Kuttainen, Victoria, and Croft, Jade (2026) Extending Critical Literacy Beyond the Secondary English Classroom: Reading and Redeploying Education Fiction as Institutional Critique. Australian Journal of English Education. (In Press)

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Abstract

Critical literacy in Australian English education has increasingly been domesticated as a set of classroom text-analysis practices, obscuring its broader political and institutional reach. Drawing on the possibilities inherent in its original conception, this article takes critical literacy beyond the secondary English classroom and puts it to work as a method for reading educational institutions themselves. We argue that this extension is particularly urgent in regional Australia, where decades of reforms aimed at widening university access have not adequately engaged with the deeper institutional and cultural dimensions of educational inequity. Through critical readings of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895) and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (2015) as narratives of regional education, we trace enduring, often subtle forms of educational inequity that remain difficult for access-focused policy interventions to recognise or address. Finally, we propose broadening this approach to a set of Australian education narratives, extending critical literacy into equity-focused professional development for university educators and pre-service teachers, beyond subject English itself.

Item ID:	94541
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2982-1223
Copyright Information:	Copyright Australian Association for the Teaching of English 2026.
Funders:	Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2026 07:06
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3902 Education policy, sociology and philosophy > 390203 Sociology of education @ 30% 47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470514 Literary theory @ 20% 39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390104 English and literacy curriculum and pedagogy (excl. LOTE, ESL and TESOL) @ 50%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1601 Learner and learning > 160102 Higher education @ 30% 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160201 Equity and access to education @ 50% 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160203 Inclusive education @ 20%
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