2025 ELATE Summer Conference Call for Proposals - National Council of Teachers of English

2025 ELATE Summer Conference Call for Proposals

Legacies of African American Pedagogical Excellence and
Future-Making in Teacher Education

July 10–13, 2025
Avery Center for African American Research and Culture
College of Charleston, Charleston, SC

 

Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday, February 3, 2025

The proposal database will open in early December 2024.

The 2025 ELATE Summer Conference theme is grounded in the history of education at the epicenter of social change, community transformation, and collective striving toward citizenship and personhood. As we celebrate 25 years of NCTE Cultivating New Voices (Among Scholars of Color), 70 years of Brown v Board of Education, and 160 years of the Avery Normal Institute, we are excited to hold this year’s ELATE Summer conference at The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, a division of the College of Charleston Libraries.

The Avery Research Center is located on the site of the former Avery Normal Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. The Avery Normal Institute was an historic secondary school and teacher training institute that dually prepared African American students for professional careers and leadership roles and served as a hub for Charleston’s African American community from 1865 to 1954. In 1985, alumni of the Avery Normal Institute (aptly known as Averyites) formed a community advisory board of directors known as the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture (AIAAHC) and worked with the College of Charleston in establishing the Avery Research Center to preserve the legacy of Black people, organizations, and businesses in the South Carolina Lowcountry. For over thirty-five years, as a part of the College of Charleston library system, the Center has collected the records of educators, activists, organizations, institutions, artists, and more from the South Carolina Lowcountry and beyond.

These artifacts documenting the legacies of Black education and pedagogical excellence are, as Winn (2025) writes, “historical beacons that can be read as highly relevant maps of/for the future.” We are inviting ELA teachers, teacher educators, community-based educators, and historians of education to consider how cultivating archival literacies might uncover blueprints and pathways for future-making in teacher education. This summer, the ELATE conference will focus on “shaping future-oriented pedagogies” by making visible the histories, narratives, and contributions of Black educators and teacher educators (Winn, 2025).

Teacher educator Melanie Acosta (2018) asserts that we should “reorient [teacher education] discourse toward African American approaches to teaching, learning, and being that we term African American pedagogical excellence (AAPE).”  ELATE extends such reorientation to be anchored in African approaches to teaching and learning brought from the continent, which are today foundational in the discourses and knowledges of African American communities (Joyce King, 2005; Gloria Boutte, 2022; Asa Hilliard, 2003). As Acosta writes, “AAPE is a plausible foundation from which to re-conceptualize pedagogies for social justice (2018)” and “teacher educators must help mend the fracture that separates the conceptualization of effective teaching from the research on effective Black . . . educators (2019).” We see these discourses and knowledges as cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths that require an overturning of colonized constraints on both pedagogy and research in a time when attempts are made to erase those strengths from K–12 and higher education curriculum.

Recently, the Avery Research Center received funding from the Mellon Foundation to organize, catalog, and digitize the unprocessed institutional records of the AIAAHC, the Avery Research Center, and papers of Averyites. The Averyite records document the professional and community service accomplishments of numerous Avery students and graduates (1868–2021). These records illuminate how the education and support Averyites received while enrolled at Avery empowered them to achieve their goals and instilled in them a sense of social responsibility to improve the lives of others in their community, a hallmark of the history of Black educators serving as advocates and shapers of improved educational opportunities (Siddle Walker, 2003). Holding components of the conference at Avery will be an opportunity to not only celebrate their 160th anniversary but also to inform how Avery will make the materials accessible to future and current educators and teacher educators. One of the goals of the conference is for ELA teacher educators and teachers to develop an archival literacy, using these and other archival documents in their ELA methods and other teacher education courses. According to Jones Royster, a scholar of rhetoric, literacy, and cultural studies, this kind of archival literacy or “kaleidoscopic view [of the history of teacher education] is designed to make the hidden and unrecognized visible. This view . . . encourages us, above all else, to complicate our thinking, rather than simplify it, in search of greater clarity and also greater interpretive power” (2000, p. 73).

In this spirit, ELATE presents the theme for our 2025 ELATE Summer Conference, “Legacies of Black Pedagogical Excellence and Future-Making in Teacher Education.” We invite English language arts teacher educators, teachers, and other members of literacy communities to consider: What are our legacies as English educators and how can we connect to African American academic excellence? This question will guide the programming for the conference, and participants are invited to explore topics for proposal submission. Proposals on any topic and focus of English education are welcome, and participants may also choose to integrate one or more of the below foci related to the theme of the conference:

  • Our legacy as English (teacher) educators 
  • Developing archival literacy toward meaningful teaching and learning  
  • Using primary resources to deepen culturally responsive and inclusive instruction 
  • Connecting literacy education and secondary English language arts methods courses to African American pedagogical excellence  
  • African American pedagogical excellence in teacher education and P–12 spaces 
  • Legacy of African American teachers and teacher educators in the south, including ideology, practices, and political engagements  
  • History of African American education and teacher education  
  • Remembering the past to reimagine the present: freedom dreaming, liberatory teacher education, and future-making in teacher education 
  • Community-connected classroom instruction, centering place and purpose 
  • Place-based learning, community-engaged teacher education 
  • Connecting to history to inform what pedagogy looks like now 
  • Teacher education for justice and joy 
  • Fugitivity, abolition, intersectionality, and otherwise possibilities in English language arts teacher education 

The ELATE 2025 Summer Conference invites English language arts teacher educators and teachers to submit proposals for completed works or works in progress. Presenters are encouraged to explore answers to these questions and others from multiple contexts of pre-K–16 English language arts education and literacy research, including after-school and community settings, students whose first language is other than English, etc. English Education will publish a special issue on the conference theme in 2026; a call for manuscripts will follow the conference. Please consider submitting a proposal for ELATE 2025, attending the in-person conference July 10–13, 2025, and contributing to these conversations.

References

Acosta, M. M., Foster, M., & Houchen, D. F. (2018). “Why seek the living among the dead?” African American pedagogical excellence: Exemplar practice for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(4), 341–353. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487118761881

Acosta, M., & Acosta, M. M. (2019). The paradox of pedagogical excellence among exemplary Black women educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(1), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487118808512 

Boutte, G. S. (2022). Educating African American students: And how are the children? (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003164456 

Green, K. L. (2020). Radical imagination and “otherwise possibilities” in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33(1), 115–127. 

King J. E. (2005). Black education: A transformative research and action agenda for the new century. Routledge. 

Hilliard A. G. (2003). No mystery: Closing the achievement gap between Africans and excellence. In Perry T., Steele C., Hilliard A. (Eds.), Young, gifted, and black: Promoting high achievement among African American students (pp.131–165). Beacon Press. 

Royster, J. J. (2000). Traces of a stream: Literacy and social change among African American women. 

Walker, V. S. (2013). Ninth annual Brown lecture in education research: Black educators as educational advocates in the decades before Brown v. Board of Education. Educational Researcher, 42(4), 207–222. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X13490140 

Winn, M. T. (In press). Futuring Black lives: Independent Black institutions and the literary imagination. Vanderbilt University Press. 

Proposal Formats

To create a conference experience that is joyful, restful, and intellectually stimulating, we encourage alternative formats for presenting your thinking, research, and teaching practices. Proposals that include preservice teachers, inservice teachers, P–12 students, parents/guardians, and/or community members are also encouraged. All proposals should include audience interaction and engagement. We will limit participants to presenting in only one session.

ELATE-ABLE: Roundtable Talks (1 hour)

Roundtable sessions will consist of three to four individual presenters who briefly introduce a specific dialogue-provoking topic that situates and supports focused conversation for roundtable attendees. Roundtable sessions should not consist of lengthy one-sided presentations but instead focus on developing thoughtful discussion over the hour provided, guided by some thought-provoking and relevant questions. If you are proposing a full roundtable session, submit one proposal that includes the required information for all facilitators; otherwise, the conference planners will match you with other roundtables to create (as best as possible) a coherent roundtable session.

Archival Literacies: Workshop Sessions (1 hour)

Workshop sessions will engage participants in a focused activity grounded in the conference theme. Led by one to three facilitators, workshops will provide an introduction to and contextual support for a specific activity that will allow participants to produce a tangible product of some sort in the time provided.

Real Talk: Problems of Practice (30 minutes)

These sessions focus on facilitated conversations surrounding problems of practice. Each problem of practice session will be paired with another problem of practice session. These should be opportunities to share and brainstorm. The purpose of the facilitator is not to present the solution but rather to pose questions and work to involve all attendees in sharing experiences, resources, and ideas. The problems of practice can include any issue that you and others are encountering in our field. Submissions could hold the theme loosely and should do the following: (1) focus on specific questions/issues, (2) include background information regarding the issue, (3) consider what you or others have done to address it, and (4) set goals or outcomes for the session and for future work. Possible questions/issues could be these:

  • How can we better situate teacher education within the strengths and cultural wealth of the communities we serve?
  • What are our responsibilities to our broader communities, and how can we better be in dialogue with them as teacher educators?
  • How can we better engage students in authentic projects while at a distance?
  • What are some practices for blending synchronous and asynchronous video communication?
  • How can we better mentor graduate students?
  • What changes should be made to teacher preparation programs, what are the obstacles to those changes, and how can we overcome them?
  • How do we better infuse educational technology into subject-specific teaching methods courses or practicum experiences?
  • How do we support school districts in their efforts to address issues related to injustice?
The Classic: Panel Discussions (1 hour)

Panel discussions will consist of two to three individual presentations around a common theme. Each panelist will offer a 10- to 15-minute presentation, and then all panelists will engage in a brief discussion of the panel’s common theme. Panel discussions should also include audience interaction and engagement. If you are proposing a complete panel, submit one proposal that includes the required information for all panelists; otherwise, the conference planners will match you with other panelists to create (as best as possible) a coherent panel.

The Re-Mix: Other Format (time can vary)

ELATE will also consider alternative formats. As noted, an alternative presentation could take the form of a lesson, podcast, piece of art, music, poetry, meditation, etc. The conference planners will help to decide how such formats will be best shared with ELATE Conference attendees and wider audiences. These may be integrated with the formats above to create multimodal, art-infused sessions.

Proposal Requirements

  • Name and institutional affiliation
  • Email address
  • Title of presentation or session
  • Format
  • Abstract ( 400 characters and spaces max)
  • Description ( 2,500 characters and spaces max)—include topic; connection to ELA teaching and learning, being, and doing; rationale; significance; and plans for engaging the audience
  • Names and information of others to be included in the session or strand, if applicable

Important Dates

  • Proposal database will open in early December 2024
  • Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday, February 3, 2025
  • Proposal notifications in April 2025
  • Conference dates: July 10–13, 2025, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC

Submitting a Proposal

The proposal database will open in early December 2024.

Questions can be sent to NCTEevents@ncte.org.