Moving beyond “Agreeable” Texts and “Boring” Tasks: Pairing Young Adult Literature and Critical Literacy in Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

This article considers the power of approaching young adult literature from a critical literacy perspective in teacher education and how that affects emerging teachers’ ability to consider its role in their future teaching. Specifically, the authors explore how critical literacy—the exposure to a variety of texts, ways of approaching texts, and means of processing texts—can elevate preservice teachers’ understanding of literature and the world around them, and thus, their ability to teach their future students from a critical literacy perspective. In this qualitative study of the teaching and learning of critical literacy in an Introduction to Adolescent Literature teacher education course, the authors illustrate how the pairing of literary theory and young adult literature can provide preservice teachers the tools for questioning texts and larger societal issues with their future students. The current study has practical implications for the field of teacher education in the way literature courses for preservice teachers are designed and conceptualized.

KEYWORDS:

• English teacher education
• young adult literature
• qualitative research
• critical literacy

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eileen M. Shanahan

Eileen M. Shanahan is a former eighth-grade language arts teacher and middle school curriculum coordinator. She is currently an assistant professor of literacy at Eastern Kentucky University.

Ashley K. Dallacqua

Ashley K. Dallacqua recently earned her doctorate from The Ohio State University and is currently working at The University of New Mexico as a professor of literacy.