First steps toward critical literacy

What is it about?

Three Korean children, whose English reading test scores were lower than their peers' and who showed a tendency to be resistant toward texts, participated in a reading tutoring program in South Korea. By reflecting on the three students' interactions with an English text, this article discusses the role of students' resistance toward texts as a way of developing critical perspectives toward texts, social and cultural practices

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Why is it important?

This work provides a unusual example of critical literacy (CL) practices pursued in a non-Western and English as a foreign language setting, offering implications for ways on expanding the understanding of texts by seemingly resistant readers’ to a deeper and more critical level. It also bears importance for the consideration of ways of using resistant readers' disapproval of texts as valuable initial stages for growth on their path to becoming better, more critical readers.