Can I Become an Activist for Social Justice? English Language Arts Teachers’ Selections of Canadian Multicultural Literature

• In Event: Roundtable Session 109
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum of Resistance: Learning From the Others

Abstract

This presentation will offer findings from the first year of a teacher inquiry group with 8 secondary English language arts teachers in a Western Canadian city to explore the potential for teachers to promote social justice in secondary classrooms with Canadian multicultural literary texts. The research aimed to investigate teachers’ perspectives on the role these literary texts might play in the development of curricula and pedagogies that address issues of equity and structural inequalities with students in their classrooms. Insights from the teacher inquiry group offer possibilities for ways teachers can articulate their understandings of social justice, collaborate in text selections of relevant Canadian literature, initiate dialogue with their students, and reflect on their teaching for social justice with colleagues.

Authors

• Ingrid Johnston, University of Alberta

• Kai Rong Yang, University of Alberta