Critical and anti-oppressive approaches to literacy and language education directly address LLED’s core principle of promoting social justice as stated in “About Us.” These approaches invite students in LLED to critically examine the ideological meanings of superiority, inferiority, or other values underlying common beliefs about language, language users, and linguistic practices. By developing critical awareness and applying it to our teaching and research, we aim to transform oppressive thinking and doing in language and literacy education. As such, critical and anti-oppressive approaches investigate how power dynamics reproduce privilege and oppression related to Indigeneity, race, gender, class, sexuality, culture, religion, ability, and other identities, and how these identities intersect each other to create complex human experiences in socially and geographically diverse contexts.

Critical and anti-oppressive approaches to teaching draw on transformative orientations, such as critical pedagogy, antiracism, and queer pedagogy. They call into question what is regarded as normative in teaching and learning and explore more equitable, inclusive, and just alternatives. Research in this area conceptually and methdologically integrates decoloniality, critical race theory, queer theory, critical feminist theory, critical disability theory, and more.

Antiracist Resources for Language & Literacy Educators Curated by the LLED Antiracist Caucus