Unpacking Our Relationship With Literacy and Power

• In Event: Using Self-Study to Interrogate Diversity and Inequity

Abstract

Critical literacy is an important component in creating a social justice curriculum (Freire, 1972). Through facilitated discourse and reflection, preservice teachers need to begin to unpack their personal relationship with power, literacy and privilege in society (Vasquez, 2013). How teacher educators support this process and facilitate preservice teachers’ ability to contemplate and teach critical literacy is a key question that researches are continuing to explore. This study documents a critical literacy discussion group, which included preservice teachers and a teacher educator at an urban community college, work to unpack individual relationships with literacy, power, and privilege in society and understand the role of critical literacy in education. As the teacher educator, I sought to understand my role as the facilitator.

Author

• Angela Pack, Montclair State University