Marcelle Haddix to Win AACTE Award for Book on Diversifying Literacy Teacher Prep
AACTE is delighted to announce the selection of Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me, by Marcelle Haddix of Syracuse University (NY), to receive the 2018 AACTE Outstanding Book Award. The award will be presented at the 70th AACTE Annual Meeting Closing Keynote session, March 3 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Reviewers praised this book for its clear and engaging writing and its well-sourced, thoughtful scholarship – as well as its timely and critical focus on diversifying the teaching workforce. The book’s copublishers, Routledge and the National Council of Teachers of English, articulate this focus in the following abstract:
[This book] examines how English and literacy teacher education – a space dominated by White, English-monolingual, middle class perspectives – shapes the experiences of preservice teachers of color and their construction of a teacher identity. Significant and timely, this book focuses attention on the unique needs and perspectives of racially and linguistically diverse preservice teachers in the field of literacy and English education and offers ways to improve teacher training to better meet the needs of preservice teachers from all racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. These changes have the potential to diversify the teacher force and cultivate teachers who bring rich racial, cultural, and linguistic histories to the field of teaching.
In nominating the book for AACTE’s award, four scholars – Gholnecsar Muhammad of Georgia State University, Detra Price-Dennis and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz of Columbia University Teachers College (NY), and Darrell Hucks of Keene State College (NH) – presented detailed evidence of the volume’s special qualities, particularly the thought-provoking questions it raises and the solutions it offers. “It is our hope that you will recognize the importance of this book for the ways it theorizes teaching and learning, generally, and for the ways it engages the literacy and English education community in a much-needed conversation about the limited presence of racially and linguistically diverse teachers in the field,” they wrote in their letter to AACTE. “Dr. Haddix’s book offers approaches to improve preparation in higher education in order to meet the needs of preservice teachers across all racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds.”
Dean Joanna Masingila of the Syracuse University School of Education concurred: “Dr. Marcelle Haddix has written a highly relevant and timely book on the perspectives and needs of racially and linguistically diverse prospective teachers in literacy and English education, and proposes ways to improve teacher preparation to better meet the needs of all prospective teachers.” Masingila added that Haddix is “an outstanding scholar, teacher, and leader in the field [whose] body of work is characterized by empirical rigor, momentum, and coherence and contributes significantly to understanding youth literacies, particularly in urban areas, and to the preparation of teachers for these youth.”
Haddix is Dean’s Associate Professor and chair of the Reading and Language Arts Department in the Syracuse University School of Education. Her scholarly interests center on the experiences of students of color in literacy teaching and teacher education and the importance of centering Blackness in educational practices and spaces. She directs two literacy programs for adolescent youth: the “Writing Our Lives” project, a program geared toward supporting the writing practices of urban secondary students within and beyond school contexts, and the “Dark Girls” afterschool program for Black middle school girls aimed at celebrating Black girl literacies. Haddix is also president-elect of the Literacy Research Association.
The AACTE Outstanding Book Award is given annually to recognize a book that makes a significant contribution to the knowledge base of educator preparation. Overseen by the AACTE Committee on Research and Dissemination, this award also seeks to honor publications that not only are well-written but offer a fresh lens on current assumptions or practices, reorient thinking in the field, and show potential for significant impact on policy or practice in educator preparation.
AACTE issued a press release today announcing all of its 2018 award winners. For more information on AACTE’s awards program, visit http://aacte.org/professional-development-and-events/awards. Nominations for the 2019 Outstanding Book Award will open in April.
Tags: Annual Meeting, content areas, diversity, workforce development
