ABSTRACT
As a Canadian teacher, I was introduced to critical literacy in the mid1990s while taking a course through Mount Saint Vincent University at the University of South Australia. Until that time, the whole language movement (e.g., Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987; Harste, Short, & Burke, 1996; Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984; Newman, 1985) seemed to me the most generative theoretical position from which to support the needs of learners. Whole language gave me a way of envisioning and supporting learning as a social experience, of creating spaces in classrooms for placing children at the center of pedagogy, and, through inquiry into literacy teaching and learning, for ensuring that student voices be heard.
