Tasha Austin
Biographic Data
| ID | 4608680 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tasha Austin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tasha |
| FAMILY NAME | Austin |
| SIGNATURE | AUSTIN T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0677-5061 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
‘Identify, Undo, Heal, Resist, Fight’: A continuum of organizational discourse moves in countering antiBlack racism
Research has widely recognized antiBlackness as a particular form of white supremacy, denouncing its normalization of systemic harm across multiple domains of life for Black communities. Particularly, white supremacy standardizes the racialization of Black students and professionals through racialized speech, practices, and spaces, even within progressive schools, universities, and educational organizations. This study illuminates how in spaces t…
Pearls before swine: An Nkwaethnographic exploration of the language and labor of Black women scholars
Within the modern era, Black women have been positioned as silent laborers unworthy of just compensation for their work. This positioning reflects broader western formations that thrive on Black women depicted as takers rather than contributors to society even when they are experts and professionals in their fields. Still, the navigation and understanding of the value of Black women’s intellectual labor has yet to be explored for the way it is di…
Black mothers as bad teachers: Intersectional raciolinguistic erasure in teacher preparation curricula
Curricular text depictions of Black communities and mothers who lead within them, anchor teacher preparation programs and potentially construct, challenge or distort how pre-service teachers perceive them. With rampant U.S. housing segregation, reliance on these representations serve to familiarize (Cross, Citation2016) early career teachers with Black communities increasing the influence of these texts. Thus, teacher educators’ selections of cur…
“More than lo visible ”: Black world language teachers' use of identity to contest culturelessness
The limited presence of Black world language teachers (BWLTs) has been attributed to a lack of interest, ability, or access. In navigating societal forces that perpetuate anti‐Black stereotypes, BWLTs challenge these and similar narratives (e.g., the belief that they cannot be both Black and command the target language). We qualitatively analyze interviews with nine BWLTs, exploring how their identities and teaching practices mutually inform one …
“ They is me!”: Redefining “traditional” students through narratives of Black world language teachers
Professional fragmentation in world language (WL) teacher preparation makes advancing in language study prior to pre‐service teachers’ certification difficult. For Black world language teachers (BWLTs), this challenge increases as they face unique structural blockades, including the lack of access to early formal WL study or fiscal resources to enter US higher education. With 4.2% of WL teachers identifying as Black, the intricacies of their path…
This is where we go: The quantum healing possibilities in languaging Black humanity
Purpose Homogenizing narratives dehumanize racially minoritized groups while obscuring the mechanisms and structures of white supremacy that ultimately harm everyone. Through an intimate conversation, Black women scholars from African American, Caribbean, and African backgrounds, the paper aims to thicken solidarities across Black diasporic difference. By exploring intraracial overlaps and tensions, this dialogue disrupts narratives that flatten …
The role of Black languaging histories in conjuring countertextual knowledges
Community Is Wherever I Am”: A Sista Circle on Othermotherwork in Teacher Education
As an exploration of potential support structures for Black women teachers, this study elicits the wisdom of Black women as othermothers who serve in an array of urban instructional settings. Using a Sista Circle Methodology as framed through Black Girl Cartographies and Radical Mothering, we found that through the dual healing processes of (re)membering and (re)fusal, these women became one another's homeplaces. Implications include a need to ac…
Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT: Inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
This paper presents a case study of a Black Spanish-language teacher and her 4th-grade students using Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) six years after a teacher-training program. We describe the program and the teacher’s understanding of tasks and TBLT. Using a bottom-up approach, we then explore the teacher and students’ implementation of TBLT six years later in a socioeconomically resilient 4th-grade classroom in Miami, Florida, where 95 % o…
Beyond the Front Yard: The Dehumanizing Message of Accent-Altering Technology
Over the past decade, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as it relates to the speech and voice recognition industry, has established itself as a multibillion-dollar global market, but at whose expense? In this forum article, we amplify the current critiques of the architectures of large language models being used increasingly in daily life. Our commentary exposes emerging AI accent modification technology and services as agents of racial …
World languages for Black Linguistic Reparations
This conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti‐Black educational policies, monolingual and imperia…
Limited capital: A genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education
Black youth as ‘struggling students’ is a persistent narrative in the contemporary U.S. psyche, both preceded by and markedly displayed through the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk , which reflected coded language encouraging a return to the pre-Civil Rights United States. This framing positioned Black students as culprits for the ills of U.S. schooling – a continuation of a history of educational policy that discursively enforces the need to defend…
Linguistic imperialism: Countering anti Black racism in world language teacher preparation
Purpose This study aims to highlight the planning, process and results of drawing on engaged pedagogy to humanize Blackness in world language (WL) teacher education. The activities were designed to center lived experiences, augment self-reflection and model instructional differentiation for WL preservice teachers (PSTs). Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research paper uses a self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) method. I…
“Black Women are the Mules of the World”: Black Women Professors of Practice in Teacher Education Programs
At the intersection of labor and racial equity in teacher preparation, Black women professors of practice (PoPs) find that they carry an excessive workload without a similar measure of compensation or recognition. The unique experiences of these Black contingent faculty provide a view from the margins regarding the simultaneity (Collins, 2002) of oppressions that are hidden from mainstream perceptions within teacher preparation, particularly thro…
SayHerName: Addressing Anti‐Blackness and Patriarchy in Language and Literacy Curricula
Black women have been and continue to be objectified, mistrusted to voice their own realities, and pushed to the margins even among other people of color, yet expected to lead and contribute their lives and labor. In this piece, we focus on curricular and epistemic violence evidenced through omission and distortions of Black women in English Language Arts and World Languages and advocate for a centering of Black women’s voices and perspectives in…
World languages for Black Linguistic Reparations
This conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti‐Black educational policies, monolingual and imperia…
Linguistic imperialism: Countering anti Black racism in world language teacher preparation
Purpose This study aims to highlight the planning, process and results of drawing on engaged pedagogy to humanize Blackness in world language (WL) teacher education. The activities were designed to center lived experiences, augment self-reflection and model instructional differentiation for WL preservice teachers (PSTs). Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research paper uses a self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) method. I…
Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT: Inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
This paper presents a case study of a Black Spanish-language teacher and her 4th-grade students using Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) six years after a teacher-training program. We describe the program and the teacher’s understanding of tasks and TBLT. Using a bottom-up approach, we then explore the teacher and students’ implementation of TBLT six years later in a socioeconomically resilient 4th-grade classroom in Miami, Florida, where 95 % o…
“Black Women are the Mules of the World”: Black Women Professors of Practice in Teacher Education Programs
At the intersection of labor and racial equity in teacher preparation, Black women professors of practice (PoPs) find that they carry an excessive workload without a similar measure of compensation or recognition. The unique experiences of these Black contingent faculty provide a view from the margins regarding the simultaneity (Collins, 2002) of oppressions that are hidden from mainstream perceptions within teacher preparation, particularly thro…
SayHerName: Addressing Anti‐Blackness and Patriarchy in Language and Literacy Curricula
Black women have been and continue to be objectified, mistrusted to voice their own realities, and pushed to the margins even among other people of color, yet expected to lead and contribute their lives and labor. In this piece, we focus on curricular and epistemic violence evidenced through omission and distortions of Black women in English Language Arts and World Languages and advocate for a centering of Black women’s voices and perspectives in…
Linguistic imperialism: Countering anti Black racism in world language teacher preparation
Purpose This study aims to highlight the planning, process and results of drawing on engaged pedagogy to humanize Blackness in world language (WL) teacher education. The activities were designed to center lived experiences, augment self-reflection and model instructional differentiation for WL preservice teachers (PSTs). Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research paper uses a self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) method. I…
Limited capital: A genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education
Black youth as ‘struggling students’ is a persistent narrative in the contemporary U.S. psyche, both preceded by and markedly displayed through the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk , which reflected coded language encouraging a return to the pre-Civil Rights United States. This framing positioned Black students as culprits for the ills of U.S. schooling – a continuation of a history of educational policy that discursively enforces the need to defend…
Beyond the Front Yard: The Dehumanizing Message of Accent-Altering Technology
Over the past decade, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as it relates to the speech and voice recognition industry, has established itself as a multibillion-dollar global market, but at whose expense? In this forum article, we amplify the current critiques of the architectures of large language models being used increasingly in daily life. Our commentary exposes emerging AI accent modification technology and services as agents of racial …
World languages for Black Linguistic Reparations
This conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti‐Black educational policies, monolingual and imperia…
The role of Black languaging histories in conjuring countertextual knowledges
Community Is Wherever I Am”: A Sista Circle on Othermotherwork in Teacher Education
As an exploration of potential support structures for Black women teachers, this study elicits the wisdom of Black women as othermothers who serve in an array of urban instructional settings. Using a Sista Circle Methodology as framed through Black Girl Cartographies and Radical Mothering, we found that through the dual healing processes of (re)membering and (re)fusal, these women became one another's homeplaces. Implications include a need to ac…
Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT: Inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
This paper presents a case study of a Black Spanish-language teacher and her 4th-grade students using Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) six years after a teacher-training program. We describe the program and the teacher’s understanding of tasks and TBLT. Using a bottom-up approach, we then explore the teacher and students’ implementation of TBLT six years later in a socioeconomically resilient 4th-grade classroom in Miami, Florida, where 95 % o…
‘Identify, Undo, Heal, Resist, Fight’: A continuum of organizational discourse moves in countering antiBlack racism
Research has widely recognized antiBlackness as a particular form of white supremacy, denouncing its normalization of systemic harm across multiple domains of life for Black communities. Particularly, white supremacy standardizes the racialization of Black students and professionals through racialized speech, practices, and spaces, even within progressive schools, universities, and educational organizations. This study illuminates how in spaces t…
Pearls before swine: An Nkwaethnographic exploration of the language and labor of Black women scholars
Within the modern era, Black women have been positioned as silent laborers unworthy of just compensation for their work. This positioning reflects broader western formations that thrive on Black women depicted as takers rather than contributors to society even when they are experts and professionals in their fields. Still, the navigation and understanding of the value of Black women’s intellectual labor has yet to be explored for the way it is di…
Black mothers as bad teachers: Intersectional raciolinguistic erasure in teacher preparation curricula
Curricular text depictions of Black communities and mothers who lead within them, anchor teacher preparation programs and potentially construct, challenge or distort how pre-service teachers perceive them. With rampant U.S. housing segregation, reliance on these representations serve to familiarize (Cross, Citation2016) early career teachers with Black communities increasing the influence of these texts. Thus, teacher educators’ selections of cur…
“More than lo visible ”: Black world language teachers' use of identity to contest culturelessness
The limited presence of Black world language teachers (BWLTs) has been attributed to a lack of interest, ability, or access. In navigating societal forces that perpetuate anti‐Black stereotypes, BWLTs challenge these and similar narratives (e.g., the belief that they cannot be both Black and command the target language). We qualitatively analyze interviews with nine BWLTs, exploring how their identities and teaching practices mutually inform one …
“ They is me!”: Redefining “traditional” students through narratives of Black world language teachers
Professional fragmentation in world language (WL) teacher preparation makes advancing in language study prior to pre‐service teachers’ certification difficult. For Black world language teachers (BWLTs), this challenge increases as they face unique structural blockades, including the lack of access to early formal WL study or fiscal resources to enter US higher education. With 4.2% of WL teachers identifying as Black, the intricacies of their path…
This is where we go: The quantum healing possibilities in languaging Black humanity
Purpose Homogenizing narratives dehumanize racially minoritized groups while obscuring the mechanisms and structures of white supremacy that ultimately harm everyone. Through an intimate conversation, Black women scholars from African American, Caribbean, and African backgrounds, the paper aims to thicken solidarities across Black diasporic difference. By exploring intraracial overlaps and tensions, this dialogue disrupts narratives that flatten …
Critical Race Theory in Education (9 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (9 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Narrative (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Pedagogy (4 works) · Curriculum (3 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (3 works) · Political science (3 works)