Vaughn W M Watson
Biographic Data
| ID | 2837995 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vaughn W M Watson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vaughn W M |
| FAMILY NAME | Watson |
| SIGNATURE | WATSON V W M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2865-7736 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Enacting digital diasporic tellings with Black African immigrant youth through podcasting
At a time of increasingly restrictive policies confronting immigrant communities in the United States, we examined findings from a youth podcasting initiative that worked as a curricular design, teaching practice, and research approach to counter the silencing of immigrant youth and communities and affirm and elevate Black African immigrant youth’s agentive, already-present voice. We extend the framework of diasporic tellings, asserting three dim…
“Heroes Like Me”—Envisioning Possibilities for Enacting Culturally Inclusive Digital Multimodal Literacies
In fostering asset‐based literacy and language teaching in classroom and digital spaces, this study draws on OmoBerry, an educational YouTube channel, to demonstrate how educators can enact culturally inclusive digital multimodal language and literacy instructions with African immigrant youth. This inquiry illustrates how such a lens offers possibilities for integrating African systems of knowing and being with digital multimodal resources toward…
Pre-service teachers demonstrating compassion through expressions of care
This qualitative research study examines the perspectives of pre-service teachers (PSTs) in the US and South Africa as they learned about the pedagogy of compassion as a generative approach for supporting students in navigating issues of social justice in the context of English teaching and learning. We examine PSTs’ work generated in a secondary English methods course in the US and interviews with 14 PSTs: 10 in the US and 4 in South Africa. Fin…
Can I Come to Your Island?”
The authors, literacy and language researchers, and teacher educators and their daughters, use narrative inquiry to story the embodied digital literacy practices of two girls of color as the girls played Animal Crossing online during the COVID‐19 pandemic and communicated about their (game)play via text messaging. We conceptually frame the girls enacting of embodied digital literacies during their (game)play as the interplay of cuentos , pláticas…
Fibrous solidarity
I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”
We share digital collages composed by youth in Lit Diaspora, a community‐based after‐school literacy initiative involving Black African immigrant youth and adult collaborators, as one contemporary example of rendering visible the contours of the educational lives of African immigrant youth, among the fastest growing immigrant communities in the U.S. We do so amid anti‐Black, anti‐immigrant discourse and policy in schools, workplaces, and society …
The Imperatives of Voice and Context in the Preparation of Community Teachers
In this conceptual/theoretical paper, we present an argument about the importance of preparing community teachers, articulating tenets of youth voice, community voice, and context in this undertaking. We operationalize these tenets by proposing a Learning-to-Teach Cycle as an organizing structure for teacher candidates to encounter across their programs through four interrelated elements-- observing; identifying; reflecting/synthesizing; and desi…
These Tellings
In envisioning literacy at a crossroads, we ask what may be the potential of a different, intense, possible love, a love we may scarcely know and may yet discern—what we think of as a cosmic love, an explosive love. Such stance-taking in literacy research provokes new possibilities for research, teaching, and learning. We share brief narrative vignettes, moments we pointedly name as these tellings, and assert possibilities across two interconnect…
Announcing the 2019–2020 Alan C. Purves Award Recipients
Preview this article: Announcing the 2019–2020 Alan C. Purves Award Recipients: Inspiring Transformative Literacy Pedagogies: The 2020 Alan C. Purves Award Committee, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/55/3/researchintheteachingofenglish31189-1.gif
Locating a pedagogy of love
Recent contexts of migration for immigrant communities from African countries have comprised what sociologist April Gordon discussed as a “new diaspora of black Africans to the U.S.” (p. 84). Yet amid contemporary contexts of migration, popularized narratives of African immigrant youth consistently linger on deficit framings and “emphasize what a particular student, family, or community is lacking”. As the ongoing work of rendering visible narrat…
This is America”
“You gotta believe in something, something, something”
We render in this theoretical inquiry, informed by empirical data, understandings of how preservice teachers’ literacy lives come into curricular considerations of future teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. In doing this work, we wondered about the past, present, and future lives of teachers: how might we understand the teaching of English as profoundly nostalgic work? Building upon the notion of “nostalgia for the future”, …
“Air I Breathe”
This qualitative study, based on data from an ongoing after-school literacy and songwriting initiative, examines the multiliteracy practices of Noriah Rose and Koral, Black adolescent girls, and their socially situated meaning-making and sharing about loss. Specifically, we asked, “In what ways do youth grapple with complicated meanings of loss as they share creative and artistic songwriting practices?” We build upon interdisciplinary framings in…
Humanizing the Black Immigrant Body
Background/Context This conceptual essay contributes to recent education research on immigrant youth from West African countries that examines the interplay of popularized narratives of immigrant youth and young adults, and their Diasporic literacy practices. Specifically, we examine embodied Diaspora literacies as affirming and extending presences and absences of Black immigrant bodies across two contexts: an after-school African Club, and a qua…
Examining Moments of Possibility Toward College Readiness in a Literacy‐and‐Songwriting Initiative
The authors examined how middle and high school students participating in a literacy‐and‐songwriting initiative in Detroit, Michigan, experienced moments of possibility that supported the youth in envisioning themselves as college bound. The authors explain how they drew from culturally relevant and sustaining educational approaches to design literacy instruction for youth of color that built from students’ interests as strengths, challenging edu…
Praisesongs of Place
Preview this article: Praisesongs of Place: Youth Envisioning Space and Place in a Literacy and Songwriting Initiative, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/53/4/researchintheteachingofenglish30140-1.gif
It’s All Possible”
This article examines how 18 teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff from seven New York City public high schools collaborated during the Black and Latino Male Professional Development Initiative (a pseudonym) to develop a “culturally relevant, schoolwide, college-going culture” supportive of Black and Latino males’ college readiness and access. We draw from a mixed-methods empirical research study to discuss participants’ changin…
From microscope to mirror
This study examines the experiences of doctoral students in a qualitative research course that centers culture throughout the research process. Data sources include one-on-one interviews, written documentation of course assignments, research team meetings, and doctoral students’ conference proposals and publications examining civic learning and action and notions of citizenship of second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Us…
Toward Participatory Communal Citizenship
Rendering visible African immigrants’ shared and differing experiences of civic learning and action, the authors present findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of African immigrant identities constructions and civic engagement, we highlight a multilayered view of civic teaching, learning, and action within and across contexts …
Toward Participatory Communal Citizenship
Rendering visible African immigrants’ shared and differing experiences of civic learning and action, the authors present findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of African immigrant identities constructions and civic engagement, we highlight a multilayered view of civic teaching, learning, and action within and across contexts …
It’s All Possible”
This article examines how 18 teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff from seven New York City public high schools collaborated during the Black and Latino Male Professional Development Initiative (a pseudonym) to develop a “culturally relevant, schoolwide, college-going culture” supportive of Black and Latino males’ college readiness and access. We draw from a mixed-methods empirical research study to discuss participants’ changin…
Locating a pedagogy of love
Recent contexts of migration for immigrant communities from African countries have comprised what sociologist April Gordon discussed as a “new diaspora of black Africans to the U.S.” (p. 84). Yet amid contemporary contexts of migration, popularized narratives of African immigrant youth consistently linger on deficit framings and “emphasize what a particular student, family, or community is lacking”. As the ongoing work of rendering visible narrat…
This is America”
The Imperatives of Voice and Context in the Preparation of Community Teachers
In this conceptual/theoretical paper, we present an argument about the importance of preparing community teachers, articulating tenets of youth voice, community voice, and context in this undertaking. We operationalize these tenets by proposing a Learning-to-Teach Cycle as an organizing structure for teacher candidates to encounter across their programs through four interrelated elements-- observing; identifying; reflecting/synthesizing; and desi…
From microscope to mirror
This study examines the experiences of doctoral students in a qualitative research course that centers culture throughout the research process. Data sources include one-on-one interviews, written documentation of course assignments, research team meetings, and doctoral students’ conference proposals and publications examining civic learning and action and notions of citizenship of second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Us…
From microscope to mirror
This study examines the experiences of doctoral students in a qualitative research course that centers culture throughout the research process. Data sources include one-on-one interviews, written documentation of course assignments, research team meetings, and doctoral students’ conference proposals and publications examining civic learning and action and notions of citizenship of second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Us…
Toward Participatory Communal Citizenship
Rendering visible African immigrants’ shared and differing experiences of civic learning and action, the authors present findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of African immigrant identities constructions and civic engagement, we highlight a multilayered view of civic teaching, learning, and action within and across contexts …
Praisesongs of Place
Preview this article: Praisesongs of Place: Youth Envisioning Space and Place in a Literacy and Songwriting Initiative, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/53/4/researchintheteachingofenglish30140-1.gif
It’s All Possible”
This article examines how 18 teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff from seven New York City public high schools collaborated during the Black and Latino Male Professional Development Initiative (a pseudonym) to develop a “culturally relevant, schoolwide, college-going culture” supportive of Black and Latino males’ college readiness and access. We draw from a mixed-methods empirical research study to discuss participants’ changin…
“You gotta believe in something, something, something”
We render in this theoretical inquiry, informed by empirical data, understandings of how preservice teachers’ literacy lives come into curricular considerations of future teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. In doing this work, we wondered about the past, present, and future lives of teachers: how might we understand the teaching of English as profoundly nostalgic work? Building upon the notion of “nostalgia for the future”, …
“Air I Breathe”
This qualitative study, based on data from an ongoing after-school literacy and songwriting initiative, examines the multiliteracy practices of Noriah Rose and Koral, Black adolescent girls, and their socially situated meaning-making and sharing about loss. Specifically, we asked, “In what ways do youth grapple with complicated meanings of loss as they share creative and artistic songwriting practices?” We build upon interdisciplinary framings in…
Humanizing the Black Immigrant Body
Background/Context This conceptual essay contributes to recent education research on immigrant youth from West African countries that examines the interplay of popularized narratives of immigrant youth and young adults, and their Diasporic literacy practices. Specifically, we examine embodied Diaspora literacies as affirming and extending presences and absences of Black immigrant bodies across two contexts: an after-school African Club, and a qua…
Examining Moments of Possibility Toward College Readiness in a Literacy‐and‐Songwriting Initiative
The authors examined how middle and high school students participating in a literacy‐and‐songwriting initiative in Detroit, Michigan, experienced moments of possibility that supported the youth in envisioning themselves as college bound. The authors explain how they drew from culturally relevant and sustaining educational approaches to design literacy instruction for youth of color that built from students’ interests as strengths, challenging edu…
Announcing the 2019–2020 Alan C. Purves Award Recipients
Preview this article: Announcing the 2019–2020 Alan C. Purves Award Recipients: Inspiring Transformative Literacy Pedagogies: The 2020 Alan C. Purves Award Committee, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/55/3/researchintheteachingofenglish31189-1.gif
Locating a pedagogy of love
Recent contexts of migration for immigrant communities from African countries have comprised what sociologist April Gordon discussed as a “new diaspora of black Africans to the U.S.” (p. 84). Yet amid contemporary contexts of migration, popularized narratives of African immigrant youth consistently linger on deficit framings and “emphasize what a particular student, family, or community is lacking”. As the ongoing work of rendering visible narrat…
This is America”
These Tellings
In envisioning literacy at a crossroads, we ask what may be the potential of a different, intense, possible love, a love we may scarcely know and may yet discern—what we think of as a cosmic love, an explosive love. Such stance-taking in literacy research provokes new possibilities for research, teaching, and learning. We share brief narrative vignettes, moments we pointedly name as these tellings, and assert possibilities across two interconnect…
I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”
We share digital collages composed by youth in Lit Diaspora, a community‐based after‐school literacy initiative involving Black African immigrant youth and adult collaborators, as one contemporary example of rendering visible the contours of the educational lives of African immigrant youth, among the fastest growing immigrant communities in the U.S. We do so amid anti‐Black, anti‐immigrant discourse and policy in schools, workplaces, and society …
The Imperatives of Voice and Context in the Preparation of Community Teachers
In this conceptual/theoretical paper, we present an argument about the importance of preparing community teachers, articulating tenets of youth voice, community voice, and context in this undertaking. We operationalize these tenets by proposing a Learning-to-Teach Cycle as an organizing structure for teacher candidates to encounter across their programs through four interrelated elements-- observing; identifying; reflecting/synthesizing; and desi…
Pre-service teachers demonstrating compassion through expressions of care
This qualitative research study examines the perspectives of pre-service teachers (PSTs) in the US and South Africa as they learned about the pedagogy of compassion as a generative approach for supporting students in navigating issues of social justice in the context of English teaching and learning. We examine PSTs’ work generated in a secondary English methods course in the US and interviews with 14 PSTs: 10 in the US and 4 in South Africa. Fin…
Can I Come to Your Island?”
The authors, literacy and language researchers, and teacher educators and their daughters, use narrative inquiry to story the embodied digital literacy practices of two girls of color as the girls played Animal Crossing online during the COVID‐19 pandemic and communicated about their (game)play via text messaging. We conceptually frame the girls enacting of embodied digital literacies during their (game)play as the interplay of cuentos , pláticas…
Fibrous solidarity
Enacting digital diasporic tellings with Black African immigrant youth through podcasting
At a time of increasingly restrictive policies confronting immigrant communities in the United States, we examined findings from a youth podcasting initiative that worked as a curricular design, teaching practice, and research approach to counter the silencing of immigrant youth and communities and affirm and elevate Black African immigrant youth’s agentive, already-present voice. We extend the framework of diasporic tellings, asserting three dim…
“Heroes Like Me”—Envisioning Possibilities for Enacting Culturally Inclusive Digital Multimodal Literacies
In fostering asset‐based literacy and language teaching in classroom and digital spaces, this study draws on OmoBerry, an educational YouTube channel, to demonstrate how educators can enact culturally inclusive digital multimodal language and literacy instructions with African immigrant youth. This inquiry illustrates how such a lens offers possibilities for integrating African systems of knowing and being with digital multimodal resources toward…
Pedagogy (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Literacy, Media, and Education (10 works) · Literacy (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (8 works) · Immigration (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Mathematics education (6 works)