Reconceptualizing literacy in early childhood: A critical interpretive review of culturally responsive literacy practices

Literacy in early childhood is often treated as a neutral, autonomous set of decodable skills, overlooking cultural and linguistic resources all children bring to school and marginalizing those of children from historically minoritized communities. This critical interpretive review examines how literacy is represented and constructed within culturally responsive teaching in early childhood (pre-kindergarten through second grade), and what that reveals about the boundaries of literacy. The review began with a broader exploration across English-dominant contexts. During searching and screening, a notable pattern emerged in how often relevant studies appeared from other contexts relative to the United States. Given the contested U.S. educational and sociopolitical climate surrounding literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy, this pattern prompted us to focus the final synthesis on U.S.-based research. Working from a sociocultural and critical literacy stance, we synthesized 17 United States-based empirical studies through reflexive thematic analysis. Two themes emerged: the expansion and questioning of what counts as literacy, extending beyond reading and writing toward multimodal literacies that include visual, social, artistic, and critical forms of meaning-making; and the relational and political dimensions of culturally responsive literacy, including family and community knowledge, identity, and social justice. These themes suggest two interconnected reorientations: expanding what is recognized as literacy and repositioning whose knowledge, identities, experiences, and meaning-making are recognized within literacy education. These findings are especially consequential within the United States context, where debates surrounding culturally responsive pedagogy, diverse texts, and the boundaries of literacy instruction make questions about what and whose literacy counts particularly urgent.