In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze a student's narrative about the arrest, incarceration, and deportation of her mother to Mexico. The student, Gisela, was a fifth grader in my classroom during the 2008/2009 school year, and I encouraged the students to collect family stories from their relatives. Gisela created this…

Different countries offer alternative curricula around what might be designated language, literacy and/or communication. This article focuses on the latter, which has typically been associated with vocational education and often labelled a 'key' or 'core' skill that forms part of a wider set of life and employability skills. In recent years, as…

Sociocultural perspectives on literacy include various theories focused on the myriad ways in which people use literacy in context, which include a strong emphasis on power relations. Yet, these theories also have important differences, and many in the field of literacy do not clearly differentiate among them. I provide a critical overview of…

This paper summarizes the literature across disciplines and cultures that examines the possibility of a "fearless society." The author presents various theories and critical methodologies that critique this literature and yet support its inherent impulse of the Fearlessness Principle. The author suggests, despite the problems of interpretation of…

This article presents how one teacher engages with children's nonfiction professionally for the Common Core State Standards and personally to teach for social justice.

In our everyday lives we are surrounded by advertising in its various forms. Thus in the school context it is not surprising that the issue of advertising is addressed by different subjects, with the main foci being advertising-specific language, images and illustrations, use of stereotypes, strategies of persuasion, etc. But advertising also…

Given the prevalence of multimodal texts in today's world, it is not surprising that adolescent literacies are as dynamic, multimodal and visual as the texts with which they interact. As Kress & Van Leeuwen (1996) have outlined, the multimodal texts that make up a large percentage of our world consist of a range of modes (auditory,…

The purpose of this study was to better understand the process of engaging in critical literacy practices with kindergarteners. The researcher spent six months in a kindergarten classroom taking extensive field notes on the ways in which the teacher and students explored issues of social justice through literacy activities. Data analysis using a…

This article explains Janks' (2010) interdependent framework for critical literacy education, how it was developed and how it can be applied. The explanation focuses on each part of the framework: power, identity/diversity, access and design/redesign and it provides an argument for their interdependence. The framework is then applied to three…

The increased presence of technology in school communities and children's lives poses a challenge to traditional teaching and learning tools. The present case study examines ways in which a classroom teacher, Marnie, conceptualised the use of a multiliteracies pedagogy (MLS) and a multimodal approach to elicit the lived experiences of her English…

This paper attempts to answer this question: what should ecoliteracy mean in a biocapitalist society? The author situates his analysis of this question within the general context of the neoliberal reconstruction of education in the US. Specifically, focus is given to the shared model of governmentality GE food industries and education policies…

Middle school is a crucial transition period for adolescents; in addition to beginning to grapple with the academic literacy demands of college and career readiness, they are working to find their place in public life and developing opinions about civic issues. This article presents debate as a literacy practice that is uniquely suited to helping…

Digital technologies make possible new avenues for sharing and accessing literacy research and practices worldwide. Among the myriad of options available, web seminars have become popular online learning venues. The current investigation is part of Global Conversations in Literacy Research (GCLR), a longitudinal and qualitative study now in its…

Classrooms are increasingly multicultural in their social composition, and students are increasingly connected, through digital media, to local and global networks. However, pedagogy has failed to take full advantage of the opportunities these resources represent. "Multilingual Digital Storytelling" draws attention to the interfaces…

This article reports on a research study investigating student-described engagement with self-selected text in a classroom where a core reading program (in the context of this study meaning instruction based primarily on manuals and commercial textbooks) comprised the majority of their literacy instruction. Fourth grade students were invited to…