Breaking down the social, political, and cultural processes through which race, class, and gender worldviews are established, ideological literacies help students look closely at the intricate, contradictory meanings in texts. The purpose of developing ideological literacies in urban youth is so they become more socially conscious of the…

Neighborhood Bridges is a nationally recognized literacy program using storytelling and creative drama to help children develop their critical literacy skills and to transform them into storytellers of their own lives. In 2012-2013, a total of 640 students in grades three through six from twenty-three classrooms in eleven schools across the…

Building on Ball's (2009) model of generative change, we explored how two experienced literacy teachers, after completing a graduate-level multicultural literacy course, enacted the tenets of critical literacy. Ball defined teachers' generative thinking as "connecting their personal and professional knowledge with the knowledge that they gain from…

Because in his Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln said, "we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain," and "...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," it is accurate to report that he spoke the words "perish from the earth" and "died in vain." But if his 1864…

This article documents a curriculum reform of the second-year German program at the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. This curricular reform had two goals: (1) compressing two semesters of intermediate-level language instruction into a single semester; (2) incorporating a strategy-based approach to literary…

There has been little exploration of emotional labor in researching the learning of adults, and emotional labor on the part of research contractors has scarcely featured in published debates. The article explores the role of emotion in this context from a critical feminist perspective, drawing on life history data from a study of the learning…

Complaints from students are rare at the college level, but when they do happen, it offers a priceless opportunity to explore the value system of those students and encourage them to write about their beliefs and the alienation they are experiencing. While a majority of the students take writing as a requirement and seek only to earn the requisite…

A fundamental goal of critical literacy approaches is to bring a change and empower students as critical agents and subjects of decision making. Students are expected to do more than simply accumulate information; they are encouraged to challenge their "taken for granted" belief structures and transform themselves as well as their…

Scotland provides an interesting context for studying adult literacy in that it is one of the few countries that explicitly acknowledge the idea of literacy as a social practice. By drawing on two initiatives we illustrate literacy learning derived from a mixture of social practice and critical literacy perspectives. Together they provide insights…

"As Coyote tossed his eyes the next time, the ravens swooped, swift as arrows from a strong bow. One of them snatched one eye and the other raven caught the other eye. 'Quoh! Quoh! Quoh!,' they laughed, and flew away to the Sun-dance camp" (Quintasket, 1933). The knowledge mobilization project involving Aboriginal students described in…

This study examines how critical literacy read-alouds can be facilitated in an early childhood setting. More specifically, it describes how books allow young children to connect with experiences that help them identify and challenge inequality and envision social change. A classroom teacher and two university-based researchers collaborated to…

Rigid foci on accountability, accreditation, and customer service pose significant challenges for literacy educators today. The most consequential identified as the snuffing out of scholastic innovation and erosion of academic freedom. This article recounts a recent experience that occurred while the author prepared a lesson for an undergraduate…

This study focuses, from a bilingual perspective, on how a Swedish national test is intended to promote critical literacy and language development in line with related aims in syllabuses for Swedish and Swedish as a second language. The material consists of reading and writing assignments and prescribed classroom preparations (including…

This qualitative case study explored four English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners' critical literacy practices by analyzing their reflective essays on a gender-related article and their perceptions of critical literacy. Four participants with varying English proficiency were purposefully selected from a critical literacy-oriented reading…

This qualitative study explored the exchange between post-secondary Critical Media Literacy instructors and their students, describing their understandings of Critical Media Literacy, as well as their pedagogical struggles, within the context of a teacher education program. The data suggested that the UCLA instructors understood Critical Media…