Critical Language Pedagogy

Critical Language Pedagogy: Interrogating Language, Dialects, and Power in Teacher Education demonstrates how critical approaches to language and dialects are an essential part of social justice work in literacy education. The text details the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted on teachers’ language beliefs and learning about dialects, power, and identity. It describes the experiences of over 300 pre- and in-service teachers from across the United States who participated in a course on how to enact Critical Language Pedagogy in their English classrooms. Through detailed analyses and descriptions, the authors demonstrate how the course changed teachers’ beliefs about language, literacy, and their students. The book also presents information about the effectiveness of the mini-course, variations in the responses of teachers from different regions of the United States, and the varying language beliefs of teachers of color and White teachers. The authors present the entire mini-course so that readers can incorporate it into their own classes, making the book practical as well as informative for teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers. Critical Language Pedagogy: Interrogating Language, Dialects, and Power in Teacher Education provides a much-needed theoretical explanation of Critical Language Pedagogy and, just as importantly, a detailed description of teacher learning and a Critical Language Pedagogy curriculum that readers can use in K-12, college, and teacher education classrooms.

"This is an eloquently written and inspiring book about language and power in schools and classrooms. This book is a gift—a real gem—for teacher educators and teachers committed to disrupting injustice and building on the many linguistic assets of students. The authors insist that we reconsider what we believe we know, redesign our curriculum practices, rethink our pedagogical moves, and reimagine our discursive interactions in order to honor and cultivate diverse identity spaces. A welcome addition to the literature, the book reminds us that White teachers can and must be prepared to teach for language equity, justice, and humanity." —H. Richard Milner IV, Helen Faison Professor of Urban Education, University of Pittsburgh, "Amanda J. Godley and Jeffrey Reaser have not only developed a wonderful, sociolinguisically informed resource for teachers in their Critical Language Pedagogy (CLP) curriculum, but they have field-tested it with 301 teachers from a variety of racial and regional backgrounds. The feedback they report in this book will be invaluable in refining CLP for future iterations, and for helping teachers and researchers who want to attempt similar lesson plans on their own. This highly innovative book fulfills a real need for those working at the nexus of linguistics and education.” —John R. Rickford, Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University, Past President of the Linguistic Society of America, and Co-author of the Award-winning Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, "The Critical Language Pedagogy curriculum is timely and necessary for college and middle- to high-school curricula. The authors do a magnificent job of creating a curriculum that teachers are hungry for and students need. When I attend conferences with practitioners, they often buy the message but want to know how to implement it. This book does that and more. Readers should walk away determining when to implement the Critical Language Pedagogy curriculum in their teaching. I know I will." —Sonja L. Lanehart, Professor and Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and the Humanities, University of Texas at San Antonio, and Author of Sista, Speak!: Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy

AMANDA J. GODLEY, Ph.D., is Professor of English Education and Language, Literacy and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh. A former English teacher, she researches issues of equity and literacy learning in high school English classrooms.JEFFREY REASER, Ph.D., is Professor of English at North Carolina State University where he directs the secondary English education program and serves as Associate Director of the Language and Life Project. His work includes the award-winning book Talkin’ Tar Heel and Dialects at School.