Product Description: How can teacher educators engage pre-service and in-service teachers in learning about and framing their teaching from a critical literacy perspective? What does this mean? Why is it important? To address these questions, this book offers a theoretical framework and detailed examples, pedagogical resources, and insights into ways to build critical literacies with teachers in and out of school...read more

What do new technologies and new forms of communication mean for young children growing up in the 21st century? How are they shaping the mindsets, identities and practices which impact their lives at home and at school? This book explores the intersection of technology and critical literacy, specifically addressing what ICTs afford critical literacy work with young children between ages three to eight. Inviting readers to enter classrooms where both technology and critical literacies are woven into childhood curricula and teaching, it brings together literacy, social studies, and science in critical and integrated ways. Real-world stories show the sights and sounds of children engaged with technology in the classroom and beyond. Concise but comprehensive, the text provides strategies, theoretical frameworks, demonstrations of practice, and resources for teachers. Pedagogical features in each chapter engage readers in making connections to their own teaching situations. NCATE standards for including technology as an essential part of teacher education programs are addressed. While acknowledging how individual children employ ICT, the focus is on how new technologies can be positioned in early childhood learning communities as tools for engaging in more meaningful, authentic, and interesting learning.

Vivian Vasquez draws on her own classroom experience to demonstrate how issues raised from everyday conversations with pre-kindergarten children can be used to create an integrated critical literacy curriculum over the course of one school year. The strategies she presents are solidly grounded in relevant theory and research. In this innovative and engaging text, Vasquez:*describes how she and her students negotiated a critical literacy curriculum;*shows how they dealt with particular social and cultural issues and themes; and*shares the insights she gained as she attempted to understand what it means to frame one's teaching from a critical literacy perspective.Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children is specifically useful for early elementary (K-3) teachers as a demonstration of classroom applications of critical literacy that they can try in their own classrooms. It is equally relevant to all concerned with issues of social justice and equity in school settings and the political nature of education, and to educators at all levels who are interested in finding ways to make their curriculum critical. For preservice teachers, this book offers a model for envisioning their future practice and for recognizing the important relationship between theory and practice. Teacher educators and consultants will find this book valuable as an example of how to put a critical edge on teaching. It is intended for use as a text in reading, language arts, literacy, social justice, critical literacy, and early childhood education courses.

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