Critical visual analysis of multicultural sketches

Abstract

In a teaching context fraught with conflicts on religious and ethnic backgrounds, I decide as a teacher researcher to address these issues with Israeli-Arab middle school students in my EFL classroom. Picture books on religious diversity and minority issues are used as a springboard for providing spaces for students to discuss these issues orally, in writing and through arts. I attempt to explore what happens when reading aloud and discussing multicultural children's literature with Israeli Arab EFL teenagers and inviting them to respond. To what extent, if any, will the enacted critical literacy curriculum inform how they begin to address social justice issues in their responses? How, and in what ways? This article presents a visual analysis of two of my students' sketches symbolising how the story Feathers and Fools (Fox, 1989) relates to their reality. The findings reveal that my critical literacy curriculum afforded profound responses and critique of social injustice.