Critical Literacy Perspective Research Articles

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.

Narrativas autobiográficas: o que dizem as professoras da rede municipal de ponta grossa sobre um ensino que promova o letramento racial crítico

This article is a part of the master's dissertation and aims to discuss the importance of teaching work in the (re) construction of children's racial identity, based on the use of pedagogical practices in a Critical Racial Literacy perspective. The research questions that we will answer are: Can the teachers understand, through the writing of autobiographical narratives, how children identify themselves racially and react to the other's racial identity in daily school life? Do these narratives help these teachers understand the importance of discussing race in the classroom from the perspective of Critical Racial Literacy? To answer these two questions, we start the discussion with a theoretical review about the topic and then present some reflections from the analysis of autobiographical narratives of three elementary school teachers from the municipal network of Ponta Grossa. Therefore, we consider authors such as: Ferreira (2014-2017), Silva and Dias (2016), Uwe (2009), Gomes (2005), among others. From this analysis, the results obtained in the teachers’ autobiographical narratives indicate that it is possible to find racist attitudes and discourses in the classroom, however, not always noticeable by the teacher. In this sense, autobiographical narratives contribute for the teacher to reflect about his classroom practice, the need to discuss about race and the importance of continuing education regarding racial issues, since the teacher-student interaction in a reflective way is one of the possibilities to combat racism.

Thinking outside the box: a critical literacy collaborative

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the practical application of critical librarianship through a critical literacy framework using a Teaching and Learning Grant. The purpose of this project was to provide teacher candidates in The College of Education at Georgia Southern University-Armstrong Campus, with tools to understand and practice reading through the lens of critical literacy. The project also serves as an example of how an instruction librarian can work with students outside of the traditional one-shot instruction session.Design/methodology/approachStudents in the Fall 2016 section of EDUC 2120, Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts were introduced to the concept of critical literacy and participated in a series of interactive faculty-facilitated small group discussions with the librarian and College of Education faculty. They concentrated on an analysis of Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah (2008).FindingsStudents provided positive feedback after the project. Many stated that they learned a great deal about the reading process in general and how to read from a critical literacy perspective. Students also stated that they began to think about looking more critically at information in general. Additionally, these pre-service educators now have more tools to use to help their future students become critical thinkers who can read their world for deeper meanings and understandings.Originality/valueThis project fills a need to help college students understand how to use critical literacy skills and become critical consumers of information. The initiative also fostered meaningful collaboration between a Reference and Instruction Librarian and colleagues in the College of Education while expanding on the one-shot instruction technique.

Moving beyond “Agreeable” Texts and “Boring” Tasks: Pairing Young Adult Literature and Critical Literacy in Teacher Education

ABSTRACTThis article considers the power of approaching young adult literature from a critical literacy perspective in teacher education and how that affects emerging teachers’ ability to consider its role in their future teaching. Specifically, the authors explore how critical literacy—the exposure to a variety of texts, ways of approaching texts, and means of processing texts—can elevate preservice teachers’ understanding of literature and the world around them, and thus, their ability to teach their future students from a critical literacy perspective. In this qualitative study of the teaching and learning of critical literacy in an Introduction to Adolescent Literature teacher education course, the authors illustrate how the pairing of literary theory and young adult literature can provide preservice teachers the tools for questioning texts and larger societal issues with their future students. The current study has practical implications for the field of teacher education in the way literature courses for preservice teachers are designed and conceptualized.

Lättläst - en demokratifråga

Easy reading novels for young people have increased rapidly during the last years. Authors, publishers, librarians and teachers regard the novels a tool for teaching, and the books are advocated to offer children and teenagers that are considered demotivated and poor readers suitable texts. The democratic argument is vital for the text type is, i.e. that everyone has the right to have access to literary texts. From a critical literacy perspective, the aim of this article is to highlight and discuss aspects of democracy in Swedish classrooms. The empirical material consists of 18 interviews with authors and publishers and text analysis of 17 novels with material for students and teachers. The article shows that authors and publishers use the democratic argument heavily when advocating for the text type. The novels show a gender stereotype pattern and the instructions encourage an efferent reading. The article argues that it is important to have a critical perspective if using the easy readers in the classroom.

Wolf cries: on power, emotions and critical literacy in first-language teaching in Sweden

ABSTRACTAdopting a critical literacy perspective in teaching is about how experiences, social contexts, languages, learning and power relations interact in language development. In this article, we explore how students’ critical literacies are enhanced and hindered by emotional power relations in the classroom. We investigate what happens when emotionally charged texts – here texts about wolves in Sweden – are used in lower secondary schools. Drawing on two examples we illustrate different ways of enhancing students’ critical approach to the argumentative text type. The article highlights the affective aspects of teaching, and thus the unforeseeable aspects of classroom interaction. Emotionally, the wolf issue became very different objects for the persons occupying the classrooms. It invoked, e.g. homosocial relations, racist accounts and nationalistic outbursts. The article stresses the significance of teacher intervention but argues that to facilitate critical literacy in emotionally charged classrooms, the circulation of emotions, including teachers’ emotions must be brought to light.

Educação e cidadania: perspectivas da literacia digital crítica

O artigo apresenta uma pesquisa que investigou o conceito de literacia digital numa perspectiva crtica. Refere-se diretamente formao humana na contemporaneidade e s relaes entre educao e cidadania digital. Considera-se a compreenso do conceito de tecnologia na sua dimenso ideolgica, colocando-se centralidade na condio dos sujeitos nos meios digitais. Explicitam-se trs categorias de anlise decorrentes do estudo - Representao Ideolgica, Posicionamento Ideolgico e Produo e Ideologia, que buscam fornecer subsdios analticos para o estado de apropriao do sujeito na perspectiva da literacia digital crtica. O aporte terico ancora-se em pensadores crticos da sociedade como Heidegger (2007), Marcuse (1973), Feenberg (2010, 2012) e especialmente Vieira Pinto (2005) Filsofo brasileiro, entre outros autores que contriburam com o debate e o aprofundamento dos conceitos de tecnologia e literacia digital. .

Developing critical literacy in a PARFOR teaching practicum module

Abstract: This paper aims to describe a distance education experience that took place in a teaching practicum module of PARFOR (National Plan for Educating Primary and Secondary School Teachers) at the Federal University of Uberlândia. With the aim of promoting a discussion about race and ethnicity in Brazil, the materials and activities of this module were devised in a critical literacy perspective (KNOBEL AND LANKSHEAR, 2011; COPE AND KALANTZIS, 2012). The paper begins with a discussion of relevant issues concerning learning and literacy in distance education today, and then moves on to a brief description of this teaching practicum module. After an analysis of two tasks from this module, we conclude by reflecting on some of the shortcomings regarding the implementation of the course, and suggesting ways in which they could be overcome.

The German Teaching in Public Schools from the Perspective of Critical Literacy: a subproject PIBID in focus

This paper aims to reflect about the German language teaching in public schools focused on promoting critical literacy. The starting point was the definition of literacy and literacy critic, relating the latter to the activities developed by undergraduate students in German Studies under the Institutional Program of Introduction to Teaching (PIBID) - subproject German Studies - in two state schools in the State of São Paulo. The reflections presented were based on students´ lesson plans and reflective diaries and on the perceptions of the subproject coordinator. The results point to the potential of the German education in brazilian public schools, not only in order to promote a new language learning, but also as a critical training and civic education

Critical Literacy Performances in Online Literature Discussions

In today’s media-laden environment, the ability to read text from a critical literacy perspective is imperative, particularly for librarians who influence children’s reading choices and behaviors. This study examines the critical literacy performances of students in an online, asynchronous, graduate-level children’s literature course using a qualitative approach to content analysis. The findings indicate that students performed critical literacy in four ways: (1) they unpacked the social identities and norms evident in the books, (2) considered characters and events from multiple viewpoints, (3) interrogated issues of power, authority, and agency and (4) analyzed the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts of the books. While the findings reveal critical literacy can be enacted in the context of online courses, students’ critically literate thinking was sometimes limited and superficial, suggesting students’ understanding of critical literacy could be deepened with additional instruction and scaffolding.

Spanish

In this paper analyzes the questions used to assess critical understanding in textbooks secondary education in Peru, which are distributed for free in the country. The analysis is approached from the perspective of Critical Discourse Studies and Critical Literacy. The results show that although they have increased the number of critical questions in relation to previous years, most of these do not seek a critical understanding; on the contrary, they can be answered even without understanding the text. Questions can take various structures and most of them prompts guide the reader to get an expected answer by the author. However, there are questions that influence more than others. Those that generate several possible answers are best suited to critical reading; however, the questions that have only one possibility of answer, restrict critical understanding. In addition, through the questions also transmitted ideologies, beliefs and assumptions of the author . How to reference this article Zarate Perez, A. (2015). El uso de las preguntas de comprension critica en los libros de texto . Foro de Educacion , 13(19), 297-326. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/fde.2015.013.019.013

The Art of Learning to Be Critically Literate

In this article, Dr. Harste argues that there are three components to a literacy program for the 21st century: meaning making, language study, and inquiry—all taught from a critical literacy perspective. He also outlines what the arts afford our understanding of literacy and learning and, in so doing, argues for an expanded definition of literacy, one reflecting our multicultural and multimodal world.

Seeking Asylum

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore middle school (grade 6‐8) students' understanding and interpretation of human rights issues with local and global implications as they engaged in the process of creating a film after reading print and multimedia texts and participating in human rights education activities. As the students explored issues related to local/global human rights from a cosmopolitan critical literacy perspective, their understanding of the interrelatedness of these issues became more complex prompting advocacy efforts.

Who owns the words

The increasing diversity of Swedish society is affecting the Swedish school. Applying the perspective of critical literacy (Janks 2010), this study examines how teachers’ attitudes in a multilingual classroom affect the ability of pupils to develop semantic and critically reflective competence. The study shows that the class teachers hardly considered the pupils’ multilingualism and cultural background when devising a procedure using literary tests to engage pupils in talking, listening and writing and to increase their lexical knowledge. With its one nation, one people and one language (May 1999), the Western cultural heritage seems to be taken for granted as natural. The teachers’ domination, the pupils’ powerlessness, and the lack of diversity do not give the pupils access to the learning that the teachers expect, and the pupils are not provided with an opportunity to develop critical-analytical thinking. The study also shows that the teachers feel inadequately trained for teaching in a society of diversity, and often experience powerlessness in their role as teachers, searching for good tools to guide their pupils.

Exploring critical literacy in Swedish education – Introductory notes

The thematic section in this issue of Education Inquiry has its background in the need for research interpreting literacy from a critical perspective. Teaching literacy is not solely about technical reading skills but is also about understanding and the making of meaning. From that point of view, teaching must also consider the use of language, the context within which language is used, and issues of power. The thematic section includes five articles about critical literacy in Swedish education. The contributions were developed after a workshop conducted by Professor Hilary Janks, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She introduces the framework of a critical literacy theory in the first article of the issue. Further, the contributions of Swedish scholars are united in their interest in applying a model of critical literacy designed by Janks to different practices, sites and speech-events, for example policy documents, home reading, teaching and learning practices. The articles offer a wide perspective of critical literacy in education and further understanding of the complex processes in teaching.

Critical Literacy and Teacher Identities: A Discursive Site of Struggle

As literacy researchers, we are challenged to consider whether our instructional practices are sufficient to help students engage in literacy practices in our current and future society, such as reading from critical literacy perspectives. Teacher identities can be discursively constructed in different ways, given the contexts in which they work. Contemporary discourses of compliance, testing, and mandated curriculum used in relation to the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States run counter to constituting an identity of teachers-as-professionals, who interrogate their own knowledge about discourses surrounding current practices and question the social context in which these issues are embedded. Instead, these discourses promote teachers-as-technicians, with the use of packaged curriculum or scripted instruction. Findings reflect how critical literacy discourses became a site of struggle over these competing teacher identities.

Literacy Practice, Pedagogy, and the “Digital University”

This paper applies a critical social literacy perspective to the idea that contemporary pedagogies of the “digital university” are involved in transforming not only the writing practices of the university but also its larger social role. The values of written scholarship that have underpinned the university's contribution to the public good in the modern age are still important to its pedagogy in current times of increased focus on its contribution to private benefit. The paper draws on examples from classroom practice in UK universities to suggest that pedagogy is becoming increasingly polarized between academic writing that attempts to inscribe “truth” values, and digital knowledge work that is focused on “use” values. The paper discusses the nature of academic literacy practices in the digital university and argues that teachers and academics need to develop their own practices of digital scholarship if they wish to ensure that the traditional value of university scholarship to the public good is prese...

Authored assemblages in a digital world: Illustrations of a child’s online social, critical and semiotic meaning-making

Drawing on case illustrations of a six-year-old child as he ‘assembles’ a digital world using Webkinz™, this paper proposes an approach that researchers and educators might use to understand, analyse and critique multimodality. This multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrates new literacies, social semiotics and critical literacy perspectives. Data were collected during a broader three-week case study via a side-shadowing interview technique (McClay and Mackey, 2009), where the first author sat next to the child, making detailed research notes, interviewing him and taking screenshots of his digital productions. The findings suggest that authorship is rarely linear as authors continually remix, layer, embed and inter-animate semiotic resources as they assemble their sociocultural worlds and critical positions within these worlds.

Critical and social literacy practices from the Scottish adult literacy experience: resisting deficit approaches to learning

AbstractScotland provides an interesting context for studying adult literacy in that it is one of the few countries that explicitly acknowledge the idea of literacy as a social practice. By drawing on two initiatives we illustrate literacy learning derived from a mixture of social practice and critical literacy perspectives. Together they provide insights into how literacy may develop to challenge relationships of inequality and oppression. The role of the literacy tutor is critical to this process and needs to begin from a position which challenges the idea of literacy as a decontextualised, skill. To help learners question what it means to be literate, and to create genuinely empowering experiences, it is important to locate literacy in the wider social and political relations in which it is embedded.