Purpose: Preparing preservice teachers to become critical literacy educators is integral to creating social justice classrooms. Numerous theoretical frameworks have been used to introduce critical literacy to preservice teachers. The commonality between the frameworks is the focus on analyzing literature. This paper aims to present an alternative…

Social realist theorising about curriculum and social justice in higher education has emphasised the importance of providing equity of epistemic access to powerful knowledge. However, there has been little discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge and how students can use it for social good. In the science disciplines, the traditional…

This study details the development of the Critical Literacy Beliefs Survey (CLBS) with a sample of U.S. pre-service teachers (N = 405) and provides evidence of validity for developing measures of pre-service teachers' critical literacy beliefs. The CLBS was created to gather data on pre-service teachers' beliefs about critical literacy and answer…

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an analysis of course titles and descriptions which are part of core adult education university curricula in the United States. The focus of the analysis was on understanding how well these adult education programs, and their curricula, address the need for developing critical literacy and…

It is essential to support teacher candidates in becoming culturally responsive and learning about social justice in the classroom as schools across the country become more culturally and linguistically diverse. In this qualitative study, the author looked at children's literature as a way to support teacher candidates' learning about critical…

In the past seven years, student-led decolonisation movements have taken root in UK universities. Decolonising the university is an intellectual project, asking critical questions about the content of curricula, disciplinary canons and pedagogical approaches. It is simultaneously a material one, challenging the colonial legacies that manifest in…

This paper investigates readers' recognition of unsourced evidentials in texts in association with critical reading. To this end, we involved four Iranian postgraduate students at an Australian university in a collective case study where each student read four Persian texts and participated in in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Data…

Political discourses and practices surrounding the current presidential administration are propagating familiar stereotypes of immigrants as "diseases," "criminals," and questionably "American." Emergent research and the news media are also reporting stories of hostility toward immigrants in schools and broader…

Challenging structural violence is a major project of our time. The massive Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprisings of Summer 2020 brought greater awareness of the systemic racism of universities and a commitment to challenge it. A Marxist-humanist lens recognizes racism as foundational to the racial-colonial capitalist patriarchy and the university as…

This essay draws from a study conducted as part of graduate thesis work at George Mason University. The thesis examined the purpose of human rights education and critical media literacy, and the international inducements to include these subjects in the national education systems of United Nations (UN) member states. It compared the United States…

As the number of displaced people increases, providing refugee-background students with critically engaging classrooms is essential. Supporting diverse learners, while focusing on issues of social justice and equity, critical literacy facilitates a perspective where texts are analyzed for underlying messages of power and sociopolitical issues.…

This paper explores critical cosmopolitan literacies as a framework to engage teacher preparation program candidates in re-conceptualizing about their work as active thinkers, ethical decision makers, and agentive global actors. The purpose of the study is to elucidate how preservice teachers, in a secondary literacy teacher education program,…

This paper presents a practical way of teaching critical literacy to pre-service teachers through a critical literacy engagement. It begins with a literature review on critical literacy. Then, the critical literacy engagement is discussed in detail. Specifically, the critical literacy engagement is intended to help the pre-service teachers (a)…

This research examined preservice teachers' beliefs about critical literacy praxis in a rural teacher education program. Using qualitative methods, preservice teachers participated in interviews, reflective engagements, and picture book analysis. Thematic analysis was used to understand preservice teacher reflections on critical literacy,…

In recent decades, diverse field experiences have proliferated in university-based teacher education programs in the United States. In particular, community-based experiences where teacher candidates learn about, from, and with community members and spaces have increased in popularity and significance. In this article, the authors consider if and…