Critical Literacy Perspective Research Articles

“I Didn’t Think About That Perspective”: Preservice Teachers’ (Dis)comfort in Applying Critical Literacy and Race-Visible Discourse

ABSTRACT Our case study analyzed preservice teachers’ (PTs’) critical dispositions and alignment or resistance to critical literacies and race-visible discourse. In a virtual reading methods course at a large public university, a diverse cohort of twenty-two PTs recursively discussed self-selected multimodal texts utilizing synchronous and asynchronous critical multimodal collaborations. Using critical literacies and plurality of literacies as theoretical frameworks, findings indicated that via ongoing, purposeful groups PTs shared their experiences and acknowledged their previous shortcomings relative to race-visible discourse and dialogue. PTs exhibited a range of (dis)comfort in addressing critical social issues, including race and racism. This study expands on previous scholarship on how PTs and teacher preparation courses explored critical literacy perspectives and developed their critical stances for applying these habits as readers, as teachers, and in collaboration with their peers. It offers one case study of the application, challenges, flexibility, and resiliency demonstrated by PTs on their journey to be and become critically minded literacy educators.

REPRESENTATION OF STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING IN WRITING: A CRITICAL LITERACY PERSPECTIVE

The goal of this study is to investigate university students’ representation on their critical thinking in academic writing from a critical literacy perspective, in which text is bias and it possesses ideological perspective of writer in expressing social critics, inequality, and power relations. Researchers analyzed 91 argumentative texts writing from Indonesian undergraduate English education students, which were qualitatively assessed using Facione’s HCTSR and LaGuardia’ s CLR rubrics, as well as NVivo 12 Plus software and an integrated theme meaning approach to qualitative content analysis. Researchers discovered that students’ critical thinking skills varied in demonstrating their logical arguments, systematic thinking in reasoning, analysis and evaluation, decision-making, and problem-solving strategies in their academic writing in higher education.

Working with Data in Adult English Classrooms: Lessons Learned about Communicative Justice during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Throughout COVID-19, health officials have relied on data visualizations to communicate urgent messages about the spread of the virus and preventative measures. Relatively few efforts have employed participatory engagement with communities who have experienced a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 illness to shape these communications. Sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois viewed data visualization as an approach to changing the way people think about themselves. This paper describes a community-engaged approach to data literacy skill-building with bilingual Latina learners in an adult English program in Northern California, Bay Area. The curriculum combines data visualization activities with language instruction and preventive health themes. Early work on COVID-19 in 2020-21 emphasized improving health knowledge and message interpretation but later shifted to a critical data literacy perspective, focusing on myth-busting, improving risk messaging in their own social networks, and supporting learners to see the power of their own experiences in data story-telling processes. This pedagogical approach, guided by Charles Brigg's idea of communicative justice priorities, locates adult learners' data visualization work as part of a broader effort to be included in the perspectives that shape knowledge production in today's healthcare system. This approach can be used to examine disparities in information access in linguistically minoritized communities and guide future education interventions.

Online Health Information Seeking Among Patients With Chronic Conditions: Integrating the Health Belief Model and Social Support Theory.

Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability. With the growing patient population and climbing health care expenditures, researchers and policy makers are seeking new approaches to improve the accessibility of health information on chronic diseases while lowering costs. Online health information sources can play a substantial role in effective patient education and health communication. However, some contradictory evidence suggests that patients with chronic conditions may not necessarily seek online health information. This study aims to integrate 2 theories (ie, the health belief model and social support theory) and a critical health literacy perspective to understand online health information seeking (OHIS) among patients with chronic conditions. We used the survey method to collect data from online chronic disease communities and groups on social media platforms. Eligible participants were consumers with at least 1 chronic condition and those who have experience with OHIS. A total of 390 valid questionnaires were collected. The partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data. The results suggested that perceived risk (t=3.989, P<.001) and perceived benefits (t=3.632, P<.001) significantly affected patients' OHIS. Perceived susceptibility (t=7.743, P<.001) and perceived severity (t=8.852, P<.001) were found to influence the perceived risk of chronic diseases significantly. Informational support (t=5.761, P<.001) and emotional support (t=5.748, P<.001) also impacted the perceived benefits of online sources for patients. In addition, moderation analysis showed that critical health literacy significantly moderated the link between perceived risk and OHIS (t=3.097, P=.002) but not the relationship between perceived benefits and OHIS (t=0.288, P=.774). This study shows that the health belief model, when combined with social support theory, can predict patients' OHIS. The perceived susceptibility and severity can effectively explain perceived risk, further predicting patients' OHIS. Informational support and emotional support can contribute to perceived benefits, thereby positively affecting patients' OHIS. This study also demonstrated the important negative moderating effects of critical health literacy on the association between perceived risk and OHIS.

Bringing Refutation Texts Back to Their Literacy Roots: What do Critical Literacy and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Have to Teach us About Students’ Conceptual Change?

Refutation texts are resurfacing as a suggested antidote to misconceptions and “fake news.” In a previous critical review of the refutation text literature, we, the author team, suggested further interrogation of the assumptions these texts imply: that learners share the same common misunderstanding about a topic, and that there is one “truth” that should replace the misconception. Building from Hynd’s feminist critique of refutation texts, we present in this essay a consideration of how these authoritative and prescriptive texts fit into an educational landscape being transformed by foci on students’ autonomy and funds of knowledge. In this position paper, we present the argument that refutation texts and their associated research may conflict with critical literacy perspectives and culturally responsive pedagogies. We examine these three perspectives for how they may view learning and literacy, and conclude the essay by proffering suggestions for future research on refutation text manipulations and for considering how refutational texts might be incorporated in classroom settings that enact culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy perspectives.

EFL teachers’ critical literacy instructional perspectives and practices: The case of the Egyptian university context

Critical literacy instruction in Egypt remains under-explored. This study combined questionnaire and semi-structured interview data to explore Egyptian university EFL teachers' critical literacy perspectives and practices. The results indicate that most participant teachers are unwilling to teach critical literacy and prefer to focus on core curricular components only. The few teachers with a positive attitude to critical literacy instruction reported integrating it into reading, literature, writing and speaking courses. Their narratives, however, indicate implementing a weak version of critical literacy instruction. This has been mainly caused by the lack of emphasis on critical literacy in the curriculum, students’ limited experiences, socio-cultural considerations, and teacher ideological bias. The teachers also reported that female and male students are interested in different types of critical literacy topics. It is concluded that critical literacy practices in the Egyptian university context could be fostered through training teachers, reforming curricula, and coordinating institutional efforts.

Critical Literacy in ELT Classroom Testing

Critical Literacy (CL) has lately influenced English Language Teaching (ELT) in Brazil, mainly after the publication of the National Guidelines for High School Teaching, and several practitioners have started to use CL perspectives in their ELT contexts. Besides, CL and Critical Language Education have been the focus of much research in Brazil. Nonetheless, these alternative approaches have not yet made their way into testing and assessment. This paper focuses on the relationship of CL and English Language testing. First, we present an overview of important concepts in the area of testing and assessment in ELT. We also discuss important concepts of CL and other critical approaches to ELT. Then, we briefly discuss the possibility of using CL together with CA in English teaching. To illustrate, we summarize a course in ELT, which has used CL and CA at university level. Finally, considering tests as part of the social practices in educational contexts, we demonstrate that, just as CL may be used for Citizenship Education and Social Justice in English classes, the same approach should be used when testing, particularly due to the use of language as a tool for social reconstruction and critique for the exposure of inequalities. Principles for developing critical practices in testing and assessment are discussed along the paper.

Teaching critical literacy in South African English classrooms: Constraints and affordances

Critical literacy is an approach to teaching that addresses the relationship between language and power. This study sought to ascertain whether or not PGCE (Post-Graduate Certificate in Education) graduates from the University of the Witwatersrand were able to apply what they had learned about critical literacy in their English teaching after graduation and how subjective experience, context and identity can influence the ways that teachers take up critical literacy. Three research participants, one of whom was the researcher, provided data on their experiences of attempting to teach from a critical literacy perspective, one in the form of the author’s auto-ethnographic narratives and two in the form of interviews. Narrative analysis was applied to all three sets of data. The findings suggest that English teachers in South African schools may be constrained by a chronic lack of time, lack of support from colleagues and institutions for the teaching of critical literacy, the overly prescriptive application of the current curriculum and schools’ own particular versions of performativity and accountability cultures. Despite these constraints, teaching critical literacy is eminently possible and efforts to practise critical literacy are aided by cultivating positive relationships with learners.

Promoting teacher professionalism in language education from the perspective of critical intercultural literacy

Against the backdrop of globalisation, many English language teaching (ELT) curricula emphasise the need to promote awareness of intercultural communication. However, in many settings, the current ELT practices still predominantly focus on Anglophone cultures or interactions with Anglophone speakers, as the teachers and materials may not fully anticipate the cultural complexity and diversity the students will encounter in the future. This paper reports on a case study designed to build teachers’ critical intercultural literacy through a series of workshops at a university located in southeast China, specifically aiming to train Chinese university teachers in how to challenge textbook content from a critical perspective. Through an analysis of interviews with teachers and their reflective journal entries, this paper examines how teachers made sense of critically-oriented teaching and it discusses the implications for developing a critical stance beyond the classroom informed by critical pedagogy and Global Englishes language teaching.

PLANNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES FROM THE CRITICAL LITERACY PERSPECTIVE: FOCUSING ON RACISM AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Considering that English language teaching in public schools requires forming critical citizens (JUCA, 2016), this study addresses the work with critical literacy in classrooms. Therefore, my aim is to analyze the process of planning English language classes from the critical literacy perspective (MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2011a; 2011b), focusing on racism and social issues. The three classes lead to writing a personal report, using can , considering the social, historical and political barriers people may face depending on their position within specific time and space.

Challenging Misrecognition: A Case for Critical Literacy

This research set out to examine if a critical literacy pedagogy can help student teachers better understand how inequity is reproduced in the field of education. These issues were explored using Bourdieu’s (1977) distinctive concepts that frame literacy as an ideological act, an act of misrecognition that results in ‘symbolic violence’. The study took place in a small, specialist teacher education college in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The methodological design was based on action research supported by semi-structured interviews pre- and post- intervention. For the action research, a semester-long, pre-existing undergraduate literacy course was restructured to embed critical literacy. A group of eight self-selecting third year student teachers participated in the research project. Findings reveal that the students held beliefs that tended to conflate poverty with prejudicial stereotyping and attribution of fault to others who are located differently in the social world. Underpinning this was unquestioning acceptance of the education system. Acquiring a sociological, specifically a critical literacy perspective I conclude can help nurture student teachers’ ideas and understanding about teaching for social justice.

Re-Mixing Making: examining the Intersections of Hip Hop Culture, Maker Spaces, and Social Justice Education

Abstract Despite the potential to promote critical literacy formation, academic engagement and social justice education, maker activities and maker spaces do not always support or engage historically marginalized communities. This paper chronicles a response to this problem by examining a study created to support equitable engagement with youth in an after-school workshop series over 8-weeks that focused on Hip Hop cultural practices and the simultaneous development of critical literacy and social justice perspectives. The series, open to community youth was located in the makerspace of the local public library. Within this study, project designers drew from Gutierrez and Rogoff’s concept of “repertoires of practice” and focused particularly on questions of what counts as making, and who has agency to make these decisions and how engagement with hip hop culture mediates these understandings. I consider two instances where students engaged in Hip Hop- centered generative practices (particularly beat making and graffiti writing) and analyze moments of student resistance and agency as opportunities to expand understandings of development of critical media literacy and social justice orientation. This paper foregrounds the importance of iterative analysis and design as participants develop artistic, social, and political identities over the course of the workshop. Finally, this paper explores implications for classroom learning that emerged from the work, including expression, exploration, and collaboration.

Critical Literacy as a Lens for Students’ Evaluation of Sources in an AP World History Class

Critical literacy is an appropriate learning outcome for social studies courses because it has the potential to teach students how to critically evaluate sources of information relevant to historical texts and current news media. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the process through which students learned to apply critical literacy strategies while completing an end-of-unit research project in tenth grade AP world history. This study looks as student and teacher interviews to examine how students use critical literacy approaches and perspectives to analyze texts. As a result of this study it was determined that: (1) students at the elite private school had limited experience with source evaluation and critical literacy prior to this research project, (2) critical literacy served as an effective evaluation tool for reliability and bias for some students, (3) certain students experienced challenges in using critical literacy as an evaluation tool, and (4) students believed that critical literacy would benefit them personally and academically. Results include implications for instructors who wish to teach critical literacy and source evaluation in this information age.

O professor ecológico: a formação de professores de espanhol como um ato de resistência

Trazemos, para este artigo, um recorte de uma pesquisa de mestrado. O contexto investigado foi um curso de formação de professores com os participantes - os professores em formação inicial do projeto de extensão Casas de Cultura no Campus, da Universidade Federal de Alagoas, e que são também graduandos do curso de Letras – espanhol. Realizamos um diálogo entre a ecologia de saberes (SOUSA SANTOS, 2009, 2010) e a perspectiva do letramento crítico (BISHOP, 2014; JANKS, 2013, 2014), relacionando-os à formação de professores para compreendê-la como um processo contínuo e permanente, que exige de nós, professores e formadores em formação, um exercício constante de autoanálise e reflexão das nossas percepções, dos nossos pensamentos e, principalmente, das nossas ações, dentro e fora da sala de aula. Objetivamos, portanto, provocar reflexões sobre a formação como um espaço de (des) (re) construção de conhecimentos. Para isso, utilizamos a autoetnografia (ELLIS, 2004; ELLIS, ADAMS, BOCHNER, 2015) como metodologia qualitativa de pesquisa e de escrita que procura descrever com detalhes e analisar a experiência pessoal com o objetivo de compreender a experiência cultural.

Civic Writing on Digital Walls

Civic writing has appeared on walls over centuries, across cultures, and in response to political concerns. This article advances a civic interrogation of how civic writing is publicly authored, read, and discussed as openly accessible and multimodal texts on digital walls. Drawing upon critical literacy perspectives, we examine how a repertoire of 10 civic writing practices associated with open web annotation (OWA) helped educators develop critical literacy. We introduce a social design experiment in which educators leveraged OWA to discuss educational equity across sociopolitical texts and contexts. We then describe a single case of OWA conversation among educators and use discourse analysis to examine shifting situated meanings and political expressions present in educators’ civic writing practices. We conclude by considering implications for theorizing the marginality of critical literacy, designing learning environments that foster educators’ civic writing, and facilitating learning opportunities that encourage educators’ civic writing across digital walls.

ESPANHOL COMO LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA (E/LE), ACCIÓN POÉTICA E XENOFOBIA: UMA EXPERIÊNCIA PEDAGÓGICA COM UM RECURSO EDUCACIONAL ABERTO NA PERSPECTIVA DOS LETRAMENTOS CRÍTICOS

RESUMO O presente trabalho versa sobre a produção de Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA) na perspectiva dos Letramentos Críticos. O objetivo geral do estudo é investigar em que medida um Recurso Educacional Aberto (REA) na perspectiva dos Letramentos Críticos pode propiciar (ou não) affordances para a produção de eventos discursivos sensíveis a problemas sociais como a xenofobia. Os objetivos específicos da pesquisa são três, a saber: a) Apresentar o REA desenvolvido (objetivos do material, princípios teórico-metodológicos que nortearam o seu desenvolvimento, materiais e ferramentas utilizados durante a sua produção, etc.); b) Analisar duas amostras dos eventos discursivos oriundos desse REA, com vistas a identificar indícios de Letramentos Críticos; c) Discutir possibilidades teórico-metodológicas para o redesign desse material. O estudo foi desenvolvido na disciplina “Oficina de Produção Textual”, da Licenciatura em Letras Espanhol a Distância da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, em parceria com a Universidade Aberta do Brasil (UFSM/UAB). Nesse sentido, apresenta características de uma pesquisa qualitativa de cunho fenomenológico (BOGDAN e BIKLEN, 1996). Os resultados da pesquisa indicam que REA na perspectiva dos Letramentos Críticos podem propiciar affordances para a produção de eventos discursivos sensíveis a problemas sociais como a xenofobia, uma vez que, apesar da pequena quantidade de amostras analisadas, foi possível identificar indícios de um Letramento Crítico no que diz respeito a tal questão. Esperamos, futuramente, ampliar o número de amostras, apontando também casos que tiveram menor sucesso, bem como motivações possíveis para isso.

Creating a Book Club with a Critical Approach to Foster Literacy Practices

This paper reports the pedagogical experience of creating a book club to foster the reading of short stories from a critical literacy perspective at a high school in Bogotá, Colombia. The Book Club arose as an after-school program where students, who were interested in the proposal, were free to join. First, the paper presents the fundamental concepts that guided the implementation. Then, it describes the central elements of the pedagogical experience: context, curricular platform, procedures, and activities. The final discussion centers on the role of a critical literacy approach that encouraged participants to go beyond concerns about the grammatical and linguistic aspects of the foreign language to focus on meaning-making. Also, to concentrate on responding and transacting with the texts while engaging in dialogic interactions that allowed them to share background knowledge, life experiences, social and individual issues of their realities and interests, and most importantly, enjoy the act of reading in a foreign language as it was seen as a social-situated practice.

Video Production in Elementary Teacher Education as a Critical Digital Literacy Practice

This article reports on a two-year, funded, qualitative inquiry into the challenges and possibilities of integrating video production into pre-service teacher education as a critical digital literacy practice. This includes the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that lead to ability to critique and create digital texts that interrogate the self, the other, and the world (Ávila &amp;amp; Zacher Pandya, 2013). Video making holds out enormous potential given our increasingly diverse classrooms and the growing need to have students connect and collaborate within their own communities and globally (Dwyer, 2016; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, 2016; Spires, Paul, Himes, &amp;amp; Yuan, 2018; Watt, 2017, 2018; Watt, Abdulqadir, Siyad, &amp;amp; Hujaleh, 2019). Video is especially significant in light of the fact that it is replacing print text as a dominant mode of communication (Manjou, 2018). Multimodal composing such as video production is, in fact, considered by some to be the essential 21st century literacy (Miller &amp;amp; McVee, 2012), but much remains to be done to bring digital technologies as literacy into the elementary classroom. Qualitative data includes a focus group, questionnaires, observations, and content analysis of teacher candidate videos and instructional plans. This study considers how video production can be integrated into teacher education programs to engage cross-curricular expectations and critical digital literacy perspectives. It responds to the pressing question of how to do teacher education differently in the digital age.

Crafting a Critical Literacy Skillset: An Improved Use of Visual Modalities

The goal of literacy development at schools is a standing feature of the curriculum. In spite of this, the means to develop critical thinking in students often comes up short. The development of literacy and critical thinking can be presented in engaging and memorable ways, but schools often defer to what they have done in the past; namely through textbooks and worksheets. This article will argue that the greater and structured incorporation of graphic novels and comic literature, but from a critical literacy perspective, will have the effect of increasing engagement of the subject matter. A closer engagement through visual means, coupled with a teaching pedagogy that directly supports critical literacy skill development builds the best experience and engagement of student learning.

English students’ experience of reframing narrative stories from a critical literacy perspective

This article reports a study investigating the English teacher’s strategies for assisting secondary school students of English to be critically literate through an analysis of narrative texts. In this study, Luke and Freebody’s (1999) four resources model of critical literacy was used as a framework for English instruction situated in an Indonesian secondary school. Data were collected from classroom observations, students’ reflective journals, and an interview with secondary school students. The findings showed that the four resources model of critical literacy, to some extent, helped students to become critically literate especially at the stage of meaning-making-of and criticizing the text. The implication of the study is that there is the possibility of implementing critical literacy-oriented English classrooms in Indonesian and Asian secondary schools.