Concerned with disinformation, fake news, and a posttruth era, literacy research on digital learning ecologies has focused on content of the texts that youth encounter but less explicitly on aesthetics--issues of form or the way a text is written. Drawing on critical sociocultural theories, this article examines youth aesthetic meaning-making with…

This is a multiple case study exploring five high school English teachers' perceived supports and challenges to enacting critical literacy pedagogy, and their experiences navigating the challenges. Through a structure/culture/agency framework, I sought to understand how these five teachers' leveraging of supports and sense of agency in the face of…

In the face of persistent racial injustice, critical literacy approaches to instruction frequently involve investigating and altering unjust racialized power structures through critical action. However, what happens when youth have become understandably skeptical of action for change? This analysis uses healing frameworks to explore the critical…

Supportive, respectful teacher-student interactions are essential to a positive learning environment for linguistically and culturally diverse students. In this article, I focus on one case from a larger study that examined the teaching practices and perspectives of four secondary teachers of immigrant-origin students of generation 1.0, 1.5, and…

This qualitative case study examines how fifth graders and their teachers participated in critical literacy instruction grounded in systems thinking on the topic of slavery. Systems thinking seeks to discover relationships and patterns in diverse underlying systems; critical literacy examines everyday texts, focuses on social justice and change,…

This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and development of social justice-oriented urban English teachers. It examines the cases of three graduates of an urban education-focused teacher preparation program who claim different intersectional identities and have completed their fourth year as urban…