Teaching Critical Literacy Principles to Math and Science Educators

Abstract

This article discusses the attitudes of math and science educators toward incorporating literacy activities into their teaching and offers suggestions for ways that teacher educators can encourage the integration of critical literacy principles into their lesson and unit planning. Emphases placed on textbooks, correct answers, multiple choice or other short answer forms of assessment, and an overall prioritizing of “covering content” over “having time to address questions and differing points of view” have made these students, as a whole, more resistant to the idea of incorporating critical literacy in math and science education. As a result, this article advocates the importance for teacher educators to encourage their students to develop lessons that promote critical literacy in math and science and model for them creative and effective ways in which this can be done. Through creating lessons focusing on issues of power, problems and their complexity and examining multiple perspectives, they will better understand that strategies of critical literacy are dynamic and can adapt to any context in which they are used. Student work samples that support these concepts are provided.