Is children's education neutral? Critical literacy in initial teacher training

Abstract

Critical literacy in initial teacher training requires democratizing spaces and problematizing social representations. We carried out qualitative research, of a socio-constructivist nature, which analyses the results of a training program in Social Studies Education for the Degree in Early Childhood Education at the University of Malaga. The aim is to find out whether, in this training context, future teachers think that making decisions about what and how to teach social issues is a neutral task or whether they should take sides in favor of a more democratic and critical education for social justice. The results indicate that teachers in training understand the importance of critically interpreting information, hegemonic discourses are questioned, but there is a predominance of neutral positions that understand critical literacy as the acquisition of reading and writing skills. They are active consumers of social and cultural content with which they educate, but they do not associate it with political and ideological decision-making. In conclusion, we believe that critical literacy is necessary for future teachers to question their social representations, to recognize education as a political act and to evolve from reproductive to transformative teaching identities.