ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses the case for learning from, and teaching with, youth voices, writing from his positionality as a literacy researcher and teacher educator. He offers readers multiple windows into how students in his graduate-level course—teacher candidates in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program—learned about literacies from youth voices. The author deals with the contexts of his graduate-level course and his research, highlighting a shared focus on learning from and with youth. He examines transcripts of youth exploring and enacting disciplinary literacy, and describes the impact that these transcripts had on MATs’ learning and thinking about literacies. Learning from youth voices is fundamental to cultivating an inquiry stance in teacher candidates. In addition to the partnership, individual relationships of trust with teachers and administrators made it possible for the author to observe youth in their classrooms, in an attempt to understand not only their literacies but also the “black box of school practice.
