A critical issue in critical literacy: The "popularity effect"

Abstract

Partly through the efforts of practitioners (present contributors included) to present critical literacy widely and favorably, and thus by implication to promote it, critical literacy is attracting increasing interest, becoming a familiar fixture on the educational scene. Favorable attention-popularity-is often accompanied by popularization, which may include trivializing, co-opting, and misnaming. In this chapter, we focus on the latter: giving the name "critical literacy" to practices we believe do not warrant that name. We offer six descriptions of "critical literacy" in action, and present our arguments for why each does or does not warrant that label. Our arguments are simultaneously definitional and political, linked to a particular lens (critical emancipatory). We also discuss how educators might view our descriptions through two other lenses (liberal humanist and poststructuralist). © 2006 Springer.