Bounding our Liberation Together: Toward Pedagogies of Coalitional Liberation

Authors

Rae L. Oviatt, Eastern Michigan UniversityFollow
Stephanie F. Reid, University of Montana, MissoulaFollow

Abstract

This article draws on the long history of movement building, culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies, and abolitionist solidarity in presenting a way to bridge ELA standards and humanizing curriculum. The authors’ present their vision of pedagogies for coalitional liberation through five actionable and manageable tenets of practice. These tenets have been formulated to guide teachers in designing their own units or lessons. Each tenet is described in detail and accompanied by classroom examples from a critical qualitative research inquiry that foregrounds one pre-service teacher’s intentional curriculum co-design. The examples show how teachers can move with their students moving from theory to practice, or praxis. We note that the potential of these pedagogies in practice were made possible through the strong justice-orientation of their mentor teacher. We conclude with implications for both liberatory teacher-organizers and a necessary call to action for bold administrators and leaders.

Author Bio

Dr. Rae L. Oviatt is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education in the College of Education at Eastern Michigan University. Rae’s experiences as a youth demonstrator and organizer led her to begin a career in education in 2005. Over the last sixteen years, Rae has continued as a teacher-organizer working with and alongside youth in urban communities across the U.S. and global contexts. Rae’s research interests include critical multimodal literacies, queer composing, youth organizing and movement building in and out of schools, and youth participatory action research. Her work can be found in publications such as the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, the Journal of College Orientation and Transition, and in public scholarship spaces such as Teachers, Profs, Parents, Writers Who Care. She can be contacted at oviatt@emich.edu.

Dr. Stephanie F. Reid is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education at the University of Montana. Stephanie’s research interests include multimodal literacies pedagogy and multimodal text analysis. She can be reached at stephanie.reid@mso.umt.edu.

Recommended Citation

Oviatt, Rae L. and Reid, Stephanie F. (2021) "Bounding our Liberation Together: Toward Pedagogies of Coalitional Liberation," Michigan Reading Journal: Vol. 54: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mrj/vol54/iss1/8