Edward Elgar Publishing A Research Agenda for Critical Literacies: Challenges and Possibilities in Troubling Times (Elgar Research Agendas)

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This cutting-edge Research Agenda offers a way forward for critical literacies that takes into account current conditions of possibility. Expert contributing authors showcase innovative research that emphasises the importance of language, multimodality, place and suppressed knowledges. A Research Agenda for Critical Literacy outlines contemporary challenges faced by the field including a changing world order, the rise of right-wing extremism, climate change, and the changing role of social media and AI. Chapters highlight critical literacy’s dynamic and malleable nature, re-imagining influential frameworks and exploring new possibilities for practice. Considering also shifts in applied linguistics and the imperatives of the decolonial project, authors assess the implications of posthumanism, new materialism and the ontological turn for re-thinking language, discourse and critical literacies and advocate for re-imagining practice in order to meet modern society’s needs. Interspersed with analytical commentary, A Research Agenda for Critical Literacy is a vital resource for students and scholars in education, particularly those interested in language, literacies, content literacies and discourse in relation to issues of identity, power and social and ecological justice. It is also an enlightening read for educators and researchers seeking to understand the ontological turn, posthumanism, new materialisms and decolonial theory in relation to pedagogy.