Investigating Teachers’ Perspectives of Critical Literacies : A Comparison of Case Studies in Canada and in Europe

while Canadian teachers explored connections of critical literacies with social justice education, Scottish teachers underlined their connection to reader identity development and Finnish teachers rather highlighted ideas of information management and multiliteracies.

This book focuses on exploring and reconstructing teachers’ perspectives of critical literacies comparatively. More specifically, the book highlights similarities and differences in the way teachers from Canada, Scotland and Finland think of the definition and implementation of critical literacies in their own situated, sociocultural and socio-educational contexts. The study is based on theory-generating expert interviews and a comparative case study design, and the analysis of the data follows a grounded theory framework. The main results show a considerable convergence in perspectives; while Canadian teachers explored connections of critical literacies with social justice education, Scottish teachers underlined their connection to reader identity development and Finnish teachers rather highlighted ideas of information management and multiliteracies. Nevertheless, there were noticeable connections among these perceptions which are integral in not only understanding the field, but alsobuilding towards a global, transnational lens of critical literacy practice.