This paper outlines a four-year study of a preservice education course based on a socio-constructivist research framework. The preservice English Language Arts course focuses on critical literacy and teaching for social justice while employing digital technologies. The research study examines two concepts across all aspects of the course: 1) new…

Despite the increasing recognition of the need for critical perspectives in teaching English to speakers of other languages, critical literacy remains very much a marginalised practice. The implementation of critical literacy is still limited in English-as-a-second-language classrooms and is almost non-existent in English-as-a-foreign-language…

To date, literacy educators receive little instruction and, indeed, little research exists on facilitating critical discussions about sexuality in classrooms. Addressing these issues with students, however, grows increasingly urgent, particularly in light of critical media literacy efforts and progressive literacy pedagogies that incorporate…

Reports on school bullying of students who are different suggest that teachers need to be intentional about implementing strategies that promote inclusive attitudes and behaviors in diverse classrooms. Literature offers much to education in general, and it provides the pedagogic space to address issues of inclusion and exclusion, particularly of…

Schools bring people together. Yet for many children there are major discontinuities between their lives in and out of school and such differences impact on literacy teaching and learning in both predictable and unpredictable ways. However if schools were reconceptualised as meeting places, where different people are thrown together (Massey, 2005)…

Reading and writing are being transformed by global changes in communication practices using new media technologies. This article introduces iPed, a research-based pedagogy that enables teachers to navigate innovative digital text production in the literacy classroom. The pedagogy was generated in the context of a longitudinal digital literacy…

In typical short-term teacher development workshops, experts model instructional practices for teachers so that teachers can then adapt the model to their own situation. Such workshops are often ineffective because of the lack of adjustment before modeling and the overreliance on teacher adaptation of existing practices. In this article, we argue…

This paper uses the example of an extra-curricular Graphic Novel Reading Group in order to explore the institutional critical reading practices that take place in English classrooms in the senior years of secondary school. Drawing on Stanley Fish's theory of interpretive communities, it questions the restrictive interpretive strategies applied to…

Critical reading of science-based media reports is an authentic context in which to explore the mutual interests of teachers of science and English, who want to use science in the media to promote their subject discipline while encouraging cross-curricular learning. This empirical study focused on 90 teachers of science and English to explore…

Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002), a cognitive theory of human processes of innovation, can be productively used alongside critical literacy approaches, for the analysis of how teachers and learners draw selectively, transformatively and purposively from aspects of the mass media. While numerous studies have pointed…

There is little point in teachers and writers arguing for the good old days of copper plate writing and the perceived decay of the English language through on-line modes. We have little choice but to embrace change, Facebook reality and consider the role of new media, so as to avoid being caught in a widening digital awareness gap. Language…

Illiteracy is a huge problem, socially, economically and educationally. This study of the history and current practices of American public libraries examines their role in supporting the development of human literate abilities and in helping all Americans to be critically literate in order to participate fully and successfully in our society. This…

This article introduces a framework designed to improve students' awareness of the need to critically evaluate websites as sources of information and to improve their skill at doing so. The framework, called the WWWDOT framework, encourages students to think about at least six dimensions when evaluating a website: (1) Who wrote this and what…

Research suggests that while students in public schools in the U.S. are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, class, and culture, the pool of prospective teachers is made up largely of White, middle-class women. The demographic imperative indicates that this trend will remain stable for the foreseeable future, reinforcing the…

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…