Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Pedagogies and Our Futures Themed Issue Guest Introduction

Preschool teacher Haydée Dohrn-Melendez Morgan expressed her belief that “children come full, they come as full humans, full people” (Nash et al., 2022, p. 1). Her ideas resonate with all of us and embody the multilayered story this themed issue, CulturallySustainingEarlyLiteracyPedagogiesandOurFutures offers. Herein, authors share research findings on culturally sustaining early literacy pedagogies across a range of contexts. Scholar-activists have identified features of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSPs) in practice (Eagle-Shield et al., 2020; Paris et al., 2017). Offering vivid illustrations of these features from the burgeoning body of scholarship situating CSPs within early childhood contexts, this issue strives to contribute to a “more loving and just” future of culturally sustaining early literacy pedagogies (Paris, 2021). Refusing current discourse about literacy which has been overly focused on deficits and on linear approaches to literacy teaching and learning, the authors hope that readers will be able to interpret and contextualize learnings about reading that fosters cultural sustenance, about Black living-ness and multilingualism, about abolitionism, about revolutionary love, about human displacement, about stories and histories and languages in their own contexts—as we collectively work toward a future where culturally sustaining early literacy pedagogies see, honor, and extend children in their fullness. The following introduction to the issue, authored by two distinguished scholars, Drs. Django Paris and Gloria Boutte, lovingly invites readers to approach the articles that will follow with critical reflexivity about reading, research, and the future of culturally sustaining early literacy pedagogies. I want to invite us to remember how important reading has been across our lives, especially recalling our early reading years. Maybe we can sit with memories of our earliest favorite books, the people who read them to and with us. Maybe our minds focus on the where, how, who of learning to read. Maybe our memories are filled with joy and laughter, maybe with pain or anger, maybe regret or longing, or all of these and still other things. We might think about the stakes for reading in our own childhoods. What was the world like? Our worlds, the worlds of our families, friends, neighbors, and communities? Whatever memories come to us, if you are reading this, I know you understand reading, the teaching, learning and doing of reading, to be foundational to our lives. The powerful set of articles in this issue, Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Pedagogies and Our Futures, ask us to think about why and how reading matters in sustaining the lives of the young people and families at the heart of our work. They ask us to consider what the stakes are for the teaching and learning of reading, and the role of reading in creating more just futures. These articles find us enduring such dire times. Indeed, the young people we teach and learn with are experiencing their early worlds amidst the confluence of pandemic, climate catastrophe, genocides, emboldened white supremacy, resurging fascism, and profound economic and social abandonment. Although each of these have been features across the history of the United States and other settler colonial nation-states, I think we all recognize that this past decade has been particularly unrelenting. And yet when we think of the children and families we teach and learn with, I know we think of the joy, care, love, and fierce vision for the future offered by families, communities, and critical educators. This has always been the case for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, and all Global Majority families and communities faced with resisting the violences of racial settler capitalism. We face the world as it is while seeking to build the world as it could and should be. In this pressing context, what does reading—learning to read and using reading—mean in lives of children and families? How can reading, and particularly teaching and researching reading, be part of sustaining the valued lifeways, the very lives and futures of young people and communities? We find answers in the articles that follow in this special issue, and I am so thankful our work on culturally sustaining pedagogies has been useful in forging these answers. Consider the concepts and enactments forwarded in this special issue: From McMurtry (this issue) comes a focus on “Culturally sustaining, Black-centric texts that center Black livingness” Bryan & McMillan (this issue) offer the necessary concept of culturally sustaining prison abolition literacies, and map for us the ways prisons share characteristics with culturally unsustaining early childhood classrooms. We learn, too, about the ways a culturally sustaining revolutionary love framework describes how loving teachers do their work (Braden, Myers, Thornton, Rodriguez, and Wynter-Hoyte, this issue). We are encouraged to remember homelands through a piercing analysis of representations of refugees and displacement in children's literature (Strekalova-Hughes, Peterman & Minanya, this issue). Johnson, Vlach, and Leija (this issue) show us how to recenter critical, sociopolitical knowledge through children's literature, “especially in the current educational climate that is characterized by harsh legislation that silences critical and culturally relevant discussion through book bans and LGBT QIA+ erasure.” And Frieson (this issue) reminds us of what it looks and feels like to offer “a seat at the table” by curating culturally sustaining spaces for Black children in multilingual classrooms. Each of these offerings are nuanced, community-anchored enactments of what Nash, Peele, Elson, Arce, Sumner, and Polson (this issue) conceptualize as a Cultural Sustenance View of Reading. In their framework, “children are full people, full humans, full of a universe of ways of knowing, being, and engaging in reading that are mediated by their social, linguistic, and cultural worlds.” As we learn alongside these articles, I hope we keep our memories of our full young reading selves close. I hope we remember, too, the world as it is and the world as it should and must be. Let's join these articles in helping to build that world through the ways we read, teach, learn, and live together. As I write this culturally sustaining love letter to you, I want to assure you that you are in for a treat with these carefully selected, priceless articles on culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies. Editors and authors for this special issue, Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Pedagogies and Our Futures, envision educational settings where children and families can bring their whole selves. Against the ill-intentional political backdrop of narrow conceptions of reading, bans on Black history (and humanity), and children's books which center culture, these scholars provide a pathway for culturally sustaining early literacy pedagogies. Let me expatiate briefly on each question. If our purpose is to be culturally sustaining literacy pedagogues, then our literacy practices must necessarily situate children's identities as central and critically address power issues. We must not be deterred and misled by overstatements and distortions of research on reading. We have to necessarily problematize pervasive narrow, deficit views of reading instruction advocated by some Science of Reading proponents. That is to say that numerous variables contribute to conclusions drawn by researchers, and research findings are mixed, indicating that there is no clear “one-size-fits-all” approach to teaching reading. From a culturally sustaining perspective, we do know that children's culture, humanity, and spirits should not be destroyed in the literacy learning process. If our purpose is to demonstrate how literacy can be both pedagogical and healing, then this welcomed and special issue fills a deep void that has been created and sustained for centuries. This issue beautifully addresses so-called taboo issues (police profiling; forced displacement; Pro-Black and Pro-Latinx identity; and other topics) that are sometimes deemed ‘developmentally inappropriate’ by misguided commentators who underestimate young children's ability to understand complex issues. Interestingly, the same may rely on traditional children's stories filled with violence (e.g., issues like murder in Snow White; violence in rhymes like Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater). All this is to say that as culturally sustaining literacy educators, we must stay the course. To answer this question, we can examine our instruction and curricula against the backdrop of articles in this volume and against the healthy knowledge base on the topic. If culturally sustaining literacy practices are occasional or an add-on, it is time to up our game. Culturally sustaining literacy practices are an essential mindset, not just fashionably performative when it's popular (e.g., after the so-called racial awakening in 2020). We are not really who we think we are (culturally sustaining pedagogues) if we follow the whims of political change which intimate that the culture and spirits of children of color and other minoritized groups do not matter. We are all works in progress. This collection of articles demonstrates that children can, do, and should learn literacy using Black-centric, abolitionist, and other culturally sustaining approaches. As we network with other culturally sustaining educators, the research, conceptions, and practices presented in this volume can guide us. Employ fugitivity (nod to Givens, 2021) if needed, and any other means necessary to ensure that children's literacies and cultures are intact. A huge thank you to Reading Research Quarterly for its vision and courage for promoting this special issue, Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Pedagogies and Our Futures. We hope readers will draw from this issue in their early childhood classrooms and teacher education courses. Stay strong on behalf of the children. Cheers! Django Paris is the James A and Cherry A Banks Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of Washington on Coast Salish Homelands, Seattle, Washington, USA; email: [email protected]. Gloria S. Boutte is a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA; email: [email protected]. Kindel Turner Nash is the Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, USA; email: [email protected]

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• Remixing images, words, and ideas

  Harini Rajagopal•Language Awareness•2025

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• Diverse picturebooks for diverse children

  Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal, Ruanni Tupas et al.•Journal of Multilingual and…•2025

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• Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Our Futures

  Django Paris•The Educational Forum•2021

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