Examining Young African American Children's Conceptualizations of Literacy Learning

Wintre Foxworth Johnson

Research has extensively examined young Black children's literacy development and practices in and out of school. Yet, Black children continue to be marginalized in U.S. schools, and their literacy practices are persistently undervalued and discarded as non-academic. Within literacy policy and practice, there is ongoing debate about what constitutes quality and effective literacy instruction. The voices of young children, however, are glaringly absent from these considerations. Through a participatory, arts-based design, this qualitative study examines the nature of African American children's perspectives about literacy learning. By engaging seven-and eight-year-olds who are enrolled in a Freedom School summer program in individual and collaborative artistic creation through drawing, painting, collaging, and journaling, this project seeks to understand African American children's experiences in literacy classrooms, what they believe it means to learn to read and write both within and outside traditional schooling contexts, and how they envision ideal literacy classroom environments. This research will underscore the importance of centering readers and creative expression in literacy instruction and seeks to inform culturally embedded approaches to teaching and research about reading and literacies in early childhood education. Moreover, this work will highlight the need for multi-voiced, reader-centered nuance in the scholarly discussions concerning literacy development, teaching, and learning.

About Wintre Foxworth Johnson

Wintre Foxworth Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development. She earned her Ph.D. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. Johnson's community-engaged scholarship lies at the nexus of sociocultural literacy studies, critical race scholarship, and critical pedagogies for and with young children. Her research investigates African American children's literacy practices, racial awareness, and sociopolitical knowledge as well as the nature and impact of centering Black intellectual traditions in early education. Through partnerships in public school classrooms, an urban community school, and summer learning environments such as Freedom Schools, her work illustrates how young children use storytelling, dialogue, artistic expression, and cultural histories to interpret and respond to structural inequities and racialized difference. Her current project, funded by a Spencer Foundation Large Grant, is a mixed methods participatory study that positions young African American children as agents of societal change. Her research has also received funding from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). In 2022, Johnson's scholarship received the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Language Arts Distinguished Article Award. In 2024, she received the Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education (CPECE) Special Interest Group (SIG) Emerging Scholar Award within the American Education Research Association (AERA). Her work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Reading Research Quarterly, Urban Education, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, and the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.