Research in the Teaching of English Feb 2024

“I’m Outside the Box. Too Outside the Box, I Explode It!”: Exploring Literacies of Dignity with Middle School Youth

Danielle R. Filipiak

Abstract

Dignity is an important construct for all students, especially those whose voices and perspectives have been historically relegated to the margins because of their racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities. With recent legislation that stands to further calcify the systemic oppression and racial violence that remains so deeply entrenched in US schools, it is urgent to understand how minoritized students broker dignity—or feelings of self-worth, value, and well-being—while navigating multiple and oftentimes intersectional keloids of dehumanization. Currently, we know very little about how dignity is developed and enacted by students within educational settings, and even less attention is paid to how literacy factors into these engagements. To address this gap, my paper is guided by the following inquiry, explored within the context of a yearlong youth participatory action research class: How do BIPOC, middle school youth leverage critical literacies and epistemologies to negotiate dignity? Data for this paper, which were drawn from a larger, critical ethnographic study, were analyzed using what I name as a literacies of dignity framework that utilized theories of critical literacies (Freire, 1970/2000; Janks, 2013), felt dignity (Gallagher, 2004; Stephens & Kanov, 2017), and youth epistemologies (Filipiak, 2020; Green et al., 2020; Kelly, 2023) to explore how middle school youth examined and critiqued three sites of devaluation: media, schooling, and adult/youth relationships. Findings reveal important ways youth were able to reimagine ways of being together and caring for one another in social, educational, and even global contexts that rendered them disposable, leveraging critical literacy engagements to broker moments of collective intimacy and vulnerability. This, in turn, fueled their sense of dignity, offering important implications for justice-centered literacy education.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2024-02-01
DOI
10.58680/rte2024583271
Open Access
Closed
Topics
literacy studies race and writing multilingual writers voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Mirra et al. (2025)
    Argument as Architecture: Constructing an Alternative K–12 Writing Paradigm for…
    Research in the Teaching of English

Cites in this index (8)

  1. Marciano et al. (2022)
    Generating New Narratives: Examining Youths’ Multiliteracies Practices in Youth…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Kim et al. (2021)
    Playful Practices: Reimagining Literacy Teacher Education through Game-Based Cu…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  3. Player (2021)
    “My Color of My Name”: Composing Critical Self-Celebration with Girls of Color …
    Research in the Teaching of English
  4. Watson et al. (2019)
    Praisesongs of Place: Youth Envisioning Space and Place in a Literacy and Songw…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  5. Johnson (2018)
    Where Do We Go from Here? Toward a Critical Race English Education
    Research in the Teaching of English
Show all 8 →
  1. Campano et al. (2013)
    “Nobody Knows the . . . Amount of a Person”: Elementary Students Critiquing Deh…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Camangian (2010)
    Starting with Self: Teaching Autoethnography to Foster Critically Caring Literacies
    Research in the Teaching of English
  3. Kinloch (2005)
    Revisiting the Promise of Students' Right to Their Own Language: Pedagogical St…
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 48 works outside this index ↓
  1. Baker-Bell (2020)
    Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy
     ↗
  2. Beydoun (2018)
    American Islamophobia: Understanding the roots and rise of fear
     ↗
  3. Bolton (2007)
    Dimensions of dignity at work.
     ↗
  4. Cammarota (2010)
    Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion
     ↗
  5. Caraballo (2017)
    YPAR and critical epistemologies: Rethinking education research
    Review of Research in Education  ↗
  6. Caraballo (2019)
    Leveraging language(s): Reframing rhetorics of fear with narratives of agency and hope
    Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy  ↗
  7. Cauce (2002)
    Cultural and contextual influences in mental health help seeking: A focus on ethnic minor…
    Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology  ↗
  8. De los Ríos (2022)
    Translingual youth podcasts as acoustic allies: Writing and negotiating identities at the…
    Journal of Language, Identity & Education  ↗
  9. Doorenbos (2011)
    Supporting dignified dying in the Philippines
    International Journal of Palliative Nursing  ↗
  10. Espinoza (2014)
    Perceiving learning anew: Social interaction, dignity, and educational rights
    Harvard Educational Review  ↗
  11. Espinoza (2020)
    Matters of participation: Notes on the study of dignity and learning
    Mind, Culture, and Activity  ↗
  12. Filipiak (2020)
    Holding space: Centering youth identities, literacies, and epistemologies in teacher education
    Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies  ↗
  13. Filipiak (2019)
    Growing together: Literacy and agency in an earlycollege research collaborative
    Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy  ↗
  14. Filipiak (2020)
    Intergenerational inquiry: Literacies of activism and desire in a youth research collaborative
    Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies  ↗
  15. Flores (2022)
    Somos escritoras/we are writers: Latina mothers and daughters writing and sharing “en con…
    Urban Education  ↗
  16. Gallagher (2004)
    Dignity and respect for dignity—two key health professional values: Implications for nurs…
    Nursing Ethics  ↗
  17. Garcia (2021)
    Glimmers of care: Attending to the affective everyday in ninthgrade literacy classrooms
    Reading Research Quarterly  ↗
  18. Gee (2015)
    Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses
     ↗
  19. González Ybarra (2022)
    “Because we have lived it”: Chicanx/Latinx youth multimodal literacies in youth participa…
    Reading Research Quarterly  ↗
  20. Gutiérrez (2017)
    Replacing representation with imagination: Finding ingenuity in everyday practices
    Review of Research in Education  ↗
  21. Heath (1983)
    Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms
     ↗
  22. Hemati (2016)
    Dying with dignity: a concept analysis
    Journal of clinical nursing  ↗
  23. Hodson (2001)
    Dignity at work
     ↗
  24. Janks (2013)
    Critical literacy in teaching and research
    Education Inquiry  ↗
  25. Kelly (2023)
    “It’s what we’re about”: Youth epistemologies in the design of social and educational futures
    Equity & Excellence in Education  ↗
  26. Kohfeldt (2011)
    Youth empowerment in context: Exploring tensions in school-based YPAR
    American Journal of Community Psychology  ↗
  27. Ladson-Billings (2014)
    Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix
    Harvard Educational Review  ↗
  28. Lee (2021)
    Encountering the affective in Latino immigrant youth narratives
    Reading Research Quarterly  ↗
  29. Lucas (2015)
    Workplace dignity: Communicating inherent, earned, and remediated dignity
    Journal of Management Studies  ↗
  30. Luke (2009)
    Critical literacies in schools: A primer
    Voices from the Middle  ↗
  31. Lyiscott (2019)
    Black appetite. White food. Issues of race, voice, and justice within and beyond the classroom
     ↗
  32. McArthur (2017)
    Black Muslim girls navigating multiple oppositional binaries through literacy and letter …
    Educational Studies  ↗
  33. McCrudden (2008)
    Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights
    The European Journal of International Law  ↗
  34. Muhammad (2022)
    Cultivating genius and joy in education through historically responsive literacy
    Language Arts  ↗
  35. (1996)
    A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures
    Harvard Educational Review  ↗
  36. Nichols (2021)
    Feeling worlds: Affective imaginaries and the making of democratic literacy classrooms
    Reading Research Quarterly  ↗
  37. Nussbaum (2011)
    Creating capabilities: The human development approach
     ↗
  38. Pless (2017)
    Art, ethics and the promotion of human dignity
    Journal of Business Ethics  ↗
  39. Sensen (2011)
    Kant on human dignity
     ↗
  40. Shulztiner (2014)
    Human dignity in national constitutions: Functions, promises and dangers
    American Journal of Comparative Law  ↗
  41. Souto-Manning (2021)
    Righting the literacy teacher education debt: A matter of justice
    Journal of Literacy Research  ↗
  42. Souto-Manning (2022)
    ELA as English language abolition: Toward a pedagogy of communicative belonging
    Reading Research Quarterly  ↗
  43. Staats (2020)
    Dignity and loss of dignity: Experiences of older women living with incurable cancer at home
    Health Care for Women International  ↗
  44. Stephens (2017)
    Stories as artworks: Giving form to felt dignity in connections at work
    Journal of Business Ethics  ↗
  45. Tuck (2009)
    Suspending damage: A letter to communities
    Harvard Educational Review  ↗
  46. Tuck (2011)
    Humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities: A dialectic of school pushout
    International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education  ↗
  47. Vasquez (2019)
    Critical literacy as a way of being and doing
    Language Arts  ↗
  48. Warren (2018)
    Activating student voice through youth participatory action research (YPAR): Policymaking…
    International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education  ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026
    Literacy Sponsorship, GenAI, and the Entangled Economies of Experiential Learning ↗
    Girdharry, Kristi
    service learning literacy studies multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  2. Philosophy & Rhetoric Oct 2025
    The Interdisciplinary Uncanny: On Not Recognizing Richard McKeon ↗
    Elizabeth S. Goodstein
    race and writing multilingual writers voice and style
  3. Research in the Teaching of English Aug 2025
    That Which We Have Left Behind: Developing Critical Sociohistorical Literacies in English Education ↗
    Lauren Leigh Kelly
    literacy studies race and writing multilingual writers
  4. Composition Forum Apr 2025
    Style and Substance: Templates for Academic Writing as Frames for Invention ↗
    race and writing multilingual writers voice and style
  5. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Jun 2024
    Our Voices Have Always Been Political: Indigenous Feminist Rhetorical Leadership ↗
    Luhui Whitebear
    race and writing gender and writing multilingual writers voice and style