In this article, we define and provide some history of "critical media literacy" (CML) in education. We then place critical media literacy in context of our current "post-truth" era. Next, we describe some of the consequences of adults' addiction to two decades of expanding, omnipresent new media to explain why we, like…

The article critiques schools' current reification and overreliance on teaching slavery as a history of exceptional individuals and unbroken progress toward freedom. The authors explore how the counterstorying of narratives of formerly enslaved individuals in both preservice and inservice education coursework complicates and engages the histories…

This study investigates the potential of integrating social studies instruction with critical literacy practices to challenge and/or expand elementary students' perceptions of gender. Gender stereotypes develop early in childhood and are often reinforced throughout elementary education. Thus, this study examines the use of a framework for social…

Decades of research demonstrate that young children make meaning about race and racism. Yet there remains a dearth of scholarship about whether and how African American children are thinking across racial and ethnic difference to make sense of systemic inequities. Moreover, there are but a handful of scholars who have documented the ways that…

For children to know how to fully participate in and most effectively lead the world they will inherit, they must learn how to critically engage with it and be knowledgeable about foundational rights and instruments that support such engagement. Together, critical literacy, which encourages the examination and interrogation of the underlying…

This study explores how preservice (PST) English language arts teachers fostered dialogue in virtual classrooms by using both dialogic and digital tools. Qualitative analysis of PST-created transcripts and lesson plan reflections revealed successes and challenges PSTs experienced in supporting students' participation and response to others' ideas.…

Contemporary nonfiction for young people plays a crucial role in the reading and writing lives of K-12 students. It is a rich and compelling genre that supports students' development as critically, visually, and informationally literate 21st century thinkers and creators. Unlike many textbooks and materials written for online or print-based school…

This study investigates how young elementary children engage with conceptions of gender in connection to video gameplay in the language arts classroom. During a three-week unit on video game literacies in a multiage lab school, children learned about, played, discussed, and wrote about video games. Student writing, game reviews, and literature…

This article argues for the extension of the three goals of two-way dual language education to move beyond bilingualism and biliteracy, academic achievement, and cross-cultural understanding for all students and include critical consciousness. After a short history of the colonial aspects of the history of bilingual education in the United States,…

Critical media health literacy (CMHL) is concerned with identifying health-related messages in the media, acknowledging the potential effects on health behaviours, critically analyzing the content of the message, and the subsequent application of the message to one's health behaviours (Levin-Zamir & Bertschi, 2018). This exploratory research…

As of May 2022, 42 state legislatures had introduced bills that would limit how (and whether) teachers can address inequities based on race, gender, and other marginalized identities. At the same time, book bans are becoming increasingly common across the country. Given the importance of providing children opportunities to critically engage with…

This article is a response to Allan Luke's [(2018). "Critical literacy, schooling, and social justice: The selected works of Allan Luke". New York, NY: Routledge] provocation to "join an international, intercultural and peer-conversation" about the imaginings and possibilities of "an education for critical literacies"…

Although ubiquitous in academic discourse for over a decade, disciplinary literacy scholarship has only recently begun to explicitly interrogate critical literacy as a discipline-dependent set of dispositions, discourses, skills, and practices. Drawing from critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) theory, this article presents findings from a…

This article presents an English language arts teacher's critical reflection on how she worked with her middle and high school students to develop perspectives about the world in her classes. The article is grounded in the idea that teachers are researchers who constantly implement new ideas and reflect on their own teaching for their own…

In this article, I critically dissect hip-hop habits of mind as a professional way of thinking, being, and doing (knowing, speaking and behaving) and explain how these habits hold critical literacy and cultural literacy benefits for students and educators. The goal of this project was to identify and name hip-hop habits of mind and to explore how…