This
workshop highlights research examining the work of teachers and
researchers who
are attempting to broaden the range of literacy practices enacted in
elementary
schools. Our work, grounded in the New
Literacy Studies (NLS), is informed by understandings of literacy as
inextricably woven into the social dynamics of power, ideology, and
culture.
While much of the NLS research focuses on literacy practices in
out-of-school
contexts, our contribution investigates the sophisticated ways that
children
use language and literacy in classrooms where teachers are committed to
transformative, critical pedagogies. We challenge monolithic notions of
schools
as institutions merely in the service social reproduction.
This set of studies examines how teachers and
students co-construct curricula by drawing on their own cultural,
linguistic,
and experiential resources. In this workshop, presenters will briefly
discuss
the findings of five studies that focus on the critical practices in
diverse
K-6th grade urban and suburban classrooms in the
What the teacher didn’t know: Teatro as a mode
of classroom critical literacy
Dr. Gerald Campano
hcampano@indiana.edu
Why
can't Tomas
get a library card?: Examining critical texts in a primary multi-age
classroom
Dr.
Amy Seely
MSIT
Are
the Jim Crow laws real?:
Critical literacy practices and inquiries in a multi-age primary
classroom
Tasha
Tropp Laman
Indiana
University
Crying
boys and
talk fighting girls: Rewriting playground politics
Dr.
Mitzi Lewison
"Stopping
to
ask why": Engaging in discourses of
critique in a multiliteracies classroom
Dr.
Katie Van Sluys
DePaul
University