"It's never taught that way": comics as a medium for anti-oppressive pedagogies in English language arts and literacy education

The purpose of this research is to explore the affordances and limitations of comics as a medium for educators to develop anti-oppressive stances within the ELA classroom. The following research question guided this study: In what ways can the medium of comics support teacher candidates in pursuit of anti-oppressive ELA curriculum and pedagogy? To investigate this question, I conducted three studies designed to explore how a group of educators at a predominantly white institution read and responded to comics marketed to youth. The first study is a comparative textual analysis that explores representations of fatphobia across prose and comics to understand how dominant narratives about fatness are upheld and disrupted in texts marketed to youth. The second and third study explore teacher candidates’ responses to comics marketed to youth within the context of a voluntary book club that met monthly at a public university in the Midwest. After collecting audio and video recordings of teacher candidates’ discussions, I analyzed talk for moments that illuminated tensions in sense-making of the texts’ characters, conflicts, and larger themes. Additionally, I looked for patterns of talk that illustrated teacher candidates engaging in self-reflexive thinking about comics and their future classrooms. Together, these studies suggest that comics, when read and discussed in collaborative settings, are uniquely able to disrupt dominant narratives, reposition privileged readers as critical outsiders, and encourage self-reflexive talk and thinking. The findings have implications for the ways that teacher educators engage teacher candidates about ELA and literacy practices grounded in anti-oppressive practice.