The ‘grammars’ of power and racialisation : supporting the co-design of an anti-racist English & literacy education through critical alliances

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Govender, Navan Nadrajan and Dwyer, Charlotte and Buchan, Jennifer and Farukuoye, Titilayo (2026) The ‘grammars’ of power and racialisation : supporting the co-design of an anti-racist English & literacy education through critical alliances. Literacy, 60 (2). e70030. ISSN 1741-4350 (https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.70030)

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Abstract

In this article, we report on a series of professional development (PD) workshops, focusing on its design and emerging ‘grammars’ of power and racialisation that serve as a toolkit for schools. Bringing together scholarship in critical literacies, antiracist education, and racial semiotics, we conduct a critical socio‐material analysis of the discursive co‐design process and provide a thick description. Thus, we explore how our own collaborative work in the series of PD workshops cohered and became instantiated in text: writing and drawing on chart paper, taking notes on post‐its and (re)arranging them, annotating visual and literary texts and so on. We argue that these discursive productions come to represent the fixing of ideas, negotiated conceptualisations, and emerging collective understanding in context—and, importantly, in the language/expressions of those present in this space—that bring critical literacies and antiracist education together in more substantial and contextually relevant ways. We then offer our emerging ‘grammars’ of power and racialisation as a toolkit for forging an antiracist English and literacy education. Finally, we conclude by recognising critical alliances, underpinned by shared commitments across various lines of difference, as significantly enhancing PD and the advancement of critical literacies for antiracist futures.

ORCID iDs

Govender, Navan Nadrajan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6764-1169, Dwyer, Charlotte, Buchan, Jennifer and Farukuoye, Titilayo;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)