Constructing Membership Identity through Language and Social Interaction

In this article, the author explores how African American children in a Black church Sunday school community in northern California developed positive membership identity. Focal participants were Sunday school children ages 9 to 12 and their Sunday school teachers. Drawn from a two-year ethnographic study, data showed that adults prepared children for membership through an interactive framework of instruction, which also formed the base for communicative competence in the setting. The author describes this framework and offers new insight into conditions that give rise to African American student success. [African American children, church, identity, communicative competence

African american · Black church · Ethnography · Faith · Pedagogy · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Parental Involvement in Education · Psychology · Religious Education and Schools · Social Psychology

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