Diversity Research in Action - Taylor, Denny

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Résumé :
Diversity in Research in Action is an essential resource for educators and policy makers who are committed to transforming and invigorating public education in the United States and around the world. There is almost universal agreement that we cannot go back to a pre-Covid world. Our capacity to shape the future for all our children will depend upon our re-imagining the ways in which they are educated. Their prospects and the realization of their potential require that we develop new approaches to pedagogical practices that are participatory, ensure empowerment, and revalue the importance of care in all human societies. In Diversity in Research in Action, Bobbie Kabuto, a great woman scholar herself, writes on diversity, white privilege, inclusion and equity in her introduction of Denny Taylor, Anne Haas Dyson, and Catherine Compton Lilly, who are the eminent social scientists whose research is featured in the book. Kabuto and the featured scholars encourage us to pursue a humane re-imagining of public education and how teachers can support children who are learning to read and write. Taylor, Dyson and Compton-Lilly address the massive power asymmetry, and advocate for a culture of social rights as the foundation of public education that rejects long held reductionist ideologies and concomitant practices of tests and measurement. They encourage us to establish more equitable educational pathways and provide evidence based, proven approaches to teaching and learning that harness the dynamism of this time when there are so many tremendous challenges.

Biographie:
Professor Emerita, Denny Taylor is the co-founder of Garn Press, and a global scholar and activist. She was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2019 she received Columbia University's Distinguished Alumni Award and also the NCRLL Distinguished Scholar Award.

James Paul Gee writes, Denny is, in my view, one of the most brilliant and important scholars of sociocultural approaches to literacy in the 20th century-a field to which I contributed as well. Her work on literacy combines technical sophistication about language and a deep commitment to human dignity and social change. She has always worked at the intersection of human development both in terms of the development of language, literacy, and learning in children, but also in the sense of the development of more humane people, institutions, and societies.

Since 1977 Denny has been continuously engaged in research with families living in extreme poverty, and in regions of armed conflict and weather related catastrophes. The concept of family literacy originates in her doctoral research at TC, Columbia University.

Today, there are family literacy initiatives in most UN Member States established to build more just, peaceful and inclusive societies. Family literacy has become a conduit for many local and regional initiatives to address poverty and hunger, public health emergencies, gender inequality, and strengthen partnerships to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Most recently Denny has used her evidence-based research on family, literacy and learning to focus on existential risks and science based macrostrategies for achieving the SDGs and human survival. Her many books span the sciences, and include novels and children's books as well as research texts. Accounts of her research on families, literacy and catastrophic events are available on her website together with many of her publications on family literacy in global contexts.