Critical Engagement with Literacy and Qualitative Research: Towards Socially Just Pedagogy in the Teacher Education Classroom

Abstract

Recently, neoconservative media reporting, as well as Commonwealth initiatives, such as the Draft Australian Curriculum for English (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2010). Australian curriculum. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum.html), has resurrected pedagogical battles surrounding the teaching and learning of literacy. Influenced by the increasing popularity of national standardized testing, public debate about literacy for Australian classrooms has focussed on comparing academic results across schools to alleviate a ‘crisis’ in student achievement. Despite a complex new millennium characterized by multiliteracies (The New London Group, Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures, 2000), neoconservative perspectives have encouraged a reductionist approach to literacy teacher education that emphasizes teaching reading through phonics. As a teacher educator concerned by pressures to normalize the teaching and learning of literacy, I draw on qualitative research to reflect on pedagogy for engaging with literacy in ways that promote critical enquiry and social justice (see Giroux, The terror of neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the eclipse of Democracy, 2004)