A Year of Equity Literacy: Community Actions and Invitations

Christy Wessel-Powell, Alexandra Panos, Regina Weir

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

School inequity is a persistent and ‘wicked’ problem communities have a responsibility to solve. Here, we argue that critical literacy advocacy within community-based settings provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine and disrupt school inequity and promote sustainable actions towards justice-based solutions. This article connects critical literacy and equity literacy theoretical frameworks to describe a series of invitations and actions that focused on addressing school inequity in one town. Here, authors offer lessons learned from a community-led school equity literacy campaign where researchers and participants collectively organised and reflected on a public event series entitled ‘Year of Equity’ (YoE). Three key YoE processes are described: facilitating book clubs, facilitating a community conversation event and forming action committees. These processes relied on critical equity literacies through the promotion of new relationships and shared experiences centring on engagement with a variety of texts, through a focus on incremental change over time.

Original languageAmerican English
JournalLiteracy
Volume55
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2021

Keywords

  • equity literacy
  • critical literacy
  • invitations
  • community

Disciplines

  • Education

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