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This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.

Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.

Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.

While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.

In light of a need for more critical education about datafication, this paper aims to develop a framework for critical datafication literacy that is grounded in theoretical and empirical research. The framework draws upon existing critical data literacies, an in-depth analysis of three well-established educational approaches – media literacy, the German “(politische) Bildung” and Freirean “critical pedagogy” – and empirical analyses of online educational resources about datafication.

The study interconnects theoretical analyses with an empirical mixed methods investigation that includes expert interviews with creators of online educational resources about datafication and a qualitative survey with educators interested in teaching about data technologies.

The research identified novel findings on the goals of resource creators and educators, such as a focus on empowering and emancipatory approaches, fostering systemic understanding of datafication and encouraging collective action. Such perspectives are rare in existing critical data literacy conceptualisations but show resemblance to traditional education scholarship. This highlights how much can be learnt from practitioners and from these more established educational approaches. Based on these findings, a framework for critical datafication literacy is suggested that aims for systemic understanding of datafication, encouraging critical thinking and enabling learners to make enlightened choices and take different forms of action.

The study is unique in its interconnection of theoretical and empirical research, and it advances previous research by suggesting a grounded framework for critical datafication literacy.

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly important and influential in reading and writing. The influx of social media digital spaces, like TikTok, has also shifted the ways multimodal composition takes place alongside AI. This study aims to argue that within spaces like TikTok, human composers must attend to the ways they write for, with and against the AI-powered algorithm.

Data collection was drawn from a larger study on #BookTok (the TikTok subcommunity for readers) that included semi-structured interviews including watching and reflecting on a TikTok they created. The authors grounded this study in critical posthumanist literacies to analyze and open code five #BookTok content creators’ interview transcripts. Using axial coding, authors collaboratively determined three overarching and entangled themes: writing for, with and against.

Findings highlight the nuanced ways #BookTokers consider the AI algorithm in their compositional choices, namely, in the ways how they want to disseminate their videos to a larger audience or more niche-focused community. Throughout the interviews, participants revealed how the AI algorithm was situated differently as both audience member, co-author and censor.

This study is grounded in critical posthumanist literacies and explores composition as a joint accomplishment between humans and machines. The authors argued that it is necessary to expand our human-centered notions of what it means to write for an audience, to co-author and to resist censorship or gatekeeping.

The purpose of this paper is to make visible the field's propensity to center whiteness even in engaging inclusive practices in information literacy classrooms. This paper offers abolitionist pedagogy as a means to understand and address these concerns.

This paper uses interdisciplinary research methods in the fields of education, library science, feminist studies, Black studies and abolition studies to examine and provide an analysis of current information literacy practices by using abolitionist pedagogy to articulate how it is possible to expand information literacy instruction practices.

Current information literacy practices and methods that seek to create inclusive learning environments for racialized and minoritized learners rely on a set of institutionalized practices such as critical information literacy and culturally sustaining pedagogies. An examination of these practices through an abolitionist pedagogical lens reveals how the field has engaged in reductive and uncritical engagement with these methods despite employing them to create inclusive spaces. Using abolitionist pedagogy as a lens, this critical essay examines the field's foundations in whiteness and illustrates pathways for transformative educational justice.

There has been much work on inclusive teaching practices that discusses challenging information literacy structures' reliance on dominant culture.? To date, there has been little to no scholarship on how information literacy practices could engage in abolitionist pedagogical praxis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

This chapter examines the concepts of race and racism, critically reviewing their historical and contemporary applications in everyday life as well as in academic and policy debates. Racism has been extensively researched, with various theories and conceptualisations developed across social science. However, there is a great deal of disagreement regarding its nature, contemporary significance and empirical validation. This chapter examines these and attempts to synthesise some of the common definitions of racism provided in the literature. It explores related concepts and underlying themes pertaining to expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, it unpacks current knowledge about racial issues and discusses recent advances in the conceptual understanding of various forms of racism. It also elucidates the social, political and analytical applications of racism as a concept and the significance of racism in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes by highlighting how racism is a dynamic phenomenon, continuously evolving with the social, political and technological transformations in contemporary societies.

The struggle for racial justice has always faced significant challenges and controversies across interpersonal, intergroup and structural levels. As racism continues to evolve and adapt to new social, political and technological developments, researchers, activists and practitioners grapple with complex and intersecting issues. This chapter discusses some of the ongoing challenges anti-racist endeavours face today. It engages with contemporary global issues, such as international migration, globalisation and the digital revolution that have implications on the fight against racism. The chapter covers topics such as the recent backlashes against anti-racism, the emergence of the ‘colour-blind’ ideology and the challenges anti-racism faces in the realm of technological advance and digital spaces. Additionally, this chapter explores the discourse of decolonisation as a radical approach to anti-racism. It concludes with a critical discussion of the idea that mainstreaming and expanding anti-racism to include racial majorities may enhance its effectiveness.

Data literacy empowers college students, equipping them with essential skills necessary for their personal lives and careers in today’s data-driven world. This study aims to explore how community college students evaluate their data literacy and further examine demographic and educational/career advancement disparities in their self-assessed data literacy levels.

An online survey presenting a data literacy self-assessment scale was distributed and completed by 570 students at four community colleges. Statistical tests were performed between the data literacy factor scores and students’ demographic and educational/career advancement variables.

Male students rated their data literacy skills higher than females. The 18–19 age group has relatively lower confidence in their data literacy scores than other age groups. High school graduates do not feel proficient in data literacy to the level required for college and the workplace. Full-time employed students demonstrate more confidence in their data literacy than part-time and nonemployed students.

Given the lack of research on community college students’ data literacy, the findings of this study can be valuable in designing and implementing data literacy training programs for different groups of community college students.