Critical Literacy Critical Teaching

This book describes and documents an exciting new approach to educating literacy teachers. The authors show how to help teachers develop their own critical literacy, while also preparing them to accelerate the literacy learning of struggling readers. The text takes readers inside a literacy lab in a high-poverty urban elementary school, reveals the instructional approach in action, and provides many excellent examples of critically responsive teaching. Featuring a synthesis of several fields of theory and research, this book: illustrates teacher preparation and development as personal and social transformation - demonstrating that this process requires changing the ways teachers think about students, language, culture, literacy, learning, and themselves as educators; provides pedagogical tools - including the history of the innovative literacy lab, the context of the instructional interactions, and the transition from a university-based to a school-based project; and combines critical and accelerative literacy instruction, showing how teachers can accelerate the slowest developing readers in their classrooms and also build a sense of engagement for students with the social world.

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.

Reading from a critical stance is a natural part of comprehension. It involves making connections between the text and the world, questioning the author and the text's purpose, and understanding how we are influenced by the text. In this clear, easy-to-use resource, the authors present a sound instructional framework that is based on the latest theory and research and brought to life through a variety of theme-based classroom lessons for the primary, intermediate, and middle school grades. For use with Grades 1-8.

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.

"Provides a snapshot of the current state of critical information literacy as it is enacted and understood by academic librarians"--

Critical Literacy as Resistance is a collaborate effort among secondary and university educators from across the United States that addresses questions such as: What does a critical literacy classroom look like? What various texts are used? What strategies do teachers use to encourage students and teacher candidates to recognize how texts construct power and privilege? How do educators inspire activism in and out of the classroom? This book documents the experiences of scholars and teachers who have successfully bridged theory and practice by applying critical literacy into their respective content areas. The authors spell out the difference between critical thinking and critical literacy, then show how to write and implement curriculum that incorporates diverse texts and multiple literacies in all content areas (including world language), and includes the voices of students as they confront issues of race, class, gender, and power. The principles and practices laid out here will help teachers use literacy to liberate and empower students both in and outside the classroom by respecting and studying the literacies students bring to school, while simultaneously teaching (and challenging) the literacies of those in power. This is a book for pre- and in-service teachers in all content areas, staff developers, secondary literacy specialists, university professors, and anyone interested in social justice.

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.

Uniquely bringing together discourse analysis, critical literacy, and teacher research, this book invites teacher educators, literacy researchers, and discourse analysts to consider how discourse analysis can be used to foster critical literacy education. It is both a guide for conducting critical discourse analysis and a look at how the authors, alongside their teacher education students, used the tools of discourse analysis to inquire into, critique, and design critical literacy practices. Through an intimate look at the workings of a university teacher education course and the discourse analysis tools that teacher-researchers use to understand their classrooms, the book provides examples of both pre-service teachers and teacher educators becoming critically literate. The context-rich examples highlight the ways in which discourse analysis aids teachers’ decision making in the moment and reflections on their practice over time. Readers learn to conduct discourse analysis as they read about critical literacy practices at the university level. Designed to be interactive, each chapter features step-by-step procedures for conducting each kind of discourse analysis (narrative, critically oriented, multimodal), sample analyses, and additional readings and resources. By attending to the micro-interactions as well as processes that unfold across time, the book illustrates the power and potential of discourse analysis as a pedagogical and research tool.