Providing context, reflection points, and ready-to-use lesson plans, this powerful book illuminates the intersections of social justice and media literacy for educators, school and public librarians, teachers of history and civics, information literacy instructors, and community leaders.

Challenging the assumption that access to technology is pervasive and globally balanced, this book explores the real and potential limitations placed on young people’s literacy education by their limited access to technology and digital resources. Drawing on research studies from around the globe, Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education identifies social, economic, racial, political and geographical factors which can limit populations’ access to technology, and outlines the negative impact this can have on literacy attainment. Reflecting macro, meso and micro inequities, chapters highlight complex issues surrounding the productive use of technology and the mobilization of multimodal texts for academic performance and illustrate how digital divides might be remedied to resolve inequities in learning environments and beyond. Contesting the digital divides which are implicitly embedded in aspects of everyday life and learning, this text will be of great interest to researchers and post-graduate academics in the field of literacy education.

Inside, readers will find a wealth of intelligently crafted, ready-to-use lesson plans and activities designed to help promote critical thinking skills for K-12 students, making this a perfect teaching resource for school and public librarians, educators, and literacy instructors.

The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Book Features: Guidance to help teachers move from classroom moral discourse to engage students in community action. Age-specific lesson plans developed with classroom teachers for integration with regular academic curricula.Detailed overview of moral growth with examples of student reasoning.Connections between moral development and critical pedagogy.Connections between moral development and digital literacy.Connections among classroom management, school rules, restorative justice, and students’ social development.Insights drawn from research conducted within the Oakland Public School system.

This book provides a practical and theoretical look at how media education can make learning and teaching more meaningful and transformative. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes a case study involving an elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. The ideas and experiences of working teachers are analyzed through a critical media literacy framework that provides realistic challenges and hopeful examples and suggestions. The book is a valuable addition to any education course or teacher preparation program that wants to promote twenty-first century literacy skills, social justice, civic participation, media education, or critical technology use. Communications classes will find it useful as it explores and applies key concepts of cultural studies and media education.

Making Media Literacy in America presents a history for the field of Media Literacy. It recounts how people have developed knowledge and skills in organized ways to respond to their rapidly changing media environments as seen through the lens of Media&Values magazine, a quarterly publication that spanned the formation, recession and revitalization of the U.S. media literacy movement from 1977 to 1993. This book maps the discourses of media studies, education reform, and the public sphere that made media literacy concepts and practices possible in America. It is a history of vital importance for scholars of media communication and education, as well as for thought leaders in teacher education, informal learning, youth media, educational technology, library sciences, and media reform—all of whom comprise the field of media literacy today.

In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catherine Prendergast draws on a combination of insights from legal studies and literacy studies to interrogate contemporary multicultural literacy initiatives, thus providing a sound historical basis that informs current debates over affirmative action, school vouchers, reparations, and high-stakes standardized testing. As a result of Brown and subsequent crucial civil rights court cases, literacy and racial justice are firmly enmeshed in the American imagination--so much so that it is difficult to discuss one without referencing the other. Breaking with the accepted wisdom that the Brown decision was an unambiguous victory for the betterment of race relations, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education finds that the ruling reinforced traditional conceptions of literacy as primarily white property to be controlled and disseminated by an empowered majority. Prendergast examines civil rights era Supreme Court rulings and immigration cases spanning a century of racial injustice to challenge the myth of assimilation through literacy. Advancing from Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath's landmark study of desegregated communities, Prendergast argues that it is a shared understanding of literacy as white property which continues to impact problematic classroom dynamics and education practices. To offer a positive model for reimagining literacy instruction that is truly in the service of racial justice, Prendergast presents a naturalistic study of an alternative public secondary school. Outlining new directions and priorities for inclusive literacy scholarship in America, Literacy and Racial Justice concludes that a literate citizen is one who can engage rather than overlook longstanding legacies of racial strife.

International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice is an international research monograph series of scholarly works that focuses primarily on empowering children, adolescents, and young adults from diverse educational, socio-cultural, linguistic, religious, racial, ethnic, and socio-economic settings to become non-exploited/non-exploitive contributing members of the global community. The series draws on the international community of investigators, academics, and community organizers that have contributed to the evidence base for developing sound educational policies, practices, and innovative programs to optimize the potential of all students. Each themed volume includes multi-disciplinary theory, research, and practice that provides an enriched understanding of the drivers of human potential via education to assist readers in exploring, adapting, and replicating innovative strategies that enable ALL students to realize their full potential. Among these strategies are the integration of digital technologies (DT) and information and communication technologies (ICT) into contemporary education platforms. However, technology must be more than just a tool to deliver content and stimulate engagement; it must become a means to broaden access to learning, advance equity, promote social justice, and encourage social inclusion. Especially reaching out to address the academic and social needs of rural, impoverished, marginalized, and displaced populations. Though the digital divide continues to hinder educational attainment for underprivileged populations, ICTs are providing significant opportunities to deliver literacy and basic skills instruction to disadvantaged segments of the global population as well as engage, motivate, and customize learning to address local needs. Nonetheless, the availability of ICT is not a deterministic process. Other societal, cultural, political and contextual factors are of fundamental importance to acceptance and integration that enables people to benefit from technology. The relationship between educational access, instructional delivery, and ICT should be considered in more complex terms. In particular, digital technologies should be viewed as instructional tools that improve access to educational opportunities, strengthen cultural resources, promote social and economic equity, and provide students with the knowledge and competencies to prepare them for a future that cannot be predicted. Therefore, developing ICT and media capabilities that instill citizenship and stewardship in today’s students is crucial to gleaning the social and cultural advantages of a contemporary global society that encourages full and equal citizenship. Citizenship education refers to two understandings of citizenship: as belonging and as engagement. The first is focused on national identity and valorizes the values of justice and democracy, as well as language and culture as the roots bridging the personality of children to the community of solidarity and shared norms. The second understanding of citizenship complements the ‘roots’ with ‘roads’, with the choices made by the individual, with the capacity to form and develop the child’s personality into the actor and author of his/her educational, professional, and life projects. The adolescent prepares to become an active, committed, and engaged citizen with the intellectual capacity for critical thinking that leads to responsible actions. Digital citizenship expresses the transformations of both belonging to and engaging in the information society and contributes to the development of generation “Y” with the aspiration to innovate and experiment, to explore the possibilities of the new digital world, to question authorities and instances of knowledge and power. Education addresses digital citizenship by opening more avenues for the intersection of Internet, imagination, and exploration. Volume 10, E-learning & Social Media: Education and Citizenship for the Digital 21st Century, addresses the use of technology in: developing and expanding educational delivery systems to reach rural populations, providing access to equitable education opportunities for disadvantaged and marginalized populations, and encouraging student civic engagement. The volume evaluates e-learning programs (distributed through the Internet, via satellite and hosted on social media) that promote equitable education for disadvantaged populations; examines the challenges and benefits of social media on student self-identity, collaboration, and academic engagement; shares promising practices associated with technology in education and e-citizenship in the 21st century, and advances the discussion on blending global citizenship education and social media that raises student awareness, accountability and social justice involvement.

Literacy is the foundation for all learning and must be accessible to all students. This fundamental truth is where Kimberly Parker begins to explore how culturally relevant teaching can help students work toward justice. Her goal is to make the literacy classroom a place where students can safely talk about key issues, move to dismantle inequities, and collaborate with one another. Introducing diverse texts is an essential part of the journey, but teachers must also be equipped with culturally relevant pedagogy to improve literacy instruction for all. In Literacy Is Liberation, Parker gives teachers the tools to build culturally relevant intentional literacy communities (CRILCs) with students. Through CRILCs, teachers can better shape their literacy instruction by * Reflecting on the connections between behaviors, beliefs, and racial identity. * Identifying the characteristics of culturally relevant literacy instruction and grounding their practice within a strengths-based framework. * Curating a culturally inclusive library of core texts, choice reading, and personal reading, and teaching inclusive texts with confidence. * Developing strategies to respond to roadblocks for students, administrators, and teachers. * Building curriculum that can foster critical conversations between students about difficult subjects—including race. In a culturally relevant classroom, it is important for students and teachers to get to know one another, be vulnerable, heal, and do the hard work to help everyone become a literacy high achiever. Through the practices in this book, teachers can create the more inclusive, representative, and equitable classroom environment that all students deserve.

The Critical Media Literacy Guide: Engaging Media and Transforming Education provides a theoretical framework and practical applications in which educators put these ideas into action in classrooms with students from kindergarten up through the university.