Purpose Imagination in critical literacy research is usually referred to as a taken for granted concept that is seldom theorised, leaving the assumptions unchecked that everyone has a shared understanding of imagination. This paper aims to challenge critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy. It aims to synthesise the imagination and criticality in the context of critical literacy, both theoretically and empirically and in doing so to illustrate what form a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination might take. Design/methodology/approach This argument is illustrated through analysing two sets of data that contain embodied enactments of contested gender issues across different modes and genres. Data from student teachers’ embodied enactments of contested gender issues and from their writing on these issues were analysed thematically. Findings A crucial aspect of the critical imagination entails creating pedagogical spaces that mobilise affect and empathy alongside criticality. Embodied literacy work across different modes and genres can play a significant role in facilitating the critical imagination by enabling students to enact, perform and immerse themselves in different discourses, ultimately generating new insights and ways of seeing. Research limitations/implications Data was drawn from a relatively small sample of 30 assignments in the context of teacher education in South Africa. More empirical research needs to be conducted across a wider range of contexts. Practical implications The paper provides a theoretical framework and practical ideas for implementing a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination and thus could be used in both teacher education contexts and school literacy classrooms. Originality/value This paper challenges critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy.

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In contemporary South Africa issues of class, race and language intersect with issues around schooling and complicate access to tertiary education. This article is an enquiry-based reflection on the challenges of providing epistemological access to an entry-level English course for students enrolling for a Bachelor of Education. As English specialists, we grapple with how to teach a powerful global language in a multilingual context in ways that are sensitive to the identities of our diverse student body. The course under analysis seeks to address this by recruiting students' diverse (linguistic) identities as a resource and placing them at the centre of the curriculum. We begin by discussing the politics of knowledge selection, the interplay between curriculum and identity (Cummins, 2000(Cummins, , 2003 and various other pedagogic strategies, such as Vygotskian ideas of mediation and scaffolding. Central to our analysis is Biggs's notion of constructive alignment (1996, 2003). In our post-course reflection, we work dialectically with this notion, using it to identify tensions and inconsistencies in our practice while at the same time using our practice to critique and extend this notion. Ultimately we propose a more nuanced, multidimensional model of alignment that we believe would be better suited for courses concerned with issues of access, power and diversity. 92Lawrence J. 2002. The 'deficit-discourse' shift: university teachers and their role in helping first year students persevere and succeed in the new university culture. Peer reviewed paper presented at

In 2020, when the switch to remote teaching and learning required redesigning asynchronous on-line versions of face-to-face courses, we were concerned about whether access to engaged and dialogic learning could be facilitated in this new space. In attempting to address this concern we asked students in a B Ed Honours course to post, in an online forum, their reflective responses to weekly readings and to each other’s posts. This discussion forum became the engine of the course. With their permission, the posts of students in the 2021 cohort, together with their summative reflective reading response assignment, were analysed in order to understand different kinds of dialogic interactions and their affordances for reducing the potential alienation of asynchronous learning. One of the key findings that emerged from this analysis is the role of dialogic interaction in facilitating the development of personal, professional and scholarly voices which contributed to epistemic access. Our analysis was informed by the theoretical work of Bakhtin on the dialogic and by theoretical and empirical work of scholars in the field of critical pedagogies. We use examples from the writing of a ‘stronger’ and a ‘weaker’ student to illustrate how students negotiated roles and positions for themselves by appropriating and using the textual resources available on the forum. We argue for the value of sustained practice in ‘writing about reading’, of reading each other’s writing and of ‘writing back’ to one another on-line, for the gradual acquisition of a range of confident voices and for enhanced understanding of module content.

This article explores how course design and assessment in a first (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2004: 92). They facilitate academic depth and rigour because of the carefully staged moves between the strange and the familiar in a context that encourages students to take creative and intellectual risks.