A step in the dance of critical literacy (original) (raw)
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Changing student demographics, globalization, and flows of people resulting in classrooms where students have variable linguistic repertoire, in combination with new technologies, has resulted in new definitions of what it means to be literate and how to teach literacy. Today, more than ever, we need frameworks for literacy teaching and learning that can withstand such shifting conditions across time, space, place, and circumstance, and thrive in challenging conditions. Critical literacy is a theoretical and practical framework that can readily take on such challenges creating spaces for literacy work that can contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world. It begins with the roots of critical literacy and the Frankfurt School from the 1920s along with the work of Paulo Freire in the late 1940s (McLaren, 1999; Morrell, 2008) and ends with new directions in the field of critical literacy including finding new ways to engage with multimodalities and new technologies, engaging with spatiality- and place-based pedagogies, and working across the curriculum in the content areas in multilingual settings. Theoretical orientations and critical literacy practices are used around the globe along with models that have been adopted in various state jurisdictions such as Ontario, in Canada, and Queensland, in Australia.
Freire's Cultural Action for Freedom (1970), which explains the ideas that underpin his critical approach to education in general and literacy pedagogy in particular, was first published in English over thirty years ago. Since then, critical literacy, a tradition of language and literacy education that takes seriously the relationship between language, literacy and power, has built upon his work in relation to developments in the field of language and literacy education, in relation to the possibilities and constraints in different contexts, and in relation to new technologies. Editorial: Critical literacy revisited: Writing as critique English Teaching: Practice and Critique
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A broad base for understanding what critical literacy is can be created by understanding three views of critical theory: critical social theory, feminist theory, and child advocacy. When each is brought to bear on the schooling rituals associated with literacy instruction, interesting commonalities among the three views Literacy 2 ABSTRACT Critical Theory and Teaching Literacy In this paper three views of critical theory are presented. These are critical social theory, feminist theory, and child advocacy. When each is brought to bear on the schooling ritLils associated with literacy instruction, interesting commonalities between the three views emerge. These patterns are then presented as ones that may be characteristic of pedagogy for literacy based on a critical stance.
The importance of critical literacy 1
This paper is divided into three parts. It begins by making an argument for the ongoing importance of critical literacy at a moment when there are mutterings about its being passé. The second part of the paper formulates the argument with the use of illustrative texts. It concludes with examples of critical literacy activities that I argue, are still necessary in classrooms around the world.
This paper examines the intersection of critical literacy informed by critical social theories and formations of the self imagined within poststructural theories. Specifically, it considers how singular views of formations of the self as either identity or subjectivity create problems for understanding the complex interrelations between the two concepts within critical literacy. The in-school literacy practices related to popular culture texts of one adolescent male are used to illustrate how singular conceptualizations of formations of the self (as identity or subjectivity) limit the complex interplay that readers engage in as they negotiate positions between identity production and subjectivity construction. Reflections on the possibilities of a broadened application of critical literacy that acknowledges the working of both identity and subjectivity are discussed.
The Importance of Critical Literacy
English Teaching Practice and Critique, 2012
This paper is divided into three parts. It begins by making an argument for the ongoing importance of critical literacy at a moment when there are mutterings about its being passé. The second part of the paper formulates the argument with the use of illustrative texts. It concludes with examples of critical literacy activities that I argue, are still necessary in classrooms around the world.