(Re)Active Praxis: Preservice Teachers’ Conceptualization of Canon: Implications for Disrupting Instruction and Pedagogy

In the current sociopolitical climate of book banning and censorship, English language arts (ELA) teachers and teacher educators face renewed urgency to disrupt and interrogate the traditional literary canon. This article explores a significant barrier to critical canon pedagogy: a generational semantic shift in the meaning of the term canon . Drawing from the lived experiences of a millennial teacher educator and her Gen Z “interpreter,” the authors examine how preservice teachers, influenced by digital fandom cultures, understand the concepts of canon , headcanon , and canon events in ways that diverge from the conceptualizations in our discipline. The authors reveal both the disconnect and the pedagogical possibilities in this shift, arguing to leverage Gen Z’s fan-driven meaning-making practices to reframe canon disruption.