Preservice Teachers Planning for Critical Literacy Teaching

This case reflects a yearlong project I, as the instructor of an Advanced Methods course, conducted with my students to help them plan and implement critical literacy units in their high school and middle school student teaching placements. To do so, I assigned student teachers to explore notions of critical literacy (including resistant reading, marginalized perspectives, and social action projects) and then use these methods to create and teach critical literacy units over two semesters. Students then uploaded these units, along with their reflections, to electronic portfolios. This research explores how these student teachers defined critical literacy for themselves and then planned, implemented, and reflected on their units.