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.

"This is an excellent text. I particularly liked how the authors share examples of critical literacy throughout the book, especially with digital and multimedia texts." —Peter McDermott, The Sage Colleges "Through realistic discussion of how text shapes us and is shaped by us, Critical Literacy provides pre- and in-service teachers with concrete ways to engage in critical literacy practices with children from elementary through high school." —Cheryl A. Kreutter, St. John Fisher College ...a unique, practical critical literacy text with concrete examples and theoretical tools for pre- and in-service teachers Authors Lisa Patel Stevens and Thomas W. Bean explore the historical and political foundations of critical literacy and present a comprehensive examination of its uses for K-12 classroom practice. Key Features: · Focuses on the nexus of critical literacy theory and practice through real classroom examples, vignettes, and conversations among teachers and teacher educators · Illustrates how critical literacy practices are enacted in the classroom at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. · Offers step-by-step teaching strategies for implementing critical literacy in K-12 classrooms at different paces, depending on existing curriculum Intended Audience: This is an excellent supplemental text for a variety of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in education departments on how to teach reading and writing. This text will also appeal to instructors and students exploring issues of representation, linguistics, and critical deconstruction.

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.

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

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.

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

Critical Literacy in a Digital Era offers an examination of the persuasive approaches used in discussions on and about the Internet. Its aim is to increase awareness of what is assumed, unquestioned, and naturalized in our media experience. Using a critical literacy framework for her analysis, author Barbara Warnick argues that new media technologies become accepted not only through their use, but also through the rhetorical use of discourse on and about them. She analyzes texts that discuss new media and technology, including articles from a major technology-oriented periodical; women's magazines and Web sites; and Internet-based political parody in the 2000 presidential campaign. These case studies bring to light the persuasive strategies used by writers to influence public discourse about technology. The book includes analyses of narrative structures, speech genres, intertextuality, argument forms, writing formulae, and patterns of emphasis and neglect used in traditional and new media outlets. As a result, this distinctive work identifies the features of online speech that bring people and ideas together and enable communities to form in new media environments. As a unique study of the ways in which ideology is embedded in rhetorical texts, this volume will play a significant role in the development of critical literacy about writing and speech concerning new communication technology. It will be of interest to readers concerned about how our talk about communication affects how we think about it, in particular those interested in communication and social change, public persuasion, and rhetorical criticism of new media content.