Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

This paper explores how fairy tales and children’s picture books can be used to decolonize adolescent perceptions of narrative. Older students with diverse literacies may be denied opportunities to be supported in reading through a critical literacy lens and instead be limited to so-called basic skills instruction in decoding and recall-based comprehension. A pedagogical approach that frames accessible, multimodal literature through the lens of post-colonialism, critical race theory and post-structural gender theory engages older students who face obstacles to traditional print-based reading. Traditional tales are juxtaposed against contemporary reimaginings, including picture books and sculptural works to highlight multiple perspectives and surface the influence of ideology and social location on meaning construction. The concept of critical literacy has recently been taken up by scholars interested in how multimodal responses to text can add another layer of critical engagement called critical expressionism (McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2019). Engagement in critical expressionism is further supported through assignments that invite students to respond to text through multimodal design projects. The presentation will share several tools based in theoretical frameworks that scaffold critical readers at all skill levels, suggest text sets that illustrate different theoretical stances well, and model design-oriented approaches to literary response.