The
July/August/September 2025 of
Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine, underscores the importance of thinking critically in a time of increasing disinformation.
Our guest editor for this edition, Shireen Al-Adeimi, is an assistant professor of language and literacy at Michigan State University. Her research explores how dialogic discussions strengthen middle school students' literacy skills, how students and teachers engage with justice-oriented topics, and how practical tools can help educators foster meaningful, inclusive conversations in their classrooms.
“Even amid the face of today's educational and societal pressures, it's possible to create classrooms where students are invited to think deeply, speak freely, and engage meaningfully with the world around them,” she wrote
in her opening note to readers.
Read on to learn more about the issue, how Shireen approached its curation, and what she hopes readers take away from it.
Tell us how you developed your vision for this issue. What were your goals? How did you choose your authors and topics?
In this issue, I wanted to center critical thinking both as a literacy goal and as a necessary practice for students navigating an increasingly complex world. I aimed to highlight work that connects reading, writing, and dialogue to students’ lives, their identities, and the pressing social issues around them. Across these articles, readers will find examples of how educators are supporting students’ agency, argumentation, and analytical skills. They do so through a range of practices, including student-led discussions, disciplinary translanguaging, project-based learning, metalinguistic inquiry, and the evaluation of digital texts.
I curated this issue by inviting scholars whose work I admire while trying to ensure a range of perspectives and contexts. I was especially interested in contributors whose research bridges classroom practice and equity. Together, these researchers and educators help us think more deeply about what it means to take critical thinking seriously in literacy education.
Your research focuses on enhancing students’ literacy outcomes through classroom discussion. How does that experience inform your views on fostering critical thinking?
Whether structured or spontaneous, dialogue is central to every classroom and shapes how students think and learn. My research examines how specific forms of talk—like dialogic or academically productive discussions—can support students’ engagement, comprehension, and writing. I also study how teachers and students navigate difficult but necessary justice-oriented conversations. That work has shown me that critical thinking isn’t developed in isolation. It grows through meaningful interaction and relies on recognizing students’ knowledge and agency. That’s why I wanted this issue to highlight how educators use talk to stretch students’ thinking across disciplines—from literacy to science to digital media. Dialogue becomes the bridge between what students read and what they come to understand about themselves, each other, and the world.
Your opening letter mentions how essential it is to teach literacy while honoring students’ experiences. What do you think are the most pressing considerations for educators looking to do this successfully while fostering critical thinking?
We, as educators, must recognize students’ home literacies (e.g., oral language, vocabulary, and bi/multilingualism) as rich knowledge bases, not deficits. Sometimes those experiences overlap with what’s emphasized in school, and other times they don’t. Either way, it’s our responsibility to learn about and from our students, and to make sure their knowledge and experiences help shape what happens in the classroom. Fostering critical thinking means treating students as active participants whose insights and questions matter. That also means stepping back to listen carefully and create space for students to make meaning in ways that reflect both their lives and the academic tools we offer.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions educators have about teaching critical thinking, and how does this issue of Literacy Today aim to address them?
Critical thinking is sometimes misunderstood as teaching students what to think. While there’s often no single right answer, we need to support students in learning how to think: To analyze, question, connect, critique, and imagine. Educators should also recognize that critical thinking also doesn’t just happen through explicit instruction in logic or argument, especially when it’s detached from students’ lives, cultures, and language practices.
This issue challenges those assumptions. Across these articles, authors show how critical thinking is developed through dialogue, through identity and language, through disciplinary meaning-making, and through inquiry into the world around us. Mari Zaru’s piece, “
The Moon Traveled With Us,” is a reminder that critical thinking is also personal and political. It grows when students see their stories and questions as meaningful, and their language practices as worthy of classroom attention.
Your graduate advisee, Rebecca Lee, co-authored the article “Talk That Matters” with you, which discusses cultivating “a climate where every students’ voice matters” in order to support true dialogic talk. Why is this work so important to you both?
This work is deeply important to both of us because it reflects a shared commitment to creating classrooms where students are not expected to absorb information; rather, they are invited to co-construct it. Dialogic talk requires more than strategic questioning or other talk moves that invite students to express themselves in the classroom. It requires a climate of trust, mutual respect, and authentic curiosity. Rebecca and I believe that when students see their voices as valued, they are more likely to take intellectual risks, engage with their peers’ and teachers’ ideas, and grow as thinkers and communicators. This is especially vital in classrooms where students’ identities and experiences have too often been overlooked or marginalized. We view this centering of students’ voices as a matter of justice.
Mari W. Zaru’s article, “The Moon Traveled With Us,” uncovers the transformative power of “supporting students in viewing literacy as personal, cultural, and political.” Why did you find this a compelling topic to feature?
Mari’s piece powerfully demonstrates that literacy is never neutral. It is always intertwined with identity, history, and power. Her work with immigrant and refugee mothers from Palestine, Mexico, South Africa, Syria, and Bolivia shows how storytelling can bridge generations, preserve cultural memory, and center linguistic and cultural identities. As Mari writes that, “Literacy is also about memory, cultural survival, and the right to be heard.”
Freirean ideals, Mari reminds us, that to “read the word” meaningfully, students must also learn to “read the world.” Hers is a model of critical, healing, and justice-oriented literacy education that I was honored to include and feature in this issue.
What do you hope readers will take away from this issue of Literacy Today, and how do you envision it sparking further conversations about fostering critical thinking?
I hope readers walk away with a richer, more expansive understanding of what it means to support critical thinking across literacy instruction. Each article in this issue that I curated offers a unique lens:
- Jennie Baumann highlights how peer-led, text-based discussions build student agency and engagement.
- Renata Love Jones shows how metalinguistic awareness can deepen students’ critical reflection about language.
- Emily Phillips Galloway reminds us not to overlook language development as a central component of critical thinking.
- Samuel Lee’s piece illustrates how multilingual students make sense of science content through translanguaging.
- Yunfeng Ye and Wenjuan Qin explore how scaffolding argumentative writing supports higher-order thinking among EFL students.
- Sarah McGrew pushes us to move beyond surface-level reading when teaching students to evaluate online information.
- Crystal Wise demonstrates how project-based learning creates space for inquiry, analysis, and reflection.
- Mari Zaru powerfully illustrates how storytelling, particularly among immigrant mothers and their children, can serve as a personal, cultural, and political act.
- And in my own co-authored piece with Rebecca Lee, we advocate for building dialogic classrooms where every voice matters and where literacy serves justice.
Together, these pieces challenge narrow definitions of critical thinking and offer tools for cultivating it in ways that are rigorous, relational, and rooted in justice.