How Fifth-Grade Students' Communicative Praxis on Social Justice Expands the Epistemology of Critical Literacy

• In Event: Honing the Critical Literacy Development of Students, Preservice Teachers, and Teacher Educators

Abstract

Inspired by marches, strikes, protests, and/or public speeches organized and participated by young activists to make their voices heard, demand truth, dismantle political lies, and try to create an influence in the periphery of the legal system between 2018-2019, the study sketches the praxis structure of critical literacy when 5th-grade students took the initiative to explore social problems concerning humanity, equity, and justice through reading and writing with the preservice teachers. The results of the study expand the epistemology of critical literacy by contributing to the search for new world possibilities through literacy education while the globe has been trampled by the on-going pandemic, environmental atrocities, increasingly stark political division across culture, and continuously excessive economic, racial, and gender inequality.

Author

• Wen-Chiang Chen, University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse