Reconsidering Primary Literacy: Enabling children to become critically literate

This book is aimed at all educators interested in using a critical pedagogical approach in their work with children and young people; that is, an approach that is concerned with issues of equity and social justice. Critical literacy is conceptualised as a process whereby learners engage in challenge and critique of language and social practices and act to transform what they see as unjust or unfair. The book aims to help educators towards an understanding of:

· what critical literacy is

· with which ages, stages and grades critical literacy can be used

· how they can use critical literacy in practice.

The book is concerned with educators’ own narratives about transformative change in their practice - including their struggles to understand and enact critical literacy – as well as examples of their pedagogies for social change. The key critical literacy concepts of access, power, reconstruction and transformation are explored in respect of the wider literature and as they relate to the experiences and practices of those educators who feature in the book. Some of the key practice areas covered include: the use of toys, children’s literature, comic books and graphic novels, photographs and new technologies to develop children’s criticality. Social justice issues such as gender, race, disability, displacement and social class are intersecting themes which are threaded throughout the book.