Oct 29 - Unsettling Critical Literacy: Justice Pedagogies for Teaching and Learning

It is well understood that the climate crisis and global racial injustice are inextricably linked (Yusoff, 2021) and tied to the practices of colonisation and the enduring imperial project of education.

This paper draws on a research project called “Reading Climate: School English, Indigenous Writing and Sustainability” which seeks to support teachers to address the imperative for critical approaches to climate education and racial justice across the curriculum. It argues that critical literacy, as a justice pedagogy that traditionally pivots on Western binaries, might be productively unsettled and expanded, foregrounding Indigenous relationality (Mary Graham, 2014) and Indigenous Futurism (Grace Dillon, 2012).  We explore the possibilities of a critical ‘literary literacy’ (Green, 2014), drawing on anti-colonial framings.