What critical literacy has to offer the study of video games

Through the proliferation of digital technologies and the increasing accessibility of video games, young people are engaging with these texts today, more than ever. However, there is a growing concern regarding what exactly young people are taking away from these textual experiences. This paper responds to the call made by Comber (1993), to document multiple cases of critical literacies developed in different contexts. It reports findings from a study which used video games as the focus texts in a middle-years English classroom in Melbourne, Australia. It found that critical literacy pedagogies could be effectively used to build new understandings with this everyday text-type. © 2018, Australian Literacy Educator's Association.