Teaching the Revolution: Critical Literacy in the Developmental Reading Classroom (original) (raw)
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Critical Literacy & Critical Literacy Pedagogy: From Theory to Practice
Different approaches to critical literacy have led to educators and researchers on different pedagogies and practices. Critical literacy gives emphasis on understanding and acting upon issues and problems of global world as democratic values. Apart from this general aim of critical literacy, it also aims to active and participatory education through personal and social transformation embodied with real experiences of individuals in educational settings. It is also about becoming social activist and becoming aware of them in the world for reasons which are perhaps sometimes transformative in the sense of being political agent who can be an active citizen. On the contrary, the issue of formal, rule-bounded literacies, critical literacy emphasizes the meaning-making process via texts, media or multi-literacies and lead people to make connection between literacy from different perspectives and people’s lives. In this respect, critical literacy should be implemented in classroom settings to make students critically literate and hopefully take action toward global issues such as injustice, oppression and so on.
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.
Creating critical classrooms: reading and writing with an edge
Educational Media International, 2015
is becoming a popular text linking critical literacy theory to practice. With more upper elementary-grade examples, new text sets drawn from "Classroom Resources," end-of-chapter "Voices from the Field," and an Expanded Companion Website, this theoretical and practical must-have text is restructured and revised throughout. Each one of the 10 chapters features the following: teacher-researcher vignette, theories that inform practice, critical literacy chart, thought piece, invitations for disruption, and lingering questions. Following Linda Christensen's foreword, underlining the importance of reflection in the teaching practice, and the introduction, where the book is presented as a result of the authors' struggle to articulate a theory of critical literacy in all its complexity, Chapters 1 through 9 explain the authors' critical literacy instruction model, which addresses two main issues: I. Moving between the personal and the social; and II. Locate the model in specific contexts. In Chapter 1, the authors describe the various components of their model by visiting the work of a teacher-researcher. In the next three chapters, the numerous personal and cultural resources that teachers and students use in critical classrooms are explored. To be more specific, in Chapter 2, the authors help the readers look into how life experiences can be used as an entrée into critical literacy; in Chapter 3, the readers find out how to use popular culture to promote critical practice; and in Chapter 4, they experience how to use literature for children and young adults to get started with critical literacy. In Chapter 5, the authors enable the readers to explore how critical literacy may be enacted during a visit to the museum, whereas in Chapter 6, the readers discover how critical literacy may be enacted in the context of interrogative multiple viewpoints, through strategies such as role play, inner dialogues, dramatizing bullying scenarios, and creating "I" statements for characters. The authors also stress the need to expand the curriculum with attempts to bring in ideas and people not prominent in the traditional in-school culture. In Chapter 7, the authors focus on sociopolitical issues, supporting that children may become sociopolitically aware through conversations with adults, e.g. teachers and others, who are sociopolitically active, whereas in Chapter 8, they focus on promoting social justice, presenting how to investigate risky topics that surround children's lives in attempts to create a critical curriculum. In Chapter 9, the authors discuss how traditional school curricula may function to welcome or keep out the cultural resources children bring into school and stress how the reflexive stance may enable a teacher-researcher to realize how to move her/his practice forward. Last but not least, in Chapter 10, a series of invitations for students, based on a particular social issue, that can be used in any part of the critical literacy instruction or the curriculum, is provided. With Creating Critical Classrooms: Reading and Writing with an Edge, Mitzi Lewison, Christine Leland and Jerome C. Harste succeed in providing a must-have book in the framework of critical literacy. It is essential for every critical literacy
Critical Theory and Teaching Literacy
1990
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.
Reimagining the Traditional Pedagogy of Literacy
Georgia Journal of Literacy, 2018
This case study examined the perceptions of a preservice teacher during the implementation of critical literacy with the integration of digital technology into a kindergarten classroom setting. a formative experiment (bradley & reinking, 2010) model was used to understand the perceptions of the pre-service teacher better while implementing critical literacy in a kindergarten classroom setting. The teacher-centered, continuous mentorship focused on critical literacy, and technology integration served as the intervention. This case study showed how teachers could fit critical literacy through technology integration into the literacy block by engaging students in shared or interactive reading activities with predetermined critical literacy questions as discussion points throughout the story. The results of this study also indicated that teaching critical literacy appeared to affect elementary grade students positively. The pedagogical goal is for teachers to modify mandated curriculum so that they build learning experiences about students' lives in engaging multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted ways. Critical literacy is the "new basic," a necessary life skill. our youngest learners are able to start thinking critically at an early age. despite popular belief, literacy, is not taught in isolation-it involves social and political acts that can be used to influence people and can lead to social change (Comber & Simpson, 2001). readers and consumers are bombarded with text daily that usually include underlying messages, and stereotypes. This is especially true with technological communication in which electronic media often carries no accountability, and many texts are unedited, heavily biased and are not attributed to any named or even credible author(s). because of this, teachers should be aware of the text that they are using to teach students literacy skills and they should teach students to critique texts instead of merely accepting them, as early as elementary age. Critical reading as a manifestation of critical thinking has become significant in living a more competitive life in the 21st century and beyond. Critical thinking involves higher order thinking skills and more complex cognitive processes necessary in the 21st century to achieve success in life (Greiff, niepel, & Wustenberg, 2015). This form of reading develops the student's