ABSTRACT

Ian is a keenly intelligent, thoughtful and reflective teacher. This chapter discusses his critical literacy approaches as well as his understandings of literacy and critical literacy, which are quite thought-provoking. Ian explained that children's critical capacity in terms of reading texts relied on their ability to access the printed word independently. He identified access to appropriate training, resources and time to develop their understanding of critical literacy and how to implement it as essential for educators; such access leads to power to enact critical approaches with deep understanding. The chapter explains how power, gender and reconstruction are key themes in comic books. It focuses on comic books as tools to address some of the more complex social justice issues, such as good versus evil. Using graphic novels as a means to explore complex social justice/political issues at the personal, humanising level will be explored in the chapter.