The Politics of Race and Language in Learning Contexts (SKILLS)

Project Summary

This project, an extension of the existing collaborative outreach SKILLS program (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society), brought together faculty and students from Linguistics, Education and Chicana/o studies to understand the politics of race and language in learning contexts. Their specific goal was to understand how the languages and dialects that racialized minority children bring from home are seen as obstacles or deficits by educational institutions, and to train graduate and undergraduate students to conduct research in the schools, in which high-school students document their own languages. The group pursued these goals by reading original research on topics such as race and racism, language, and politically engaged pedagogies. This then informed the group in conducting research, and developing a new course that prepared undergraduate students to mentor high school students in research. The group also helped to prepare low-income Latino youth for college by training them to carry out original research on language use in their peer groups, families, and communities – as well as writing scholarly articles on this research. The faculty and graduate fellows' research also lead to scholarly academic publications.