The Handbook of Critical Literacies aims to answer the timely question: what are the social responsibilities of critical literacy academics, researchers, and teachers in today’s world? Critical literacies are classically understood as ways to interrogate texts and contexts to address injustices and they are an essential literacy practice. Organized into thematic and regional sections, this handbook provides substantive definitions of critical literacies across fields and geographies, surveys of critical literacy work in over 23 countries and regions, and overviews of research, practice, and conceptual connections to established and emerging theoretical frameworks. The chapters on global critical literacy practices include research on language acquisition, the teaching of literature and English language arts, Youth Participatory Action Research, environmental justice movements, and more. This pivotal handbook enables new and established researchers to position their studies within highly relevant directions in the field and engage, organize, disrupt, and build as we work for more sustainable social and material relations. A groundbreaking text, this handbook is a definitive resource and an essential companion for students, researchers, and scholars in the field.

The Handbook of Critical Literacies aims to answer the timely question: what are the social responsibilities of critical literacy academics, researchers, and teachers in today's world? Organized into thematic and regional sections, this handbook provides substantive definitions of critical literacies across fields and geographies.

How can teacher educators engage pre-service and in-service teachers in learning about and framing their teaching from a critical literacy perspective? What does this mean? Why is it important? To address these questions, this book offers a theoretical framework and detailed examples, pedagogical resources, and insights into ways to build critical literacies with teachers in and out of school. Its unique contribution is to bridge critical literacy theory and teacher education. Participants in teacher education programs and professional development settings are often reminded of the need to build curriculum using children’s inquiry questions, passions and interests but generally this message is delivered only through telling (lectures) or showing (examples from other people’s classrooms). This book advances critical literary by explaining and illustrating how teacher educators can do much more—by creating opportunities for pre-service and in-service teachers to "live critical literacies" through experiencing firsthand what it is like to be a learner where the curriculum is built around teachers’ own inquiry questions, passions, and interests.

In this innovative and engaging text, Vivian Maria Vasquez draws on her own classroom experience to demonstrate how issues raised from everyday conversations with pre-kindergarten children can be used to create an integrated critical literacy curriculum over the course of one school year. The strategies presented are solidly grounded in relevant theory and research. The author describes how she and her students negotiated a critical literacy curriculum; shows how they dealt with particular social and cultural issues and themes; and shares the insights she gained as she attempted to understand what it means to frame ones teaching from a critical literacy perspective. New in the 10th Anniversary Edition New section: "Getting Beyond Prescriptive Curricula, the Mandated Curriculum, and Core Standards" New feature: "Critical Reflections and Pedagogical Suggestions" at the end of the demonstration chaptesr New Appendices: "Resources for Negotiating Critical Literacies" and "Alternate Possibilities for Conducting an Audit Trail" Companion Website: narratives of ways in which the audit trail has been used as a tool for teaching and learning; resources on critical literacy including links to other websites and blogs; podcast focused on critical literacy and young children

Taking the pulse of current efforts to do—and, in some cases, undo—critical literacy, this volume explores and critiques its implementation in learning contexts around the globe. An impressive set of international authors offer examples of productive critical literacy practices in and out of schools, address the tensions and gaps between these practices and educational policies, and attempt to forecast the future for critical literacy as a movement in the changing global educational policy landscape. This collection is unique in presenting the recent work of luminaries such as Allan Luke and Hilary Janks alongside relative newcomers who use innovative approaches and arguments to reinvigorate and redefine critical practice. It is time for this cutting-edge inquiry into the state of critical literacy—not only because is it a complex and ever-evolving field, but perhaps more important, because it offers a reaction to, and powerful reworking of, standardization and high-stakes accountability measures in educational contexts around the globe.

Critical Literacy and Urban Youth offers an interrogation of critical theory developed from the author’s work with young people in classrooms, neighborhoods, and institutions of power. Through cases, an articulated process, and a theory of literacy education and social change, Morrell extends the conversation among literacy educators about what constitutes critical literacy while also examining implications for practice in secondary and postsecondary American educational contexts. This book is distinguished by its weaving together of theory and practice. Morrell begins by arguing for a broader definition of the "critical" in critical literacy – one that encapsulates the entire Western philosophical tradition as well as several important "Othered" traditions ranging from postcolonialism to the African-American tradition. Next, he looks at four cases of critical literacy pedagogy with urban youth: teaching popular culture in a high school English classroom; conducting community-based critical research; engaging in cyber-activism; and doing critical media literacy education. Lastly, he returns to theory, first considering two areas of critical literacy pedagogy that are still relatively unexplored: the importance of critical reading and writing in constituting and reconstituting the self, and critical writing that is not just about coming to a critical understanding of the world but that plays an explicit and self-referential role in changing the world. Morrell concludes by outlining a grounded theory of critical literacy pedagogy and considering its implications for literacy research, teacher education, classroom practice, and advocacy work for social change.

Compelling and highly engaging, this text shows teachers at all levels how to do critical literacy in the classroom and provides models for practice that can be adapted to any context. Integrating social theory and classroom practice, it brings critical literacy to life as a socio-cultural orientation to the teaching of literacy that takes seriously the relationship between language and power and orients readers to the social effects of texts. Students and teachers are drawn into the key questions critical readers need to pose of texts: Whose interests are served, who benefits, who is disadvantaged; who is included and who is excluded? The practical activities help readers grasp complex issues. Extending the theoretical framework in Hilary Janks’ Literacy and Power with a rich range of completely new, up-to-date activities that translate theory into practice, Doing Critical Literacy is powerful, relevant, and useful for both pre- and in-service teacher education and for use in schools.

Illustrates the differences and similarities between modernist and postmodernist theories of literacy, and suggests how the best elements of both can be fused to provide a more rigorous conception of literacy that will bring theoretical, ethical, political, and practical benefits. Some of the 14 essays are theoretical, other present case studies of literacy programs for adults and other applications. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book explores the intersection of technology and critical literacy, specifically addressing what new technologies afford critical literacy work with young children between ages three to eight.

Through stories from kindergarten to sixth grade classrooms where students and teachers have attempted to put a critical edge on their teaching, this book shows critical literacy in action across the curriculum. Readers see students and teachers together using critical literacy discourse to frame conversations in ways that engage students in examining the meaning of the texts they read and acting on local and global social issues that emerge. Drawing on multiple perspectives such as cross-curricular explorations, multimedia, and child-centered inquiry pedagogies, the text features a theoretical toolkit; demonstrations from across the content areas including art, music, and media literacy; integration of technology; and attention to how critical literacy can inform decisions about standards and assessment. Annotated booklists, examples of students’ work, Reflection Questions, Try This (practical classroom strategies), and Resource Boxes can be used to encourage and support engaging in critical literacy work in different areas of the curriculum.