Introduction

In this introduction, we solidify in writing some of the conversations about key issues in critical literacy that we have been having over the past 10 years. We began this process in homage to Miles Horton and Paulo Freire's conversations in We Make the Road by Walking (1990), aiming to discuss and reflect on critical literacy's place in the world today. Like them, we have purposefully used dialogue as a framework through which to articulate the need to, as our title suggests, move critical literacies forward. We have brought the authors in this book together to show what critical literacy as a set of practices and stances can help us accomplish in classrooms and in our worlds. We—the participants in this edited volume—argue that critical literacies offer powerful ways of engaging with the opportunities and inequalities accelerated by globalization. New student populations and new technologies are combining to change what it means to be literate and to teach literacy.