ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses critical theoretical perspectives to teaching English language arts by considering how meanings are made in the intersecting spaces of learners, teachers, and texts. Enduring tensions in the field of English education will be explored and then contextualized in contemporary conditions to reveal how relations of power are constructed, (re)produced, and consumed. The chapter identifies the role of language in creating texts and norms as well as in resisting and transforming. The critical lens that frames and magnifies these ideas will reveal both the inherently political nature of teaching and the essential possibilities of transformation that exist in the praxis of theory and practice. Critical theory, through a dialogic approach that toggles between microscopic and telescopic lenses, can expose how relations of power function at multiple levels including through personal interactions, in institutional settings, and scaled in larger social, even global, milieus. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
