The field of special education lacks an understanding of how students with learning and other disabilities engage with the ideological and contestable nature of the texts they read. Using qualitative methods, I explored a critical literacy model designed with techniques known to benefit students with disabilities. Over the course of three months,…

This study delves into the realm of critical multimodal literacy through the lens of fairy tale reconstruction. Employing an innovative pedagogical approach, the research examines how students engage with and transform traditional narratives using a critical perspective and digital tools. This action research showcases how students collaboratively…

Drawing from an ethnography with mixed-status families residing in Mexico, we examine what we term transborder literacies of (in)visibility, or diasporic people's innovative interactions around texts that prepare them to move across incompatible mononational institutions divided by borders. Through close attention to the literacy practices…

Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated in children's literature through critical dialogue can support young readers to move toward a social justice mindset. The authors of this article share critical strategies and analytic tools to support teachers and readers to analyze types of power,…

By illustrating how eight Korean English language learners came to understand embedded assumptions from traditional fairy tales and retell the tales through a critical literacy framed English literacy workshop, this qualitative study argues that fairy tales as English reading texts can effectively cultivate English learners' critical stance and…

This essay details what we, three White teacher-researchers, learned about how one class of fourth grade children interacted with signs such as castles, forts, and walls through a three-day improvisational workshop aimed at fostering critical literacy skills. Theories and methods of improvisational theatre offer a distinct way to approach critical…

This article offers an autoethnographic reconsideration of a primary school teacher's practice and children's interpretation of picturebooks in multicultural primary schools in England. It considers the balance teachers strike between respecting children's rights to freedom of thought and expression, and wielding their own power as directors of…

This article presents an illustrative case study to explore the classroom potentials of critical multimodal literacy. We feature Marcela's multimodal response to demonstrate how she engaged with visual and textual tools for learning. Illustrative cases are especially useful to explore a particular issue and often involve in-depth analysis of…

Immersion in fiction narratives like Alan Gratz's (2017) "Refugee" can help students recognize and acknowledge our common humanity when discussed in a dialogic classroom using a critical literacy pedagogy. Following the literature on using novel discussions to help students understand pressing societal issues (e.g., Boas, 2012; Hsieh,…

This article reports on what three white critical whiteness scholars learned about the ways white supremacy was affirmed and resisted during a two-day improvisational, critical whiteness workshop. The authors relied on critical literacy to theorise the castle as a sign or text with implicit, racial meaning. Furthermore, the authors use…

Drawing on theories of "radical pragmatism," this article situates the experiences and reflections of four teacher leaders at a K-12 public school to develop aspects of teacher leadership acts that are rooted in a social justice disposition. This article marries frequently established ideas and acts of teacher leadership with social…

This case study focuses on the diverse discourses Latinx bilingual students bring to class to make sense of power relations in the world. The study implements critical literacy practices such as read-alouds, discussions, writing, and drawing activities that help students critique and disrupt power discourses embedded in texts and visuals. With the…

This paper draws on practitioner inquiry and participatory action research methodologies to recount how five K-12 educators, who inhabit a range of positionalities and levels of teaching experience, engage in a collaborative professional development program, called Teaching Out Loud as they draw upon critical literacy theory and practice to…

The use of critical literacy with children's books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children's literature course were asked to respond to a range of children's texts that dealt…

The current paper examines teaching practices in three first-grade primary classrooms (age range from five years and nine months old to six years and nine months old) in Greek Cypriot public schools, exploring whether the wider changes in critical literacy education declared on a policy level are influencing classroom literacy practices. Greek…