Following on from the already wide-ranging academic discussion about fostering critical thinking in students as an important component of a university's educational mission, this paper takes a particular look at didactic principles for fostering this critical thinking. We begin with a reception of Abrami et al.'s (2015) comprehensive meta-study of…

Subvertising, traditionally linked to counterculture and anti-consumption, is utilized in education to reveal the manipulative strategies of corporate messaging to students. Classroom use of cut-and-paste methods deconstructs advertisement messages, fostering an understanding of how needs and desires are constructed through appropriation,…

Purpose: This paper aims to connect disability studies to multicultural education. This paper advances equity discussions and positions educators as interrupters of deficit dialogues that exclude students with social/emotional/behavioural (SEB) differences, disrupting the ableism that is present in schools. Design/methodology/approach: The authors…

This manuscript describes a white teacher's process of teaching texts authored by writers from historically marginalized cultural groups in a high school classroom. I wrote this self-study as theoretical guidance for teachers who also want to contextualize conversations about race. The scholarship of bell hooks motivated me to adopt the pedagogy…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe how engaging in an inquiry-as-stance reflexive approach informed the design of a graduate-level early childhood social studies methods course to support the professional identity development of multilingual/Latinx, Black, Indigenous, people of color (ML/L/BIPOC) teacher candidates. Design/methodology/approach:…

Purpose: Faced with increasing systemic constraints and pressures, secondary school English teachers often implement transactional approaches to pedagogy and curriculum aimed at improving student results on external exams, which are then used to rank schools. Despite the pressure to teach this way, teachers acknowledge the power of literature,…

This dissertation uncovered the ways through which culturally relevant young adult literature (YAL) engenders empathy for immigrants in middle grade readers. Empathy was displayed through both affective and cognitive responses and resulted in mirror and window moments (Bishop, 1990) as well as crystallizing experiences. Their empathetic responses…

This article presents the findings of a university reading and writing workshop on fairy-tale reimaginations. Fairy-tale reimaginations, understood as rewriting fairy tales using alternative narrative techniques, can be introduced into a literacy classroom where learners read reimagined fairy tales that stimulate their critical response and…

HBO's "The Wire" (2002-2008) is often regarded as one of the best television shows ever aired. Through reiterative viewings and a critical content analysis of the show, I argue that "The Wire" should be used as an anchor text in preservice English education courses in order to foster cosmopolitan literacies in preservice…

The goal of literacy development at schools is a standing feature of the curriculum. In spite of this, the means to develop critical thinking in students often comes up short. The development of literacy and critical thinking can be presented in engaging and memorable ways, but schools often defer to what they have done in the past; namely through…

This paper provides the rationale and purpose for a critical literacy awareness strategy, implemented to 20 English second language students at a township secondary school in South Africa. This empirical study provides insight into using newspapers as a pedagogical tool to develop students' language and critical literacy skills. Using different…

A 2018 study conducted by the independent, non-profit organization The Commission on Fake News and The Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills reported that only 2% of children have the literacy skills they need to determine if a news story is real or fake. Over 50% of the teachers in the study believe that current curriculum does not equip children…

Children's literature text sets can be powerful tools for teaching students about diversity and literacy, engaging students in authentic purposes for literacy practices while exploring complex issues such as Islamophobia. The authors discuss how an intermediate public school teacher integrated a children's literature text set project exploring…

Education on sustainability is a crucial goal that requires a transformative shift in teacher education to drive meaningful changes oriented to action. A cross-sectional study with an exploratory design investigated preservice science teachers' perceptions regarding teaching sustainable citizenship, specifically focusing on the climate crisis and…

This paper proposes a pedagogical approach for teaching and learning critical thinking through multimodal analysis--that is, "multimodal analysis for critical thinking". The approach builds on the conviction that students require competencies that move beyond traditional notions of literacy to meet the changing demands posed by media and…