Marginalized Literacies

A volume in Contemporary Research in EducationSeries Editor Terry A. Osborn, Fordham UniversityFunctional literacy, cultural literacy, and progressive literacy are just a fewof the many terms one can invoke when attempting to define literacy. From acritical perspective, for a democratic society to exist, a critical literacy is of crucialimportance. Critical literacy aims to empower individuals and transform society. Itis grounded in critical theory and, like critical pedagogy, investigates ways in whichsocial, cultural, racial, sexual, and economic inequalities are reproduced. Byinvestigating the ideological, political, and social structures that perpetuate suchinequalities, it hopes to raise consciousness and move towards creating a moresocially just society.This book examines the approaches set forth by Atwell, Calkins, and Rief in their books, In the Middle(1998); The Art of Teaching Writing (1994); and Seeking Diversity (1992), respectively. This book is ofrelevance to teacher educators and English Language Arts teachers. It enables one to become familiar with themain components of the Readers’/Writers’ workshop and develop an awareness of how literacy may beconceptualized and reconceptualized through this approach. Teacher educators will find this text useful forraising preservice teachers’ awareness of the ideologies that inform literacy education and in developing theirunderstanding for how students are positioned socially, culturally, politically and economically by suchideologies. English Language Arts teachers will find this book informative in understanding how they can bepositioned by teacher texts to teach towards certain ideologies of literacy. Finally, it allows teacher educatorsand English Language Arts teachers to consider what kind of literacyeducation is provided for through the Readers’/Writers’ workshop, andwhether space may be negotiated within the Readers’/Writers’ workshop, forthe teaching of critical literacy.