ABSTRACT
Long recognized as a leader in critical literacy research, Canada is perhaps unique because of how critical literacy remains entangled with the curriculum. Simultaneously, Canada continues to contend with ongoing issues related to systemic racism, settler colonialism, and the rise of populist nationalism, creating urgent sites for critical literacy curriculum and scholarship. In this chapter, we draw together the work of foundational critical literacy scholars alongside official curricular documents and illustrate how, as Vivian Maria Vasquez (2004/2014) wrote, “deliberate attempts to expose inequity in the classroom and society need to become part of our everyday classroom life” (p. xv). Ultimately, we emphasize the tensions Canadians oriented toward critical literacies encounter and offer future directions for this work.
