Who Gets What Kind of Literacy in School? Structured Inequity, Common Core State Standards, and Transformative Critical Literacy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Literacy for Social Justice

Abstract

We are constantly reminded of the importance of Literacy, but clearly school stratification (reproducing classist, racist, sexist hegemony) results in different students getting different kinds of literacy. And as we see, this negatively impacts educational access and outcomes for students in poverty, for working class students, and for students of color (since race and class largely correlate in the US). It is important that teachers in this CCSS era know how to counter this systemic inequity: engaging all students in higher levels of literacy development and especially in critical literacy is essential if the achievement/opportunity gap is ever to be seriously tackled. This session will explore the research, history, philosophy and role of Critical Literacy as transformative social justice pedagogy.

Author

• Anne Fairbrother, SUNY - College at Oswego