This article identifies a conceptual paradox between recent educational policy in England and a social-democratic understanding of critical literacy. Recent political events including Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and the Coronavirus Pandemic reiterate the need for pedagogies that equip students to critique information circulated…

Digital systems are increasingly becoming central to the running of contemporary schools. A range of digital tools are also adopted by teachers to facilitate face to face teaching and learning and more recently to accommodate remote schooling. Similarly, digital technologies lie at the heart of how students support their learning but also interact…

In this paper, we make initial advances towards building an argument for the inclusion of Critical Literacy Awareness within the new Early Career Framework in England. Using illustrative examples from recent research projects, we argue that post-2010 education policy has discursively divided practitioners, structuring relationships between…

This essay considers the relative merits of critical writing and writing in role as a means of enabling and assessing students' responses to literary texts. Drawing largely on the author's experience of teaching "Frankenstein," it argues that the distinction between critical and creative writing is not as absolute as is sometimes…

The concept of cultural literacy as a dialogic social practice celebrates alternative perspectives. Navigating multiple perspectives in dialogue requires high 'tolerance of ambiguity' characterised by a positive, open and flexible attitude towards uncertainty. This article aims to explore how provisional language is used in classroom dialogue to…

This paper draws on sociological and critical educational frames, particularly Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, in order to contest the dominant model of literacy education that is driven by the premise of a 'knowledge economy'. Instead it foregrounds the political, social, and economic factors that marginalise learners. Data from two…

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…

The benefits of reading for pleasure and positive reader identities have been well established in previous research. However, much discussion regarding young people's reading is underpinned by a discourse of deficit, placing emphasis on what young people should be reading. In an attempt to move away from this discourse, this article considers…

This article discusses the two main strategies commonly used to safeguard children and young people online; namely, Internet filtering and digital literacy education. In recent U.K. government guidance, both are identified as means to prevent online radicalization in schools. However, despite the inadequacies of filtering, more attention is…

Purpose: Non-dominant voices have been further marginalised in the most recent national curriculum in England (DfE, 2014), and those working across the English teaching profession often find the subject framed according to narrow, assessment-driven models and prescribed skill sets. This paper aims to bring together two perspectives on the…

This article draws on an inquiry into the design and implementation of the curriculum in a case study urban primary school in the north of England. In response to the introduction of the revised National Curriculum in September 2014, teachers and the school head engaged in a critical discourse around their perceptions of students' attainment and…

This article is derived from a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a sixth form college in north-west England. Through a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a group Facebook page about the students' scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examined the…

It is clear from several government reports and research papers published recently that the curriculum for English in primary and secondary schools is about to change yet again. After years of bureaucratic stranglehold that has left even Ofsted report writers criticising the teaching of English, it seems as if the conditions are right for further…

This volume of transformed research utilizes an activist approach to examine the notion that nothing is apolitical. Research projects themselves are critically examined for power orientations, even as they are used to address curricular problems and educational or societal issues. Philosophical perspectives that have facilitated an understanding…