In this article, we explore the experiences of four girls with reading difficulties who participated in a book club designed to promote critical discussion of sociocultural gendered issues. Using the book "Dork diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO- fabulous life", they connected content in the book to their lives as relates to school "food…

While schools have been using computers within their classrooms for years now, there has been a purposeful ignoring of the growing power of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many schools ban students from accessing and using sites such as Facebook at school and many English and literacy teachers ignore or deny their value as a teaching…

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 author argues that whiteness remains an overwhelmingly absent dimension in literacy teaching that addresses systems of power from a critical perspective. One way literacy teachers may bring this dimension more explicitly into the classroom is by facilitating critical conversations on whiteness with young adult literature. As…

In the United States education system a large achievement gap between African American and Latino students compared to White American students exists. Various studies have documented the gap, but there has not been much success in closing it. Recognizing that the educational system is growing more, not less, diverse, including due to the rise in…

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Associated Schools Network is an international organization that can help teachers and students learn more about practical ways to apply social justice themes at an academic, personal, social, and global level. Learning processes are holistic and multi-dimensional within…

This paper reports a follow-up study that explored the relationship between EFL learners' critical literacy practices and the English language proficiency. It investigated four focal EFL learners' critical literacy practices in their dialogic interaction and also analyzed 39 students' views on their critical literacy learning. The four focal…

This article features key findings from a study that highlights the transformative impact of a pedagogical approach that employs Critical Multimodal Hip Hop Production (CMHHP). The study took place in an extended day program in a northern California public middle school among a group of 30, urban, African American, Chicano/a/Latino/a, and Asian…

This qualitative case study describes in detail a college teacher's experience in teaching critical literacy to English major students in Taiwan. A qualitative analysis of the data collected from classroom observation, class discussion and interviews shows that the teacher struck a balance between language skills teaching and critical literacy…

The contributors to this edited volume examine the simultaneous implementation of critical and digital literacies and explore ramifications for the development and assessment of critical digital literacies (CDL) curricula across educational contexts. We ask: How has the increasing ubiquity of digital literacies in and out of school affected our…

While we hold that cultural colonization in English teaching in the cross-cultural context is a legitimate concern, we argue that when overstretched it tends to ignore the complex power relations within a culture by imposing homogeneity on it. It may also fossilize the role a foreign language can play in a multilingual context, which, we believe,…

Given the escalating role of media and new media in our everyday lives, there is an urgent need for courses in Critical Media Literacy, at all levels of schooling. The empowering nature of these kinds of courses is demonstrated through a discussion of a Critical Media Literacy course taught at UCLA. (Contains 1 note.)

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.…

This study examines critical literacy and the intersections of oral, aural, written, and performative literate practices in City Debate, an afterschool program dedicated to providing debate instruction to students in a major Southeastern city. Previous research into definitions and beliefs about literacy in an urban debate program over its twenty…

Utilizing ecosocial theory and the notion of the environment as text, two teachers, the vice principal and a university researcher, engaged in a year-long, place-based, qualitative action research project in which they used the environment as the integrating context for teaching critical literacy, mathematics, and science. The project revealed…