Increasingly, librarians are encouraged to deliver information literacy sessions that go beyond finding and using traditional scholarly sources. They are asked to cover a wider range of the information ecosystem and develop students' capacity to critically engage with Google and the open web. In this study, we incorporated these learning…

This study sought to revisit established definitions of critical visual literacy and determine how this concept could be re-envisioned specifically for picture books when informed by the approaches of teacher education students who had received limited prior formal instruction on critiquing visual texts. Seventeen sophomore elementary education…

As visual cultures scholars have argued, visual expression and aesthetic artifacts largely comprise the modern world. This includes the production of the school as an institution. A critical approach to education therefore must reinscribe students with the ability to see what educational processes attempt to hide and to construct an understanding…

Purpose: Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children's literature around fatness. This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's…

The International Literacy Day 2023 was the first after the launch the text generating artificial intelligence ChatGPT. This was the reason for a Literacy Promptathon that allows users to learn how to handle text and image generation. The International Literacy Day media coverage for the first time touched on the question of AI generated text. One…

Given the importance of teachers' views and perspectives in promoting media literacy among students and children, this study examines the perspectives of kindergarten teachers in Austria on media education. Data was collected through an online survey of kindergarten teachers who participated in a training. The results show that common approaches…

This study explores how youth engage with literacy practices in the age of AI through the use of counter-cartographies within the Nayah-Irú curriculum. By critically examining digital platforms and the underlying algorithms, students embarked on a journey to understand and challenge the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence in their…

This qualitative study examines the consequential evasive discourse moves 23 PSTs made during critical conversations about a young adult novel. Findings illustrated how PSTs engaged in a constellation of discourse moves--what we've theorized as "shielding"--that disrupted PSTs' critical engagement with sociopolitical content and…

High-quality children's literature, including picturebooks, are important resources in the classroom for students to engage with complex and sometimes concerning contemporary issues. One strategy to involve students in learning about such issues is through the use of metafictive devices, which are literary stratagems that draw readers into knowing…

This study investigated students' critical reasoning about commercials, as an aspect of advertising literacy. Critical reasoning was examined under two different experimental conditions. That is, students were tasked with watching four different commercials with 1) brand information provided or not, and 2) asked to engage in critical reasoning or…

In present-day digital environments, people frequently encounter content from sources of questionable trustworthiness. Advertising is an untrustworthy source because its purpose is to persuade consumers rather than to provide impartial information. One factor known to enhance the perceived truth of advertising claims is repetition: Repeated…

Two studies investigated students' critique generation, an elaborated form of content evaluation wherein students identify information selectively, inaccurately, or incompletely presented in text(s) and consider where such selective presentation may stem from. Critique generation, as an important critical reading outcome, was examined here, within…

To ensure equitable access to education for emergent multilingual learners, teachers should hold certain beliefs (Lucas et al., 2015) about language, including sociolinguistic consciousness, a value for linguistic diversity, and knowledge of the sociopolitical positioning of language (Lucas, 2011). This study examines possible effects of critical…

Asset-based and relational pedagogies highlight the centrality of meaningful relationships and authenticity in teaching and learning. Foregrounding children's lived experiences, interests, and ways of knowing provides a focus for teachers to be responsive, both relationally and pedagogically. Writing workshop, as conceived in the 1980's by Donald…

This study investigates how Chinese American children construct their identities in self-created multimodal discourses. Drawing from multimodal discourse and critical visual literacy, the research analyzes multimodal discourses created by eight Chinese American children, including the illustrations, texts, and oral explanations. The findings…