Patriann Smith

University of South Florida | USF · Department of Teaching and Learning

Drawing on the authors’ experiences as Black parents, researchers, teachers, and teacher educators, this timely book presents a multipronged approach to affirming Black lives and literacies. The authors believe change is needed—not within Black children, but in the way they are perceived and educated, particularly in reading, writing, and critical...

Learn how to center, affirm, and develop Black immigrant literacies in ways that allow all youth to engage with and honor their literacies. This book presents a framework to revolutionize teaching in ways that draw on students’ assets for redesigning, rethinking, and reimagining literacy and the English Language Arts curriculum. This novel framewor...

On June 12 & 13, 2024, the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans and Discovery Education, convened the Power Up summit in Chicago, IL under the leadership of Malcolm Kenyatta (Chair, Presidential Advisory Commission) & Monique S. Toussaint (MA, GCDF), Senior Advisor, White H...

Drawing on the lived experiences of high school-aged young Black immigrants, this book paints imaginaries of racialized translanguaging and transsemiotizing, leveraged transnationally by teenagers across the Caribbean and the United States. The Black Caribbean youth reflect a full range of literacy practices – six distinct holistic literacies – ide...

A Transformative Journey: As a Black multilingual immigrant from the Caribbean to the USA, Dr Patriann Smith’s multilingualism and diverse linguistic skills have not always been recognised or valued. Her personal struggles, along with her observations of similar challenges faced by her daughter, Black immigrant students, and educators, fuelled her...

Al empezar 2024, Scientia Global, plataforma internacional que invita al dialogo entre ciencia y sociedad, publicó en X (antes Twitter) un artículo divulgativo sobre mi trabajo, y acumuló una audiencia de más de medio millón de personas. La atención a uno de mis artículos académicos al que hacía referencia se transformó casi de inmediato: el artíc...

The preparation of literacy and English language arts teacher candidates across the globe has long been steeped in the use of “The Master’s Language.” For the English-speaking Caribbean where largely uncontested entanglements with the Master have been maintained via a long-held and established inheritance of colonized Englishes, a subtle but insist...

This episode includes panelists who discuss translanguaging across literacies. Panelists: Drs. Faythe Beauchemin, Lindsey Rowe, Patriann Smith, and Angie Zapata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZNewaQ4qZo

Au début de l’année 2024, Scientia Global, une plateforme internationale qui ouvre le dialogue entre la science et la société , a publié sur X (autrefois appelé Twitter) un article portant sur une de mes recherches, récoltant plus d’un demi-million de vues. L’attention portée à l’un de mes articles scientifiques dont les références ont été elles-mê...

This chapter contests the inheritances of entanglements that have continued to remain a pervasive part of literacy and language education in the English-speaking Caribbean. Contending with such inheritances is necessary to free the self to unapologetically restore the decolonial impetus imbued by our ancestors to cultivate the proposed notion of li...

Across the globe, teachers of language and literacy increasingly leverage Englishes (Kachru, 1992) across their home countries and destination countries such as the United States. During this process, ideological tensions emerge based on novel expectations for the use of Englishes in and beyond literacy and language classrooms (Smith et al., 2018)....

In this chapter, I draw from my autobiographical responses to an interview conducted by Dr. Allan Luke in conversation with me to present my story of (in)justice, scholarship, and its interwovenness with my teaching. Relying on a heuristics of the heart, I autoethnographically present a portrait of the racialized entanglements evolving among myself...

In this exploratory chapter, the notion of translingual entanglements of Englishes is used in conjunction with a transraciolinguistic approach to introduce racialized entanglements of Englishes and peoples. Alluding to a dynamic space-neither located within Englishes nor within racialized bodies-racialized entanglements of Englishes and peoples sug...

In 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Patriann Smith, professor in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. Dr. Smith's transdisciplinary research examines how differences in languages, Englishes, and English language ideologies affect Black Caribbean students’ immigrant literacy practices as they cross cultures and languages be...

Translingualism is rarely visible in the writing undertaken by scholars. Typically, there is a requirement that writing aligns with the codification of certain named languages so that this writing can be accepted, published, rewarded. Yet, this alignment process is often different from our daily language and cultural practices, almost always requir...

The long-standing use of the term 'Black English', originally synonymous with African American English and having evolved into 'Black Englishes', represents an increasingly complexified notion of Blackness as language and languaging-a global construction. Black Englishes, though often assigned to the periphery of 'World Englishes', institutions, sc...

This essay describes how translanguaging functions in Black immigrant literacies. The framework for Black immigrant literacies is used to articulate a transdisciplinary engagement with the equally intersecting social constructions of language, race, and migration. These constructions, among others, are shown to be central in the lives of immigrants...

On February 5, 2018, approximately two weeks before the much anticipated release of the superhero film "Black Panther," multilingual American rapper Cardi B, who is of Trinidadian and Dominican heritage, told Teen Vogue: "One thing that always bothers me is that people know so little about my culture. We are Caribbean people, and a lot of people be...

El 5 de febrero de 2018, aproximadamente dos semanas antes del tan esperado estreno de la película de superhéroes Black Panther, la rapera estadounidense multilingüe Cardi B, de ascendencia trinitense y dominicana, declaró a Teen Vogue: "Algo que siempre me molesta es que la gente conozca poco de mi cultura. Somos caribeños; mucha gente me ataca po...

Em 5 de fevereiro de 2018, aproximadamente duas semanas antes do tão aguardado lançamento do filme de super-herói “Pantera Negra”, a rapper americana multilíngue Cardi B, que é de herança trinitária-tobagense e dominicana, disse à Teen Vogue: "Uma coisa que sempre me incomoda é como as pessoas sabem pouco sobre a minha cultura. Somos caribenhos, e...

At the start of 2024, Scientia Global [https://www.scientia.global/], an international platform that opens dialogue between science and society, published [https://x.com/scientia_social/status/1750171428660396454] a lay article about my work on X (formerly Twitter), amassing a viewership of over half a million. Attention to one of my academic artic...

On January 1, 2009, the Spirit Airlines flight that had carried my daughter and me from Trinidad to the United States with just two large suitcases -- the only belongings that we now possessed in the ‘new world’ -- landed at the Tampa International Airport. Classified upon arrival to Florida as ‘immigrants’ and as “aliens” in the U.S., we would soo...

This book illuminates emerging perspectives and possibilities of the vibrant schooling and civic lives of Black African youth and communities in the United States, Canada, and globally. Chapters present key research on how to develop and enact teaching methodologies and research approaches that support Black African immigrant and refugee students....

A transdisciplinary approach to literacy research, practice, and policy Patriann Smith, Associate Professor at the University of South Florida’s Department of Teaching and Learning, discusses transdisciplinarity and how it could inform approaches to literacy research, practice, and policy. Transdisciplinarity, defined as ‘that which is at once betw...

A plethora of services in early childhood care and education has not sufficiently resulted in equitable practice for families and, specifically, families of Color across the globe. Despite numerous programs geared toward alleviating literacy challenges, families of Color worldwide continue to experience Eurocentric approaches to addressing the lite...

This volume focuses on processes, motivations, policies, and practices that influence international migration, the experiences of migrating and settling in a new country, and how these intertwined facets are influenced by intersectional factors and ecological systems and settings. Chapter contributions are by international and interdisciplinary sch...

This volume focuses on processes, motivations, policies, and practices that influence international migration, the experiences of migrating and settling in a new country, and how these intertwined facets are influenced by intersectional factors and ecological systems and settings. Chapter contributions are by international and interdisciplinary sch...

This invited paper highlights the reflections of expert panelists who were spontaneously called upon, graciously accepted, and quickly organized to respond thoughtfully and compellingly to Dr. Arlette Willis' powerful and timely Oscar Causey address at the 2022 Literacy Research Association (LRA) annual conference. In her address, Dr. Willis issued...

“Black immigrant literacies” is an intersectional framework that draws from diaspora literacy, racial literacy, and transnational literacy to center race and present teachers with a lens that can support Black immigrant students and their peers' literacies in classrooms. Black immigrant youth can be described as first-, second-, or third-generation...

The aftermath of a prolonged period in which xenophobia and racism have been significantly made visible, as well as escalated in and beyond the United States, has heightened attention to racialized im/migration. Despite the agency afforded to im/migrants by autonomy of migration perspectives, numerous im/migrants across the globe are daily racializ...

At this historical moment of post-pandemic transition, recovery and reckoning, how can we, as literacy researchers, together with teachers and practitioners, international, nuanced and integrated understandings that adequately respond to the challenges and opportunities of the current context? This Special Issue takes a reflective and critical stan...

Twenty-first century literacy teacher education in and beyond the United States continues to reinforce standardized languages – often English -- and knowledges based on these languages in their preparation of literacy teachers. Despite literacy research informed by a largely white monolingual population of teacher educators, most of whom are predom...

For decades, the Black Majority World has been described by white and Eurocentric institutions as illiterate, with some arguments made that functional literacy for Blacks should be improved while others have instead focused on the literate strengths of Black youth. Patriann Smith counters these views, using a "both-and" approach, arguing that Black...

Family literacy education has arguably created change, ranging from a focus on sustaining informal family interactions among parents and children driven by the need to eliminate intergenerational cycles of poverty to more formal and federally funded programs driven by legislative definitions that advance traditional literacy skills, life skills as...

In this plenary prepared at presented at the TESOL BELPAF Global Symposium, I draw simultaneously from a raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa & Flores, 2017), quantum physics as a basis for transdisciplinarity (Smith, 2013), "entanglements of Englishes" (Pennycook, 2021) and transraciolinguistics (Smith, 2019) to introduce “racialized entanglements of...

Continued contradictions between what we hope to see and what we do in literacy education increasingly create a challenge for teachers who wish to be responsive to the long-standing linguistic, racial, and cultural diversity that exists across the globe. Addressing this impasse, there are calls that extend beyond a focus on responsiveness to divers...

The intricacies of language and culture and the ideological tenets on which much of our current conceptions of transculturalism stand invoke logics guided by emerging critiques that question the basis for dynamics such as “historic amnesia” (Pavlenko, 2022) in the field of multilingualism. The tendency to present transcultural practice as it relate...

The need for addressing the institutional effects in relation to individual representations and responses to the burden of racialization is commensurate with increasing calls that invite the field to tap into the knowledge and experiences of teachers of language and literacy who are racialized as Black and who leverage other Englishes. These ‘Black...

This issue, “Algorithm of Love: Insights from Immigrant Literacies and Narratives,” aims to develop an algorithm of love by locating love as a function of narrative research in literacy research conducted with immigrant populations. Specifically, the purpose of this issue is to illustrate how to love—coalitional love, compassionate love, (responsiv...

As the world continues to experience the recent wave of racial reckoning and its associated backlash, the field of applied linguistics has been called upon to renew efforts through which language functions as an avenue for redemption and restoration of humanity and of the world. Acknowledging the role of racialization in the language-related challe...

Family literacy education has arguably created change, ranging from a focus on sustaining informal family interactions among parents and children driven by the need to eliminate intergenerational cycles of poverty to more formal and federally funded programs driven by legislative definitions that advance traditional literacy skills, life skills as...

In this episode of Critical Conversations, Dr. Tasha Austin and Dr. Patriann Smith first discuss what the reclamation of English looks like for Black language users and the ways in which this can that help recruit and retain Black language professionals in organizations such as NJBE/NJTESO. Dr. Smith highlights the three A's -- agency, assertivenes...

This study examined the elements of [critical] multicultural awareness ([C]MA) and [critical] multilingual awareness ([C]MLA) identified in the pedagogical responsiveness of five literacy teacher educators (LTEs), the factors that influenced this awareness, and the ways in which this awareness shaped educators' pedagogical responsiveness in literac...

Classroom Caffeine host Dr. Lindsay Persohn discusses with Dr. Patriann Smith about her transdisciplinary research at the intersection of linguistics, (im)migration and race in literacy education. Patriann shares with Lindsay about the solutions she advances such as ‘a transraciolinguistic approach’ and the framework for ‘Black immigrant literacies...

Across the globe, students increasingly use literacies to cross boundaries, locally and globally, virtually and geographically, willingly and involuntarily. They cross these boundaries with versatile linguistic backgrounds that allow them to effectively navigate new school and life worlds. Many students who cross boundaries are students of color wh...

The United States and Canada, two countries known to have large immigrant populations, have long since reflected a dichotomy where Canada is generally perceived to be a country with education policies that demonstrate its receptiveness to embrace multiculturalism in schools and classrooms while the United States seemingly functions as a country tha...

The field of literacy remains assailed by a persisting discrepancy between an increasing body of literacy research that honors the diversity in students’ practices juxtaposed against a persistent system of schooling and high-stakes assessment that has not been designed to draw from underrepresented students’ literate assets. This discrepancy has cr...

This invited article is a precursor to the Racial Justice in Literacy Research Report. It is framed around the key concepts of equity, literacy, race, and their intersections in the field of literacy research. The authors make the case that antiracism is the best antidote to a history of unacknowledged racism in the field and in contemporary practi...

This study examines teachers’ cultural awareness of Black immigrants and the pedagogical strategies they implemented that aided in the academic success of Black immigrant youth attending public urban schools. A related goal was to examine Black immigrant youths’ relationships with teachers and peers, the challenges they faced in navigating a new ed...

Racialized speakers of standardized and non-standardized languages (i.e., most often dialects) are often regarded as illegitimate and inferior despite extensive efforts to legitimize such languages in and beyond schools. In this chapter, we challenge the use of terms such as dialect, bidialectal, bidialectalism in the labelling of such languages th...

Race and racism are part of the air we breathe in the United States. The history and legacy of race and racism are embedded in every aspect of life, including education, government, politics, society, and literacy. To address racism, we must be purposefully intentional in our pursuit of racial justice. In this report, we review how the field of lit...

A (Trans)Raciolinguistic Approach for Literacy Classrooms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RCycjPIR70&t=2s This session, presented by Dr. Patriann Smith, was part of the 2021 Shifting Linguistic Landscapes conference on April 26, 2021. The aim of the conference was to explore creative and socially just approaches to multilingual literacies. You c...

In this podcast, "A Transraciolinguistic Approach for Literacy Classrooms ft. Dr. Patriann Smith," Stephen Hurley from VoicEd Radio discusses with Dr. Patriann Smith about her rationale and her vision for using a transraciolinguistic approach to transform literacy classrooms. https://www.spreaker.com/user/voicedradio/a-trans-raciolinguistic-approac...

I recently wrote the piece "Beyond Anti-Blackness in Bilingual Education" for the American Educational Research Association's Bilingual Education Research Special Interest Group. In this piece, I invited everyone to think about how anti-Blackness has inadvertently persisted in bilingual education throughout the United States via the lens of Black i...

For decades, anti-Blackness has inadvertently undergirded the framing, legislation and examination of bilingual education in the United States in ways that hierarchize languages, delegitimize linguistic repertoires and perpetuate divisive rhetoric among racialized students. The persistence of anti-Blackness in bilingual education has been especiall...

Historically and contemporarily, immigration laws have disproportionately affected immigrant faculty and students of color because they often inadvertently function as racial policy. (Critical) legal literacy enacted via a bottom-up approach can help to address such laws. Higher education institutions, organizations, labor unions and associations a...

This study examined the degree to which elements of culturally and linguistically responsive literacy pedagogy were visible in the practices of in-service teachers as they assessed and instructed K-12 learners within the context of an online literacy course. Findings revealed that teachers reflected responsiveness across a wide range of literacy in...

Teachers of literacy increasingly leverage Englishes (Kachru, 1992) across their home countries and the U.S. During this process, ideological tensions emerge based on novel expectations for the use of Englishes in and beyond literacy classrooms (Author, 2018). Undoubtedly, such tensions arising from institutional norms in host and receiving countri...

When the world learned, in 2018, of the banning of citizens in five majority-Muslim nations [Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen] from entry to the US, there was shock, outrage and outcry. On January 31, 2020, the world saw another ban from the US, evoking similar reactions. This time, Nigeria, among other nations [Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, S...

Background/Context Previous research suggested that first- or second-generation African immigrants comprised nearly a third of Black students attending selective U.S. colleges. While research frames the involvement of Black immigrant collegians as distinctly different from African American peers as it pertains to family goals, relationships, ethnic...

In this study, we problematize the notion that Black immigrant youth be designated as high achieving or new model minority when comparing their literate success with that of their Black American peers. We draw from ideological and autonomous views regarding literacies while recognizing notions such as languaging informed by personhood, monoglossic...

Over the years, education in the Caribbean region has been and continues to be a topic that has been much discussed and debated. Among the many bones of contention are practices that have been in place from the times when the countries of the region were colonies of one or the other European nation. Issues such as curriculum content and methods, pr...

URL: blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/08/18/why-for-black-speakers-despite-what-they-are-told-using-standard-english-will-not-lead-to-acceptance/ Many believe that if a Black person simply speaks 'properly', 'sounds like a native English speaker', or uses 'Standard English', their language will be accepted in the academic spaces of universities and...

Black immigrant youth in the United States tend to be considered a new model minority because of the perception that they perform academically better than their African American peers. Yet, Black immigrant youth face challenges with literacy performance that often go unnoticed by teachers, which amplifies the invisibility of their literacies. I ass...

URL: https://www.tcrecord.org/Issue.aspvolyear=2020&number=13&volume=122 This Yearbook is designed to demonstrate the ways in which race acts as a central force in the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experiences of Black immigrant youth to create complex and nuanced ways of using literacies in and beyond classrooms. The Guest Editor, along wit...

In this conceptual essay, I argue for centralizing race in research that examines the Englishes and literacies of Black immigrant youth in the United States. My rationale for this argument is based largely on the increasingly divisive rhetoric surrounding Black immigrant and Black Americans (ABC News, February 11, 2020). This rhetoric has erupted f...

As the Literacy Studies faculty at the University of South Florida, we write to share our feelings of outrage and grief in the loss of life at the hands of racialized policing and violence in the United States, most recently and visibly the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade. As Literacy scholars, we seek to unde...

Many have written about the apparent ongoing 'achievement gap' between young Black and White students, but in new research Patriann Smith and colleagues write that this 'gap' may not give a true picture of Black students' literacy. They find that Black immigrant youth often speak multiple dialects just as their Black American peers do, and also oft...

Purpose/Objectives/Research/Focus of Study This qualitative study investigated online instructors’ perceptions of cultural diversity in the online classroom and the challenges that instructors of online courses encounter in their efforts to incorporate cultural diversity and multicultural learning contents in the online learning environment. An ass...

Black immigrant youth in the U.S. tend to be considered a new model minority because of the perception that they perform academically better than their African American peers. Yet, Black immigrant youth face challenges with literacy performance that often go unnoticed by teachers, which amplifies the invisibility of their literacies. I assert that...

Immigrant students in the U.S. educational system experience challenges learning to adapt and integrate into new educational environments. Little is known, however, about factors that facilitate acculturation strategies of immigrant youth from West Africa and how they affect their academic success and challenges faced. Considering the current polit...

In this study, we set out to investigate how 65 youth raised in Senegal with a culture of dependence on teachers as their source of knowledge adapt to a U.S. school system that is seemingly more open and lends itself to the co-construction of knowledge in the classroom. In essence, we study the experiences of these immigrant youth as they navigate...

National and international large-scale literacy assessments play an indelible role in impacting educational policy and curriculum across the globe. In fact, the value attached to these measures persists regardless of questions raised about the influence of the nature of such tests, characteristics and requirements of test items, and the ways in whi...

Purpose In this conceptual essay used to introduce the special issue titled “Clarifying the Role of Race in the Literacies of Black Immigrant Youth,” I argue for centralizing race in research that examines Englishes and literacies of the largely invisible population of Black immigrant youth in the United States. My rationale for this argument is ba...

This study draws from World Englishes and a raciolinguistic perspective to examine how seven Black educators used standardized Englishes after their migration to the United States. Findings reflected sources of English (il)legitimacy to which educators were subjected based on negative reactions to their accents, race, communication, and vocabulary....

Teacher‐educators who are aware of differences that present themselves in diverse student populations must increasingly work to help teachers to connect with students in ways that allow them to improve literacy outcomes. Despite its potential for helping to address the needs of diverse students, awareness of culture and language often tends to be t...

In keeping with the American Educational Research Association’s theme that highlights “the power and possibilities for the public good when researchers and stakeholders collaborate,” this symposium presents insights focused on race from our research with Black immigrant youth based on collaborations with universities and schools. Drawing from conce...

Increasingly, teacher educators are required to prepare teachers for students in mainstream classrooms who are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. Yet, calls for teacher educators to model enactments of curriculum and instruction concerning diversity expected of prospective teachers in U.S. K-12 classrooms have resulted in...

Increasingly, teacher educators are required to prepare teachers for students in mainstream classrooms who are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. Yet, calls for teacher educators to model enactments of curriculum and instruction concerning diversity expected of prospective teachers in U.S. K-12 classrooms have resulted in...

Teacher educators who are aware of differences that present themselves in diverse student populations must increasingly work to help teachers connect with students in ways that allow them to improve literacy outcomes. Despite its potential for helping to address the needs of diverse students, awareness of culture and language tends to often be tout...

The purpose of this phenomenological narrative study was to describe what it means to be Literacy Teacher Educators (LTEs) who supported writing in the context of a research–practice partnership (RPP) in the southwestern United States and to identify elements of the RPP in which we worked that were most useful for supporting writing instruction in...

The purpose of this phenomenological narrative study was to describe what it means to be Literacy Teacher Educators (LTEs) who support writing in the context of a research-practice partnership (RPP) in the southwestern United States and to identify elements of the RPP in which they worked that were most useful for supporting writing instruction in...

This study presents holistic insights into the culturally relevant English language arts and reading instructional practices of one award-winning Asian-American male teacher as he worked with culturally and linguistically diverse students from a variety of backgrounds in a ‘significantly underperforming’ urban middle-school. Avenues through which t...

This methodological review highlights the trends in empirical studies where a methodological construct (i.e. verbal reports) intersects with content (i.e. literacy research). Specifically, we synthesise research on language learners’ reading in which verbal reports were deployed as a methodological tool. Questioning the long‐standing assumption tha...

This guide accompanies the following article: Smith, P., Kim, D., Vorobel, O. & King, J. R. Verbal reports in the reading processes of language learners: A methodological review, Review of Education, https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3170

Immigrant students in U.S. educational system experience challenges learning to adapt and integrate into new educational environments. Little is known, however, about factors that facilitate acculturation strategies of immigrant youth from West Africa and how they affect their academic success and challenges faced. Considering the current political...

We draw on the concept of the opportunity gap explanatory framework in this study to problematize the notion of ‘(under)performance’ of Black American (i.e., African-American) and Black immigrant youth. Examining reading literacy achievement results of Black American and Black immigrant youth using a corpus of data from the 2012 Program of Internat...

This methodological review highlights trends in empirical studies where a methodological construct (i.e., verbal reports) intersects with content (i.e., literacy research). Specifically, we synthesize research on language learners' reading in which verbal reports were deployed as a methodological tool. Questioning the long-standing assumption that...

There appears to be a general gravitation towards what many describe as a post-truth era in our 21st century. The word “post-truth”, defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, was designated as Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word o...