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“I Never Really Knew the History behind African American Language”: Critical Language Pedagogy in an Advanced Placement English Language Arts Class

Article  in  Equity & Excellence in Education · July 2013

DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2013.806848

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April Baker-Bell

Michigan State University

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To cite this article: April Baker-Bell (2013) “I Never Really Knew the History behind African American Language”: Critical Language Pedagogy in an Advanced Placement English Language Arts Class, Equity & Excellence in Education, 46:3, 355-370, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2013.806848

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 46(3), 355–370, 2013 Copyright C⃝ University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education ISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 online DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2013.806848

“I Never Really Knew the History behind African American Language”: Critical Language Pedagogy in an Advanced

Placement English Language Arts Class

April Baker-Bell Michigan State University

This article responds to two long-standing dilemmas that limit the effectiveness of language education for students who speak and write in African American Language (AAL): (1) the gap between theory and research on AAL and classroom practice, and (2) the need for critical language pedagogies. This article presents the effectiveness of a critical language pedagogy used in one eleventh grade advanced placement English Language Arts (ELA) class. Findings show that students held negative attitudes toward AAL before the implementation of the critical language pedagogy, and that the critical language pedagogy helped students to interrogate dominant notions of language and to express an appreciation of AAL.

The motivation for the critical language pedagogy that I describe in this article stems from my experience being ill-prepared to address my AAL-speaking students’ language and literacy needs when I worked as a high school English teacher. I recall having a discussion with my students about code-switching from AAL to Dominant American English (hereafter DAE). This discussion revealed that my students either held negative attitudes toward AAL (although they spoke it) or resisted using DAE because they felt that it reflected the dominant culture, and they did not want to be forced to imitate a culture of which they did not consider themselves part. One student flat out said, “What would I look like speaking in DAE? It don’t even sound right.” The questions and concerns that these students were raising shed light on the critical linguistic issues that code-switching pedagogies fail to address, and unfortunately, at that time, I did not have the pedagogical tools necessary to provide my students with a critical understanding of AAL.

This experience speaks to at least two dilemmas limiting the effectiveness of language educa- tion for students who speak and write in AAL. First, there is a gap between theory and research on AAL and classroom practice (Gilyard, 2005; Smitherman, 2006; Smitherman & Quartey-Annan, 2011). While language scholars are currently calling for critical1 approaches that respond to the language and literacy needs of students who speak and write in AAL (Alim, 2005; Godley & Minnici, 2008; Kirkland & Jackson, 2008; Paris, 2012; Young, 2009), some K-12 English Language Arts (hereafter ELA) teachers—even at this late hour in history—are not prepared to view AAL in a larger system of language learning (Alim, 2005, 2007; Ball & Lardner, 2005; Ball

Address correspondence to April Baker-Bell, Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, Michigan State University, 434 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824. E-mail: adbell@msu.edu

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& Muhammad, 2003; Gilyard, 2005). Second, many classrooms are informed by code-switching pedagogies that (1) fail to consider the matrix of language, identity, and power (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur, 2011; Kirkland & Jackson, 2008), (2) postpone students’ ability to think critically about linguistic imperialism in a pluralistic world (Canagarajah, 2006), (3) advise teach- ers to ignore the relationship between language and race (Young, 2009), and (4) cause students to feel linguistically and culturally inadequate (Fogel & Ehri, 2006). Given these dilemmas, it is crucial that literacy educators and researchers investigate the implementation and effectiveness of critical approaches that align existing theory and research on AAL with classroom practice. However, there are few studies that capture such pedagogical applications and how they improve the language education of students who speak and write in AAL (Alim, 2005, 2007; Chisholm & Godley, 2011; Godley & Minnici, 2008).

With these needs in mind, I became interested in exploring the possibility of a pedagogy that moves beyond filling students’ linguistic toolboxes with code-switching techniques and toward providing them with a critical understanding of the historical, cultural, and political underpinnings of AAL. Drawing on the work of Alim (2005, 2007), Kirkland and Jackson (2008), Chisholm and Godley (2011), and Godley and Minnici (2008), I use the term “critical language pedagogy” to describe an instructional approach that encourages students to interrogate dominate notions of language while providing them space to value, sustain, and learn about the historical importance of their own language. This article documents students’ responses to a critical language pedagogy that I co-taught in one eleventh grade Advanced Placement (AP) ELA class.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Despite there being decades of research on AAL and it being the most studied and written about language in the world (Gilyard, 2005), it has yet to be embraced as a resource for educational innovation in twenty-first century ELA classrooms (Paris & Ball, 2011). This is overwhelmingly problematic given that there is no indication that AAL will be used less in U.S. society (Paris & Ball, 2011), and the enrollment of black students in American K-12 institutions is expected to increase by 2020 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). This suggests that ELA classrooms will become increasingly multilingual and multicultural (Kinloch, 2005). Language scholars have consistently argued that teachers must shift their pedagogies and practices to value the rich resources that multilingual speakers and writers bring with them to ELA classrooms, yet many classrooms continue to be informed by monolingual ideologies (Ball & Muhammad, 2003; Canagarajah, 2006; Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur, 2011; Kirkland & Jackson, 2008; Shaughnessy, 1977; Smitherman, 1995; Young, 2009).

Moving Beyond Code-Switching Pedagogies

One monolingual approach that is commonly used in ELA classrooms to address the needs of speakers and writers of AAL is the code-switching approach. The code-switching approach is concerned with getting users of AAL to develop facility in DAE by restricting AAL to informal contexts and DAE to formal contexts (Canagarajah, 2006; Wheeler & Swords, 2006).

CRITICAL LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY 357

Critical scholars of language Kirkland and Jackson (2008) argue that code-switching ped- agogies do not improve students’ attitudes toward their own languages, and these pedagogies perpetuate students’ feelings of linguistic and cultural shame as they fail to consider the matrix of language, identity, and power. Kirkland and Jackson call for teachers to take a critical instructional approach to language—one that:

addresses critical-linguistic issues, • makes students aware of the historical importance of AAL, • considers the significance of all sociolinguistic forms and provides students with opportu-

nities to investigate, accommodate, and critique such forms, • addresses negative assumptions about languages and their speakers, • is explicit about the political act of language (i.e., making students aware that every time

they speak or write, they are engaging in a political act), • provides instruction to all students, regardless of race or ethnicity, which offsets the as-

sumptions that perpetuate linguistic discrimination. (pp. 148–149)

Canagarajah (2006) asserts that the code-switching approach postpones linguistically marginalized students’ critical literacy practices, reproduces monolingual ideologies and lin- guistic hierarchies, disables students’ contexts of linguistic pluralism, keeps codes separate but equal, and does not contribute to long-term goals of accepting minority languages and World Englishes. Additionally, Canagarajah declares that code-switching pedagogies also convey to stu- dents that their language “should only have a restricted place in [their] repertoire” (p. 1624), and it insinuates that only one code can be present at any one time. Last, he argues that code-switching pedagogies do not uphold the Students’ Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL)2 resolution, but instead grants teachers the right to students’ languages.