Education Commons^™

Putting Out Fires Through A Re-Grounded Critical Literacy: Slowing The Spread Of Misinformation Through Teacher Education, Noah Asher Golden, Breanna Couffer

Literacy Practice and Research

In this essay, we discuss the challenges teacher educators face when preparing secondary teachers to educate adolescent learners in an age of seemingly-ubiquitous online mis- and disinformation. Mis- and disinformation about COVID-19, the climate crisis, or even the shape of the planet Earth are abundant in our mediasphere, and teacher educators can play a central role in supporting secondary-level learners in navigating the multiple and conflicting claims they come across. We explore a literacy teacher education approach that marries discursive analysis with empirical investigations, and share an example of critical textual analysis bolstered by scientific investigation.

An Analysis Of Critical Literacy In Featured Manuscripts Appearing In Two Major Literacy Journals (2011-2020), Kathleen A. Gormley, Peter Mcdermott

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

Literacy journals provide an important resource for teachers’ professional development. Although school districts offer in-service education for their faculty and teachers often attend conferences and workshops sponsored by professional teaching organizations, journal reading remains an important source of information for teachers’ ongoing learning. In this study we examined what elementary teachers would learn about teaching critical literacy from reading major journals in literacy education. Critical literacy served as our focus because of the increasing importance of readers knowing how to recognize political, social and cultural perspectives embedded in the texts that they read. Content analysis served as our research method …

Elementary School Library Collections: A Content Analysis Of Science Trade Books, Sandra W. Watson, Sheila F. Baker

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

In this study, science trade books from the libraries of 10 elementary schools across the United States were evaluated using the modified Hunsader rubric for their overall quality pertaining to science content, literacy, and critical literacy criteria. Findings indicate that 62% of the books met the overall science content criterion, 99% met the overall literacy criterion, and 41% met the overall critical literacy criterion. The majority of science trade books in each school were life science books, and the majority of books across all schools were 18–23 years old, with many being much older. Implications and recommendations are provided.

Collaborative Inquiry To Support Critically Reading Children’S Literature, Laurie Rabinowitz, Amy Tondreau

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article provides an overview of a qualitative study investigating how K-5 classroom teachers describe their beliefs, concerns, and planning process for enacting read alouds featuring characters with disabilities. The study explored educators' close reading of picture books to elicit the unpacking of beliefs about individuals with disabilities conveyed by children’s literature. Through dialogue about social issues in picture books with colleagues, teachers sharpened their own critical literacy skills to bring into the classroom. Based on our findings, we offer a collaborative inquiry cycle that teacher groups can replicate to critically read children’s literature for different social justice issues.

Developing Critical Communities For Critical Conversations In K-12 Classrooms, Natalie Sue Svrcek, Henry Cody C. Miller

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

As marginalized identities are still largely denied representation in society and students from dominant groups lack sociocultural knowledge to live in a multicultural democracy, books are a powerful tool to address injustices. This article provides teacher candidates as well as practicing teachers with tools to address social justice topics in their classes by building critical communities to support critical conversations and subsequently using texts as tools for teaching in socially just ways. We offer a three part framework including 1) How teachers can begin to prepare to engage in critical conversations with students; 2) Laying out necessary steps for structuring …

The Critical Literacies Advancement Model (Clam): A Framework For Promoting Positive Social Change, Petra A. Robinson

Faculty Publications

This paper outlines the development and structure of the Critical Literacies Advancement Model (CLAM) and discusses its usefulness as a framework for promoting positive social change through the advancement of critical literacy skills which have been classified into five major categories.

Coming To Know About Sacrifice Zones And Eco-Activism: Teaching And Learning About Climate Change, Alexandra Panos, James Damico

Alexandra Panos

This paper shares curricular tools to engage in inquiry around issues related to environmental justice for upper elementary and middle grades students. Focusing on developing background knowledge and critical reading practices, the unit offers approaches to fiction and non-fiction online sources that promote an inquiry stance based in empathy and exploration. In addition to developing critical stances and questions to explore sacrifice zones and eco-activism, this paper shares many resources (texts and scaffolded tools) for praxical application in classrooms.

Toward Diversity In Texts: Using Global Literature To Cultivate Critical Perspectives, Rick Marlatt

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Abstract Literature study in the 21st Century should be characterized by the inclusion of global texts that afford diverse students the opportunity to engage in their literacy development through and alongside authors, characters, and storylines that represent their own linguistic and cultural traditions. In this narrative analysis, I reflect on the importance of equity-driven literature study from my perspective as a teacher educator at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southwestern United States. Following an introduction to the political and institutional contexts surrounding text selection in schools and a brief review of the literature, I situate myself and my students as …

A Teaching-Learning Grant Initiative: Developing The Critical Literacy Instructional Abilities Of Pre-Service Educators, Anne Katz Ph.D., Vivian Bynoe

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Pre-service educators in a section of "Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts" were introduced to the concept of critical literacy. Throughout the course of the semester, students were provided with the opportunity to apply their knowledge of this framework through a series of discussions around the young adult novel, Does My Head Look Big in This? (Abdel-Fattah, 2008). Guest speakers— in the form of a local high school student who recently began wearing a hijab to school, as well as a visiting scholar who specializes in critical literacy—expanded students’ perspectives. Results of a pre and post-test, as well …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Re-Reading, Re-Writing, And Re-Imagining Texts: Critical Literacy In A Kindergarten Classroom, Meredith Labadie

Dissertations

This qualitative action research study focuses on the integration of critical literacy practices in a kindergarten classroom. Critical literacy recognizes that no texts are neutral, and that authors position their readers in particular ways. Thus critical literacy practices are those concerned with positioning readers to inquire into issues of language and power, and to disrupt, critique, and challenge texts. In this study, critical literacy was brought to life through a curriculum of rereading and revisiting texts over time. The study took place in the researcher’s kindergarten classroom, and follows students’ discussion, written responses, and dramatizations around texts read aloud in …

Asking The Tough Questions: Teaching Literature And Nonfiction Through Critical Literacy To Recapture Our Voices, Agency, And Mission, Elsie L. Olan, Wendy Farkas, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

Exploding the Myth of Mental Illness

Exploring Teacher Candidates’ Civic Efficacy Through Civic Engagement And Critical Literacy In A Literacy Methods Course, Dana M. Karraker

Theses and Dissertations

Public school spaces play a large role in developing people’s understandings of civic knowledge and responsibility. Teachers, administrators, and policy-makers design school curriculum to reflect the types of citizens they believe a society needs, and thus, determines approaches to teaching and curriculum development (Labaree, 1997). This action research study examined the civic efficacy and critical literacy understandings of seven elementary education teacher candidates enrolled in a content area literacy course. The course and the study were designed using a critical literacy and civic efficacy framework as literacy practices are closely connected to the ways in which people are able to …

Critical Media Literacy Instruction With Teacher Residents In Urban Catholic Schools: A Comparative Case Study Approach To Implementation And Critical Transformational Learning, Jennifer K. Shah

Dissertations

Critical literacy is a cultivated habit that students learn in order to read media texts in their world more consciously. The Catholic context is ideal for work around critical media literacy due to a continued mission and vision around social justice. This research fills gaps in literature relating to critical media literacy in Catholic schools. The goals are threefold: (1) to study the transformational learning of teacher residents as they learn about and implement critical media literacy in urban Catholic schools, (2) to identify supports and barriers related to this process in order to better address critical media literacy implementation …

“It’S Just Too Sad!”: Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Resistance To Picture Books, Aimee Papola-Ellis

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The use of critical literacy with children’s books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children’s literature course were asked to respond to a range of children’s texts that dealt with many social issues and disrupted the commonplace. Despite an explicit emphasis on critical literacy and social justice, the candidates were very resistant to using many of the texts in their own future classrooms. They had strong emotional reactions that prevented them from consideration …

Preservice Teachers Engaged In Professional Learning Community To Explore Critical Literacy, Vanessa Casciola

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As demographics change, our school populations are ever changing. Preservice teachers (PSTs) need to be aware of how to meet the needs of all of their future students. Teacher education programs have been charged with the duty of preparing these PSTs for the diverse school population they will encounter. This qualitative multiple case study focused on the influence of specific work with PSTs in the inquiry process within a learning community to make sense of critical literacy. The following research questions guided this study: (1) How do elementary PSTs engaged in practitioner inquiry make meaning of critical literacy instruction within …

Coming To Know About Sacrifice Zones And Eco-Activism: Teaching And Learning About Climate Change, Alexandra Panos, James Damico

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

This paper shares curricular tools to engage in inquiry around issues related to environmental justice for upper elementary and middle grades students. Focusing on developing background knowledge and critical reading practices, the unit offers approaches to fiction and non-fiction online sources that promote an inquiry stance based in empathy and exploration. In addition to developing critical stances and questions to explore sacrifice zones and eco-activism, this paper shares many resources (texts and scaffolded tools) for praxical application in classrooms.

Using Critical Literacies To Instruct Through Multicultural Text To Enhance Comprehension, Higher Order Thinking Skills, And Respect For Other Diversities, Shannon Moncrief Enders

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this approach was to instruct students using critical literacies within the confines of multicultural texts. While using a variety of texts, students were exposed to text and “voices” they might not otherwise have heard as well as learned to comprehend better and learned to use higher order thinking skills beyond the words on the page.

Performing Critical Consciousness In Teaching: Entanglements Of Knowing, Feeling And Relating, Kathleen A. Mcdonough

Doctoral Dissertations

At a time when education reform is guided by neoliberalism, accountability and standardization have reshaped teaching as highly technocratic and threatened the democratic possibilities of public education. Even so, many teacher education programs have taken up the call to prepare teachers to teach for social justice, whether framed as multicultural education, critical literacy, or critical pedagogy. A construct that ties these pedagogical approaches together is critical consciousness, with the aim of some teacher education efforts to evoke critical consciousness among preservice teachers. This study focuses on exploring how nine educators from elementary grades to higher education experience and enact critical …

Speaking Back To Structure: Critical Multimodal Media Literacy & The Politics Of School Reform, Kate Way

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the development of critical multimodal and media literacy skills in high school aged students against the backdrop of current state and national education policy. Following the progress of students in a semester-long writing course that focuses on critical multimodal and media literacy, the study examines how critical literacy skills develop within different modes and mediums – particularly those enabled by new media and digital technologies – and considers the implications of critical multimodal and media literacy skills for student engagement, agency, and achievement. The study further analyzes the impact at the institutional level of educational reforms incentivized …

A Multiple Case Study Of Whiteness And Critical Literacy Practices Among White Elementary Teachers In Urban Public Schools, Amanda Rose Vandehei

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether white elementary teachers' perception of Whiteness influences critical literacy practices in elementary classrooms in an urban school district in the Southwest United States. This study consists of six white elementary school teachers.

Using Hardiman's model of White Identity Development, (WID) this study specifically explores the phenomenon of Whiteness and how teachers view themselves as having white privilege and advantage in American society. Hardiman's WID model includes five stages of white racial identity development in which a white person begins with no awareness of him or herself as a racial being and …

Exploring Critical Literacy Through Teachers’ Professional Learning, Christina Marie Ramirez-Nava

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

With a huge focus on professional development as a method to increase knowledge and skills, one-shot initiatives or flyby in-services bombard the teaching field. Moreover, with the increase of diversity, such as second language needs, children of poverty and other social issues in schools, a focus should be on implementing a critical stance through teacher collaboration

Critical literacy aims to make the unknown known and fight injustices, but many teachers are not aware of this ideology. Simply reading articles and books about critical literacy will not necessarily lead to a critical stance, pedagogical revolution, or engaging learning for students. Working …

Emerging Critical Literacy In Teachers As Novice Researchers, Jennifer Mitton Kukner

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the experiences of three teachers as novice researchers as they taught full-time in a university English language school in Turkey. Viewing the participants’ experiences as researchers through a narrative understanding of teacher knowledge and a critical literacy lens enhanced their critical cognisance of their positioning as women instructors in a higher education setting. Their research experiences were shaped not only by their classroom concerns but also by expectations and larger social narratives that lived beyond their classroom doors. This study focuses specifically upon English language teachers and acknowledges the intersection of gender roles and contextual constraints as …

Production Of Third Spaces For Immigrant English Language Learners: (Re)Negotiating Identity And Discourse In The Secondary Classroom, Andrew W. Habana Hafner

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores theoretical and pedagogical implications of space, language, and power in renegotiating identity for immigrant English Language Learners (ELLs) in secondary schools in the United States. The primary research question explored in the study is: How does spoken and written language and discourse shape the production of third spaces for renegotiating immigrant student identity in the ELL writing classroom? I adopt an epistemological lens of space from a postmodern geographic perspective that contends that space is socially produced and is co-constituted by material, abstract and lived spaces. The theoretical framework draws on constructs of social space, space-time, and …

A Challenging And Rewarding Process: Implementing Critical Literacy Instruction In A Middle School Classroom, Amy Michelle Geilman

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study focuses on a teacher's experiences while implementing critical literacy instruction in a seventh grade language arts class. Throughout the unit, a tension between teacher control and student autonomy emerged in three areas: discussion (teacher-directed and student-directed), curriculum (teacher choices and student choices), and student text comprehension (surface and critical). Finding the balance between teacher control and student autonomy was difficult. When these two elements were not balanced, the classroom experience for everyone was mediocre. When they were balanced correctly the entire classroom community had positive experiences that advanced student learning. Critical literacy instruction, though difficult to …

Teaching For Social Justice With Standards-Based Secondary English Language Arts Curriculum, Alison George Dover

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

Teaching for social justice is the attempt by classroom teachers to use their position in the classroom to promote social and educational reform within and despite current educational conditions and mandates. However, while a growing number of K-12 teachers have published anecdotal reports of their attempts to teach for social justice in secondary classrooms (e.g., Bender-Slack, 2007; Christensen, 2000; Singer, 2005), there is great variability among these accounts, and scant evaluation of their impact on specific academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes (see Grant & Agosto, 2008; Kelly & Brandes, 2008; Poplin & Rivera, 2005).

This qualitative study addresses this research …

Critical Literacy With English Language Learners, Susan Adams, Kathryn Brooks

Susan Adams

Workshop presented at the Reggio Collaborative Conference, Indianapolis, IN, August 2009.

Comics, The Canon, And The Classroom, James Carter

James B Carter

This chapter, which explores what I call the canon-curriculum-culture connection in terms of comics and graphic novels, also offers definitions of the augmental and supplemental approaches to using graphic novels in the classroom. The link is to the "Google Books" version of the paper, which begins on page 47 of the book.

Transforming English With Graphic Novels: Moving Toward Our "Optimus Prime", James Carter

James B Carter

I argue for the transformative potential of graphic novels in the English classroom.

Whose Story Is It Anyway?: An Explanation Of How `Academic Literacy' Was Constructed In A University Transition Course For Indigenous Australians During A Period Of Organisational Change, Gregory J. Stratton

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines how a group of lecturers who taught in a university preparation course designed for Indigenous Australians thought about what `academic literacy' meant. Lecturers were asked to consider the relationships between the meanings of `academic literacy' , curriculum, and the considerable problems the Course was facing in order to remain viable. My research goal was to better understand what alignment of people, ideas, and other important entities would be required to develop a sustainable program for Indigenous people seeking an alternative pathway into university degrees.