and Black male development.

About David E. Kirkland

David E. Kirkland is a transdisciplinary scholar of languages, texts, and cultures in urban arts and humanities education, who explores the intersections among youth culture and digital/portable technologies, discourse and identity, and literacy and urban teacher preparation. He has expertise in critical literary, ethnographic, and sociolinguistic research methods. He has received many awards for his work, including the 2008 AERA Division G Outstanding Dissertation Award and was a 2009-10 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and is a former fellow of NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices. Dr. Kirkland has published widely. His most recent articles include: “‘Black Skin, White Masks’: Normalizing Whiteness and the Trouble with the Achievement Gap” (TCRecord), “English(es) in urban contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities” (English Education), and “We real cool: Examining Black males and literacy” (Reading Research Quarterly). He recently completed his fourth book, A Search Past Silence, which will be published in Teacher College Press‘s Language and Literacy Series. Dr. Kirkland believes that, in their language and literacies, youth take on new meanings beginning with a voice and verb, where words when spoken or written have the power to transform the world inside-out.