ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the programmatic and practical introduction to Australian approaches to the teaching of critical literacy. It presents an introduction to theories and practices of critical literacy. A key lesson from the history and sociology of literacy is that literacy education is always a situated response to particular political economies of education. The chapter introduces the institutional and governmental arrangements, and the distribution of discourse, material and spatial resources within societies that govern educational reform by political economies. The theoretical debates and practical directions noted above have generated a vast array of classroom approaches to critical literacy. There is a growing literature on classroom methods and materials used to explore analysis of texts of popular culture and media, literature, social studies and science education. In terms of coding practices, students bring diverse cultural, community and linguistic resources to bear in the classroom, including background linguistic knowledge of how oral and written language works.
