Being Heard: Remixing Critical Literacy for Active Citizenship

With a long-term shift towards standardised models of pedagogy, teachers face significant challenges as they seek to promote active citizenship through critical literacy. Further, the Australian Curriculum provides only broad connections between literacy, student voice and citizenship at the primary level.

This project therefore investigates strategies for promoting student voice and active citizenship within literacy education, drawing on exemplary classroom practice and the affordances of new digital technologies.

The project is based on a teacher-led analysis of current school initiatives on student
voice, and on discussion of quantitative system-generated data being used to inform school-level decisions (including surveys of wellbeing and agency, and standardised test results). It then proceeds to design experiments in three primary schools with highly diverse student populations. Analysis of the pedagogies in these experiments and of the resulting student text production will provide the basis for professional development and a book manuscript to benefit the profession more widely.