As political participation across the globe grows increasingly contentious and accusations of "fake news" and "post-truth" politics rise, the how, where, and why of civic learning in schools are called into question. In contrast, multimodal practices such as digital video production continue to promote youth engagement and…

This article argues that digital writing pedagogy needs to prepare students to deal with underlying oppressive realities within the range of everyday digital writing practices as opposed to simply focusing on affordances as unfettered opportunities. In particular, digital writing is increasingly mediated through digital apps and other interactive…

Two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share three core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. This article proposes a fourth core goal: critical consciousness. Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture, and race backgrounds, equity…

Making engineering and science culturally and socially relevant requires teachers to have broader content knowledge and an increased repertoire of pedagogical skills. One aspect of being an effective and culturally inclusive teacher that is seldom discussed is the ability to engage with the emotions associated with working for social justice. In…

Globally, many people spend most of their time interacting with the products of engineering design as they wear clothes, drink clean water, use transportation systems, and more. Given the omnipresence of engineering design, whose material results are felt daily in people's lives, it seems especially important that students learn to recognize and…

The author proposes that teachers of critical literacy must not only decenter texts as infallible authorities, but also decenter teachers as infallible (textual) authorities. She outlines problematic aspects of pursuing critical literacy as outcome, where there is heavy emphasis on having students parrot the teacher's viewpoint, and of pursuing…

Even though there are multiple literacies, the preoccupation and even reliance on the primacy of functional literacy, as seen as an end-point in the formal process of schooling, masks an ideology that rarely goes interrogated throughout all disciplines. This article considers the obligation and structure of functional literacy, and, in particular,…

Research and teaching resources are replete with ideas for creating a more culturally responsive and critical curricula (Allen, 2010; Bomer & Bomer, 2001; Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2008). Many have suggested that by offering a curriculum that is authentic and meaningful to children, real differences will be made in teaching and learning.…

In this article, the authors consider ways teachers can bring critical literacy into the classroom using Common Core State Language Arts Standards as a starting point and examining an 11th grader's response to a critical literacy assignment. Furthermore, they explore how teachers can use digital tools to introduce meaningful critical literacy…

Solorzano and Yosso (2002) defined counter-storytelling as "a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i.e., those on the margins of society). The counter-story is also a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege" (p. 32). This article seeks to explore how…

In this article, the authors argue that teachers and researchers must expand current verbo- and logo-centric definitions of critical literacy to recognize how texts and responses are embodied. Ethnographic data illustrate the ways that youth perform critical literacy in ways that educators might not always be prepared to see, hear, or acknowledge.…

In this article, I critique a component of the highly structured Open Court Reading curriculum designed to teach elementary children "inquiry and higher-order thinking" skills. The intended outcome of this component is, I argue, the production of critically literate and informed consumers of information. However, both the critical…

The term "critical literacy" refers to use of the technologies of print and other media of communication to analyze, critique, and transform the norms, rule systems, and practices governing the social fields of everyday life (A. Luke, 2004). Since Freire's (1970) educational projects in Brazil, approaches to critical literacy have been…