Critical literacy

Condensed by

Husain

Abdulhay

What is Critical Literacy?

Critical literacies include reflecting on

how personal and social desires are

shaped by our engagement with

everyday cultural texts (Kelly, 1997).

1.It provides students with the opportunity to

look critically at literature and question what

they are reading.

2.Students can become empowered to take

on, discuss, and question such issues as

social justice and equality

3. It helps teachers and students expand their

reasoning, seek out multiple perspectives,

and become active thinkers”.

(McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2004, p.52).

(1) Disrupting the commonplace, for example,

interrogating texts by asking questions such as “how is

text trying to position me?”

(2) Interrogating multiple viewpoints such as trying to

understand experience and texts from our own

perspectives and the viewpoints of others.

(3) Focusing on sociopolitical issues, for example,

challenging the unquestioned legitimacy of unequal

power relationship by studying the relationship

between language and power.

(4) Taking action and promoting social justice, like

engaging in reflection and action upon the world in

order to transform it.

Promises of CL

CL allows for tolerance and dialogue among

cultures, an essential demand in the global

world. It allows for independent thinking and

diversity.

Literacy as social construct

and political practice

Auerbach (1995) suggests that instructors’ pedagogical approaches and choices of teaching materials both influence, and are influenced by, the nature of the socioeconomic and political forces that exist beyond the classroom.

To deny the political nature of language education, argues Pennycook (1989), can be equated with ‘articulating an ideological position in favour of the status quo’ (p 591).

English teachers as "the experts in

ideas"

Forced assimilation to English :

the imperial crew made up of missionaries,

teachers, advisers, government agents, and

scholars who were implicated in "westernizing

the backward.

Challenging the status quo.

‘Cultural inclusiveness in higher

education […] means achieving a

greater level of self-awareness on the

part of the educators’ (Malcolm and

Rochecouste1998: 71).

Today’s dynamic world

Gender issues as well as class and cultural

conflict and exchange are categories which

need to be redefined and surfaced in the

EFL class so that our students can cope

with –and/or survive- in the new constantly

changing global reality.

Accommodationist ideology

An endorsement of traditional academic

teaching and of current power relations in

academia and in society.

Accommodationist ideology

Both Pennycook and Benesch stress the need

to adopt an approach to learning that

encourages critical questioning, not only of all

pedagogical approaches and materials, but

also of the society of which instructors and

students form a part.

CL & culture

Critical literacies include reflecting on

how personal and social desires are

shaped by our engagement with

everyday cultural texts (Kelly, 1997).

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

“…Educators traditionally have attempted to

insert culture into the education, instead of

inserting education into the culture”

(Ladson-Billings, 1995, p.159).

cultureA frame where all actions and representations of

reality make sense. Clifford Geertz (2000).

knowledge is produced within a culture and

therefore is loaded with specific values and

perceptions of reality that are perfectly

legitimate to that context e.g., wink of an eye

as a signal of a joke but also as a sign of

conflict depending on the culture/context where

it occurs.

Primitive Stone Age culture

indigenous peoples of Australia was

partially responsible for arresting their

progression from barbarism to

civilisation (Clark 1986: 9)

‘wrongs the white people committed

against (indigenous) people’

racist attitudes held by social Darwinists who

believed in the ‘civilizing’ effects of European

culture and traditions on ‘primitive’ and inferior

societies.

Colonial and Postcolonial

Discourse and ESL Identity

In Canada it was believed that complete

assimilation of culture and language

was the only way to "civilize" First Nations

people (Grant, 1983).

Desire to race and nation

English was interpellated as the language of

power and superiority, whereas First Nations

languages became Other and extinct, so that

not only was a hierarchy of languages

established by colonial order and "expertise,"

but also human bodies according to various

racial characteristics.

struggles over difference,

identity and politics

Using indigenous and non-indigenous

Australian writers’ texts about colonial

and post-colonial Australian society

in the EAP classroom

Race and desire

Desire as a social construct offers an

unbinding of the naturalized

and colonized discourses of desire and social

categories of race, gender, nation, class,

and so forth.

I acquired the books that were used in Grenada.

They had sentences like "The revolution

provides milk for mothers and babies" and

blank lines for the students to copy.

My desire to help illiterate people was again

entwined with romantic desire in the figure of

the handsome and tragic Che Guevara.

(Ardiss Mackie)

Exotification of the racial Other

A missionary zeal to teach and develop

curriculum that would prove "helpful"

to refugees and immigrants entering

white culture (Vandrick, 1999)

Teaching as a political act

desire to be a liberator-teacher

Freirian-based literacy campaign:

Critical pedagogy

Pedagogy of oppressed vs. banking

concept of education

desire to be a liberator-teacher

Grenada, an English-speaking country

with Freirian-based literacy

Participatory or Feririan

approach

Education and knowledge have value

insofar as they help people recognize

and liberate themselves from the

social conditions that oppress them.

Pedagogy of oppressed

An approach to teaching literacy in which

researchers study the conditions in a

community and identify generative words to

describe situations familiar to learners and

then literacy teachers develop materials

using this generative words to help

learners decode the syllabuses as well as

deconstruct their social conditions(Feeire

1972 )

Banking education

A mere transmission of concepts aimed

at filling the student with supplies

provided by the teacher

Critical theory

“I want to teach my students that capitalism is not the only option and that they can do something about the inequalities in the world. It is OK to imagine a better world and critical literacy is a good tool for moving us toward that imagined world. Taiwan is moving farther and farther away from the ideal world mostly because of our corrupt government. We need critical literacy to help our students see what is going on in Taiwan.” (Mei-yun Ko 2007:16)

"ESL Other"

"attraction to racial Others and my desire to help

them overcome oppressive circumstances"

A monolithic community of people, joined by

their sameness to each other and their difference

from me, and by their dependence on me to help

them out of their difficulties and to provide a

model of Canadianness to which they could

aspire. (Ardiss Mackie2003:30)

CL as educational philosophy or pedagogical

method?

They think critical literacy is an educational

philosophy because it is more instrumental in

achieving the ideal aim in education; namely,

cultivating responsible citizens of the world who

can think critically and independently and thus

will not fall an easy prey to propaganda in the

system of capitalism. Also, they all emphasize

the importance of thinking, or having one’s own

ideas, in foreign language learning.

Critical literacy in EFL classes

By infusing critical literacy in EFL class, they can

re-emphasize the importance of critical thinking

in foreign language learning and make

students understand that in learning a foreign

language they are not just learn the words but

also the world through critical literacy.

CL and power relations

language does things and is not only an aseptic

system of signs used for communication.

Dissecting meaning then and deconstructing

representations are possible ways in which

power relations can be analyzed.

CL and texts

From a critical standpoint and on a more concrete

level, texts –literary, but also audiovisual,

photographic, advertising and even TV

commercials- are seen as biased entities which offer

just a partial interpretation of reality; they express

a certain clipping of an issue, a historically and

culturally bound glimpse of the world. Students are

consequently encouraged to identify and recognize

the assumptions behind them.

A cow in India & its counterpart’s

beef in kitchens of Argentina

Should students believe that theirs is a

better perspective than that

predominant in another country?

Should they feel that both views are

equally valuable and enriching ?

CL and ideology

Ideology is the lens through which we see, interpret

and experience the world.

Exploring these naturalized beliefs requires a lot

of work and our own estrangement from all the

perceptions and ideas we are used to. We need

to take a distance, exert ourselves to produce an

intellectual separation from all those things that are

normal in the world that surrounds us every day.

‘Pluralisation of knowledge’

A greater understanding of the nature of the

historical and cultural forces that shape the

ways in which we make sense of our worlds.

Avoid perpetuating the exclusionary practices

which deny writers of ‘non-academic’ or

alternative text types, both the possibility of

representing themselves in their preferred

writing styles, and the means of reaching a

large and diverse readership

CL, discourse and power

It is through power that some specific

discourses become dominant to the detriment

of others. Western societies we can say the

dominant discourse is heterosexual, male,

white and middle class Women, blacks,

homosexuals and the poor are leftas outsiders

in the periphery.

Becoming estranged is the best way to surface

assumptions, that is, to make all these

naturalized pre-concepts become conscious

to us so that we can analyze them critically

A critical approach to a text should dissect the

dominant discourse and treat it no longer as

the only possible interpretation, but as one

among many others

Open Space for Dialogue and

Enquiry (OSDE)

1. what every individual produces –discourses,

practices, beliefs- in their own context is

valid and legitimate. Clifford Geertz(2000)

2. All knowledge is partial and incomplete &

visibly derived from its ‘contextual’ nature.

Michel Foucault (1972)

3.All perspectives should be questioned.

Diversity : Rule N. 1

1.what every individual produces –discourses,

practices, beliefs- in their own context is valid

and legitimate. Respect and tolerance for

diversity are encouraged and specially

emphasized where difference is accepted

and contrast of views is even encouraged within a

plural frame. The conflict is eventually overcome

through the validation of those views, which are

acknowledged by the members of the space.

Power distribution: Rule N.2

Post structuralist view :

all knowledge is partial and incomplete is

visibly derived from its ‘contextual’ nature.

dominant discourse arises and claims itself to

be the most precise representation of reality

relegating the others to a lower position Michel

Foucault (1972)

Rule N.3 : Questioning

Deconstructivism :

to confront their own beliefs and dissect them

not just to get rid of them but to address

them critically Derrida (1998) .

Independent Thinking

result of the preceding process in which

individuals, now aware of how identities and

social practices work, seek change in a

more autonomous way. Therefore, they are

enabled to fight against dogmatisms and

dominant perspectives and explore their own

culture sharply.

Aims of OSDE in Class

Critical Literacy & Independent Thinking

empowering students to address their context

and reality.

Against the uniformity of gender, race and class

stereotypes, both students and educators are

offered the opportunity to think otherwise and

get involved with alternative representations

of the world and themselves.

Respect one another

appreciating

both

differences and affinities

Thank you for listening!

Good Luck with all of your future endeavors!