Literacy, language and power

When we think of the terms 'critical' and 'cultural sustainability', do we think of leaners' existing knowledge and practices as assets for learning, or as barriers to be undone?Every year the English specialism in the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) that I co-lead introduces student teachers to the field of multiliteracies and critical literacies. These fields are interested in how we make meaning from a broad range of texts, across modes of representation and genre, and how these sign systems (from language, to visuals, to oracy) are deeply imbued with issues of power, access, and diversity (see Hilary Janks' Literacy & Power). Our module for initial teacher education therefore seeks to engage students with the ways in which language and other sign systems contribute to maintaining, resisting, or transforming different relations of power both in and out of the classroom.