Expertise

As a race critical researcher and an experienced educator, my mission is to cultivate more human fulfillment and mitigate human suffering. I launched my research career through the Literacy, Language and Culture program, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. My dissertation study (Croom, 2018) investigated teachers’ conceptualization(s) of race in literacy instruction with Black children. This work makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the fields of Education and Literacy.

Within my broader inquiries of race and literacies, I continue to document teachers’ understandings of race and examine the influence these understandings may have on teacher efficacy, student identification, pedagogical reasoning, and teaching practices in literacy. Typically, I generate knowledge through case study and qualitative methods using post-White vindicationist philosophy, practice of race theory (PRT), and race critical practice analysis. Still, counts and comparison of averages can also be meaningful in this orientation to data analysis.

Concisely, I use research and experience to help individuals and groups develop racial literacies and thereby advance the justice, antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of schools, universities, businesses, organizations, and communities.

Communities
Curriculum and Instruction
Keywords
racism or race relation social justice literacy