Preliminary Material / Karyn Cooper and Robert E. White -- Of Critical Theory and Critical Literacy: Connections to the Legacy of Critical Theory / John Willinsky -- Above and Beyond: Critical Literacies for the New Millennium / Robert E. White -- Critical Alternatives: Solutions to Ease Discrimination, Oppression, and Youth Violence / Wendy M. Pullin and Karyn Cooper -- Engaging and Critiquing Challenge in the Process Drama Classroom: Socio-Economic Status as Topic and Resource / Kelly Freebody and Peter Freebody -- Traveling Objects and Reconfiguring Identities: Meaning-Making and Multi-Modalities / Kate Pahl and Jennifer Rowsell -- Uncomfortable Positionings: Critical Literacy and Identity in a Post-Apartheid University Classroom / Carolyn McKinney -- Outside More Common Spaces for Critical Literacy: Exploring Issues of Language and Power / Vivian Vasquez and Sarah Vander Zanden -- Countering the Rhetoric of Warfare: A Framework for Practical Media Criticism and Curriculum on the War in Iraq / Jonathan Arendt -- “Basic Information Structure” and “Academic Language”: An Approach to Discourse Analysis / James Paul Gee -- Critical Literacy: Methods, Models and Motivation / Hilary Janks -- “Am I a Couch Potato?” Blog: Blogging as a Critical Literacy Practice / Jackie Marsh -- The Difference of Critical Literacy: A Diverse Discourse Dialogue on “Taken-for-Granted Practices” in English Education / Peter Trifonas and Greg O’Leary -- About the Contributors / Karyn Cooper and Robert E. White -- Volume / Karyn Cooper and Robert E. White.

Critical Literacies in Action: Social Perspectives and Teaching Practices asks how educators can become more experienced in order to truly support literacy, particularly for children of poverty or for those who have been labeled “at-risk”. This is especially important in current times, since a literate individual is one who is more successfully able to situate him- or herself within a continuum of lifelong learning in order to fulfill personal goals and to participate fully within the wider societyal context. Although the word “literacy” has been with us for a very long time, the very meaning of the term itself has become increasingly complex due to a multiplicity of factors. At least in part, this complexity is a function of expanding and interconnecting notions of what it is that constitutes modern literacy as well as the increasingly technological nature of the world within which individuals live and learn. As such, a new horizon in literacy research has appeared, promising to renegotiate traditional definitions of the term “literate” and what it means to be critically literate in this increasingly complex world. Definitions of literacy have also evolved along with the evolution of the computer. Currently, the term “literacy” describes a commitment to and participation in a multiplicity of meaning making systems, many of which exhibit ever-greater degrees of interdependence with one another. The term “Critical Literacy” has come into use relatively recently and is generally regarded as a sub-category of Critical Pedagogy—“Critical” because it promotes an agenda for positive social change.

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