Ernest Morrell
ERNEST MORRELL is the Associate Dean of Humanities and Equity in the College of Arts and Letters, the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education, a professor of English, and Africana Studies and Director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame. Ernest is also director of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) James R. Squire Office for Policy Research in the English Language Arts. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, an elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). From 2015-2022 Ernest has been annually ranked among the top university-based education scholars in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by EdWeek. Ernest is also the recipient of the NCTE Distinguished Service Award, the Kent Williamson Leadership Award from the Conference on English Leadership, and the Divergent Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies. His scholarly interests include: Critical Pedagogy, English Education, Literacy Studies, Postcolonial Studies, popular culture and education across the African Diaspora.
Ernest has authored 90 articles, research briefs, and book chapters and ten scholarly monographs including Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community (Columbia, 2020), Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education (Routledge, 2019), New Directions in Teaching English, and Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools, which was awarded Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine of the American Library Association. Ernest has earned numerous commendations for his university teaching including UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award. He received his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of California, Berkeley where he was the recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation award in 2001. Ernest is chair of the Planning and Advisory Committee for the African Diaspora Consortium and he sits on the Executive Board of LitWorld.
Supervisors: Jabari Mahiri, Pedro Noguera, and Jeannie Oakes
Ernest has authored 90 articles, research briefs, and book chapters and ten scholarly monographs including Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community (Columbia, 2020), Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education (Routledge, 2019), New Directions in Teaching English, and Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools, which was awarded Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine of the American Library Association. Ernest has earned numerous commendations for his university teaching including UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award. He received his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of California, Berkeley where he was the recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation award in 2001. Ernest is chair of the Planning and Advisory Committee for the African Diaspora Consortium and he sits on the Executive Board of LitWorld.
Supervisors: Jabari Mahiri, Pedro Noguera, and Jeannie Oakes
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Books by Ernest Morrell
The study revealed the key roles and strategies of the critical research community of which these students became a part. This research community was comprised of certain teachers in the high school and researchers from a prominent university involved in a school/university partnership. It worked within a cultural studies epistemology that drew upon critical, postmodern, and Marxist theory to reconceptualize and challenge educational structures and practices that produced inequitable achievement.
In addition to documenting the experiences of most of the students affected by the intervention, this research also followed four focal students over a two-year period to determine specific impacts that the program had on their personal and academic development. The study found and assessed a number of ways that work to develop the students' perspectives and abilities as critical researchers could also lead to higher commitment to social action, increased academic performance, and ultimately greater access to college. It also examined a variety of ways that the structure and culture of urban schooling resists the implementation of potentially empowering curricula and pedagogies.
Drawing on research studies from around the globe, Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education identifies social, economic, racial, political and geographical factors which can limit populations’ access to technology, and outlines the negative impact this can have on literacy attainment. Reflecting macro, meso and micro inequities, chapters highlight complex issues surrounding the productive use of technology and the mobilization of multimodal texts for academic performance and illustrate how digital divides might be remedied to resolve inequities in learning environments and beyond.
Contesting the digital divides which are implicitly embedded in aspects of everyday life and learning, this text will be of great interest to researchers and post-graduate academics in the field of literacy education.
Organized around the 7 Strengths inherent in super readers (belonging, curiosity, friendship, kindness, confidence, courage, and hope), this powerful resource helps children:
• Develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills
• Learn comprehension strategies
• Build a robust vocabulary
• Deepen analytical prowess and an ability to talk and write about text
• Develop empathy, a strong identity as a reader, and an expanded understanding of the world
Featuring stirring reading and writing lessons, robust assessment tools, ready-to-share Family Guides, and embedded videos that illuminate the 7 strengths and more, Every Child a Super Reader shows teachers, parents, caregivers, and out-of-school providers why reading is the ultimate super power, opening a world of possible for every student.
Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities.
For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.
This book is multi-voiced. It includes perspectives from classroom teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in language and literacy, positioned to respond to recent changes in national conversations about literacy, learning, and assessment. These variously situated authors also recognize the rapidly changing demographics in schools, the changing nature of literacy in the digital age, and the increasing demands for literacy in the workplace.
This book is critical. At all times education is a political act, and schools are embedded within a sociocultural reality that benefits some at the expense of others. Therefore the approach advocated through many of the chapters is one of critical literacy, where English students gain reading and writing skills and proficiency with digital technologies that allow them to become more able, discerning, and empowered consumers and producers of texts.
Critical Literacy and Urban Youth offers an interrogation of critical theory developed from the author’s work with young people in classrooms, neighborhoods, and institutions of power. Through cases, an articulated process, and a theory of literacy education and social change, Morrell extends the conversation among literacy educators about what constitutes critical literacy while also examining implications for practice in secondary and postsecondary American educational contexts. This book is distinguished by its weaving together of theory and practice.
Morrell begins by arguing for a broader definition of the "critical" in critical literacy – one that encapsulates the entire Western philosophical tradition as well as several important "Othered" traditions ranging from postcolonialism to the African-American tradition. Next, he looks at four cases of critical literacy pedagogy with urban youth: teaching popular culture in a high school English classroom; conducting community-based critical research; engaging in cyber-activism; and doing critical media literacy education. Lastly, he returns to theory, first considering two areas of critical literacy pedagogy that are still relatively unexplored: the importance of critical reading and writing in constituting and reconstituting the self, and critical writing that is not just about coming to a critical understanding of the world but that plays an explicit and self-referential role in changing the world. Morrell concludes by outlining a grounded theory of critical literacy pedagogy and considering its implications for literacy research, teacher education, classroom practice, and advocacy work for social change.
This comprehensive,theoretically grounded and empirically tested approach to teaching popular culture in schools promotes academic and critical literacy development among students. Ideal for preservice teachers, practicing teachers and teacher educators who, given the current demographic shifts among the teaching and student populations, are increasingly challenged to find ways to meaningfully and authentically connect with diverse students in schools.
Papers by Ernest Morrell
The study revealed the key roles and strategies of the critical research community of which these students became a part. This research community was comprised of certain teachers in the high school and researchers from a prominent university involved in a school/university partnership. It worked within a cultural studies epistemology that drew upon critical, postmodern, and Marxist theory to reconceptualize and challenge educational structures and practices that produced inequitable achievement.
In addition to documenting the experiences of most of the students affected by the intervention, this research also followed four focal students over a two-year period to determine specific impacts that the program had on their personal and academic development. The study found and assessed a number of ways that work to develop the students' perspectives and abilities as critical researchers could also lead to higher commitment to social action, increased academic performance, and ultimately greater access to college. It also examined a variety of ways that the structure and culture of urban schooling resists the implementation of potentially empowering curricula and pedagogies.
Drawing on research studies from around the globe, Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education identifies social, economic, racial, political and geographical factors which can limit populations’ access to technology, and outlines the negative impact this can have on literacy attainment. Reflecting macro, meso and micro inequities, chapters highlight complex issues surrounding the productive use of technology and the mobilization of multimodal texts for academic performance and illustrate how digital divides might be remedied to resolve inequities in learning environments and beyond.
Contesting the digital divides which are implicitly embedded in aspects of everyday life and learning, this text will be of great interest to researchers and post-graduate academics in the field of literacy education.
Organized around the 7 Strengths inherent in super readers (belonging, curiosity, friendship, kindness, confidence, courage, and hope), this powerful resource helps children:
• Develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills
• Learn comprehension strategies
• Build a robust vocabulary
• Deepen analytical prowess and an ability to talk and write about text
• Develop empathy, a strong identity as a reader, and an expanded understanding of the world
Featuring stirring reading and writing lessons, robust assessment tools, ready-to-share Family Guides, and embedded videos that illuminate the 7 strengths and more, Every Child a Super Reader shows teachers, parents, caregivers, and out-of-school providers why reading is the ultimate super power, opening a world of possible for every student.
Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities.
For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.
This book is multi-voiced. It includes perspectives from classroom teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in language and literacy, positioned to respond to recent changes in national conversations about literacy, learning, and assessment. These variously situated authors also recognize the rapidly changing demographics in schools, the changing nature of literacy in the digital age, and the increasing demands for literacy in the workplace.
This book is critical. At all times education is a political act, and schools are embedded within a sociocultural reality that benefits some at the expense of others. Therefore the approach advocated through many of the chapters is one of critical literacy, where English students gain reading and writing skills and proficiency with digital technologies that allow them to become more able, discerning, and empowered consumers and producers of texts.
Critical Literacy and Urban Youth offers an interrogation of critical theory developed from the author’s work with young people in classrooms, neighborhoods, and institutions of power. Through cases, an articulated process, and a theory of literacy education and social change, Morrell extends the conversation among literacy educators about what constitutes critical literacy while also examining implications for practice in secondary and postsecondary American educational contexts. This book is distinguished by its weaving together of theory and practice.
Morrell begins by arguing for a broader definition of the "critical" in critical literacy – one that encapsulates the entire Western philosophical tradition as well as several important "Othered" traditions ranging from postcolonialism to the African-American tradition. Next, he looks at four cases of critical literacy pedagogy with urban youth: teaching popular culture in a high school English classroom; conducting community-based critical research; engaging in cyber-activism; and doing critical media literacy education. Lastly, he returns to theory, first considering two areas of critical literacy pedagogy that are still relatively unexplored: the importance of critical reading and writing in constituting and reconstituting the self, and critical writing that is not just about coming to a critical understanding of the world but that plays an explicit and self-referential role in changing the world. Morrell concludes by outlining a grounded theory of critical literacy pedagogy and considering its implications for literacy research, teacher education, classroom practice, and advocacy work for social change.
This comprehensive,theoretically grounded and empirically tested approach to teaching popular culture in schools promotes academic and critical literacy development among students. Ideal for preservice teachers, practicing teachers and teacher educators who, given the current demographic shifts among the teaching and student populations, are increasingly challenged to find ways to meaningfully and authentically connect with diverse students in schools.
How do we motivate and engage youth drawing from their interests and experiences while also creating challenging and standards-based English Language Arts curricula? Is it possible for 21st century literacies and “great literature” to co-exist in the same units and lessons? In this hour-long keynote Morrell will examine these questions and more as he outlines a core set of principles for culturally relevant and academically rigorous 21st century literacy classroom instruction. Morrell begins his talk addressing the challenge of motivation. He explains how incorporating new literacies into classroom instruction can serve to increase student engagement. Next he outlines several core tenets of powerful teaching through practice that involves engagement, affirmation, discipline, inspiration, purpose and love. The remainder of the talk will feature numerous examples of 21st century pedagogy in action across the K-12 spectrum. Some of these examples include working with youth as critical media consumers, developing Ning sites, creating digital documentaries, involving youth in community-based research, and using PowerPoint to make powerful public presentations. Morrell concludes with a set of strategies for teachers who want to learn more about how to incorporate 21st century literacies into their standards-based ELA curricula.
Lecture I. Towards a Pedagogy of the City: Voice, Agency, Achievement, Purpose, Action and Love
Lecture II. Youth Participatory Action Research, Academic Literacy, and Civic Engagement in Urban Schools
Lecture III. Popular Culture, Media Production, and a Re-Imaging of Classroom Life
Of course, nothing is inevitable, and there have been historic moments when populations have gained access to literacies of power as they also intervened in their conditions of oppression. Even now, literacy educators and scholars possess the potential to create positive, conceptually grounded and empirically tested strategies for transformative literacy education that can not only change classroom practices, but the world itself.
This course examines historical, cultural, and critical contexts of literacy theory and research in hopes to produce scholars and educators who are able to theorize, create, and/or investigate these transformational practices. It begins with an examination of the historical legacy of literacy as a vehicle to freedom and empowerment for marginalized populations. Students will read literature covering the Cuba literacy campaign and the struggles of African-Americans in the United States as they consider (and reconsider) the role of literacy education in social transformation. The class will also investigate the major paradigms of literacy theory and research during the past half century examining myths about great divides between oral and literate societies and the transformation from “culturally neutral” theories of literacy to cross cultural and sociocultural theories. The course will also consider the impacts of the revolution in communications technologies on the nature of literacy and on contemporary new media literacy practices. Finally, the course will examine theories of critical literacy education and examples of literacy praxis in classroom and out of school settings.
Learning Goals With this in mind, the goals of this course are: • To explore the anti-colonial tradition that is a precursor to and a companion of the postcolonial theoretical movement • To understand the roots of postcolonial theory and its development across global contexts, with a focus on South Asian, sub-Saharan African, Latin American/Caribbean, and U.S. Postcolonialism • To read critically postcolonial literatures and media texts from Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States • To draw on postcolonial theory to re-read the traditional British and American literary canons • To develop the ability to employ Postcolonialism as a toolkit to read and critique any cultural text (i.e. music, film, theatre, social media, advertisements, political speech, fashion, etc.).
Learning Goals Upon successful completion of the course you will be better able to:
•Identify key tenets of critical pedagogical theory
• Identify key concepts and key authors in British and American cultural studies
• Articulate how scholars have applied critical pedagogical theory and popular culture to classroom practice in urban and multicultural settings
• Brainstorm applications of critical pedagogy and cultural studies in your own professional and personal life
• Examine and critique the arguments of key theorists and scholars in group presentations that you will make to your classmates
Webster’s dictionary defines theory in two ways 1) as the analysis of a set of facts in relation to one another and 2) as a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action. These definitions are important to educational leaders and scholars for a number of reasons. Our decisions as leaders and researchers are often based upon theories that we may or may not be aware of. Knowing about the existence of theories in education can lead to a questioning or even a challenging of existing policies and practices. Developing new theories may also lead to innovative and transformative policies and practices in K-16 education. With that in mind this brief two-unit course intends to expose students to some of the most important theorists and thinkers in education in the 20th century. These thinkers have generated ideas about how children learn, the purpose of schooling, explanations for educational failure and educational inequality, approaches to powerful teaching and learning, and strategies for educational reform. It is the hope that exposure to these leading thinkers and their ideas helps you in your roles as educational leaders. It is also my hope that these thinkers help as you begin to formulate your dissertation studies. The idea for this course emerged from conversations with members of prior cohorts who, at the dissertation stage, wanted more exposure to theories of education. These ideas have also developed through my countless interactions with educational leaders across the country who are trying to figure out novel approaches for bridging theory with practice.
English educators also wrestle with the external pushes from economic, technological, critical, and cultural forces to fundamentally reconsider the nature and practices of our discipline. A discipline that once prided itself on the teaching of humanities and the greatest works of literature in the English language is now forced to encompass workplace literacy, participatory media technologies, writing, and oral language development. Indeed the common core standards are built around the ideas of career readiness and college readiness and, though these are important goals, they don’t often lend themselves to conversations that may be of more concern to the humanities like the appreciation of art and literature, or an understanding of one’s self and the human condition.
A new generation of English educators, then, is challenged to answer fundamental questions concerning what we do, how we do it, and why it is all still necessary in a world where we are told the book is a dying relic and that the word is giving way to the image (Kress, 2003). Why, for instance, do we continue, for the duration of their K-12 education, to teach children a language that they know and are able to speak and write at an early age? Why do we insist on teaching the novels, poems, and plays of people who are long since perished; works of fiction and drama written by people who may have held problematic and politically incorrect worldviews?
And, even if we are able to defend our intents, of what achievements can we boast? After thirteen years of compulsory English language arts, why aren’t our students reading and writing better than they do? Why do such large and seemingly intractable gaps in reading achievement persist along lines of race and socioeconomic class (US Department of Education, 2005)? Why do reading levels so accurately predict prison populations and why are prison populations so differently constituted than the population of the university where I teach? Why does the English classroom look so similarly to what it did a generation ago when the world of literacy is so rapidly changing? If there is going to be English teaching (and lets hope that there is) in the future of American education, what can it do to be more powerful, more relevant and yet retain its character and its traditions?
In response to the question “why English,” clearly there is more to this discipline of English than teaching students the rudimentary rules of language. However, questions persist as to the substance of English and whether or not it should change to reflect the changes in society. Should English teaching change as the population of students change? If we hold on to the teaching of literature as a primary focus, what literature should be taught and what approaches to literature should students be encouraged to undertake? Should our priorities in English education change as the communications technologies transform to make life utterly unrecognizable to the worlds that many of our canonized authors inhabit? And what in English is sacred and untouchable? What makes our discipline a discipline at the elementary and secondary levels? How does it relate, if at all to English as defined and taught in undergraduate and graduate level seminars at our colleges and universities.
In response to these questions and more, this course will look at how multicultural, sociocultural, postmodern and critical theories have shaped and are shaping research and practice in the teaching of English within the current political-education climate. We will also examine the latest research and the most innovative practices in the teaching of writing, reading and literary theory, and the uses of popular culture and other media in English classrooms. Students will have the opportunity to develop their presentation skills and students will also have the power to shape their final projects in consultation with the course instructor.
An understanding of American history, literature, and contemporary culture is incomplete without a serious and culturally sustaining engagement with the African-American literary tradition. However, African-American literature is often obscured or absent in the canon of texts taught in college English departments. And when African-American novels, poems, plays, essays, and popular texts are included, they are often read through an Anglo-centric lens.
With this in mind, the goals of this course are:
To expose students to the breadth of African-American literature from slave narratives to the Harlem Renaissance, to Civil Rights Literature, to Afrofuturism to hip-hop.
To understand the roots of African American literary theory and its development from the West African griot tradition through the late 20th century.
To employ African American literary theory to read critically African American literatures and popular texts from the antebellum period, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, Afrofuturism, and the Hip-Hop Social Movement.
To draw on African-American literary theory to read the traditional British and American literary canons.
To develop the ability to employ African-American literary theory as a toolkit to read and critique any cultural text.
Of course, nothing is inevitable, and there have been historic moments when populations have gained access to literacies of power as they also intervened in their conditions of oppression. Even now, literacy educators and scholars possess the potential to create positive, conceptually grounded and empirically tested strategies for transformative literacy education that can not only change classroom practices, but the world itself.
This course examines historical, cultural, and critical contexts of literacy theory and research in hopes to produce scholars and educators who are able to theorize, create, and/or investigate these transformational practices. It begins with an examination of the historical legacy of literacy as a vehicle to freedom and empowerment for marginalized populations. Students will read literature covering the Cuba literacy campaign and the struggles of African-Americans in the United States as they consider (and reconsider) the role of literacy education in social transformation. The class will also investigate the major paradigms of literacy theory and research during the past half century examining myths about great divides between oral and literate societies and the transformation from “culturally neutral” theories of literacy to cross cultural and sociocultural theories. The course will also consider the impacts of the revolution in communications technologies on the nature of literacy and on contemporary new media literacy practices. Finally, the course will examine theories of critical literacy education and examples of literacy praxis in classroom and out of school settings.