Considerations for Using Critical Race Theory and Critical Content Analysis: A Research Note

This conceptual paper explores how Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education can be utilized with a Critical Content Analysis (CCA) of children's literature. We first explain how we came to this work as education scholars trained to examine systemic racism in educational institutions. We then explain the steps we have taken to pursue our current study that examines the portrayal of Latinx in children's literature. First, we describe an online library catalog platform that we have created to catalog a book collection of over 300 books by/about Latinx people published in the United States during a five-year period from 2011 to 2015. Next, we outline our understanding of two prevalent research approaches in critical analyses of children and youth literature, Critical Multicultural Analysis (CMA) and CCA. We then explain CRT in education and its tenets. Finally, we explain how the tenets of CRT can be applied to a CCA. We provide a set of guidelines for researchers to use in their own critical race analyses of children’s literature and use an example of how these guidelines are applied.