CRITICAL LITERACY PERSPECTIVE - WHAT? WHY? HOW?

What is Critical Literacy?
 attributed to:
McLaughlin & DeVoogd (2004).  Critical Literacy:  Enhancing students' comprehension of text, 
     14-16.
Critical literacy views readers as active participants in the reading process and invites them to move beyond passively accepting the text's message to question, examine, or dispute the power relations that exist between readers and authors.  It focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action (Freire, 1970).

The Principles of Critical Literacy

• Critical literacy focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action
• Critical literacy focuses on the problem and its complexity.
• Critical literacy strategies are dynamic and adapt to the contexts in which they are used.
• Critical literacy disrupts the commonplace by examining it from multiple perspectives.

Luke and Freebody (1999) "A Map of Possible Practices:  Further Notes on the Four Resources Model"

4 Resources Model of Literacy Practices

1) code breaking

     alphabetic and letter-sound knowledge

2)  text participation

     readers interact and ask questions of the text

3)  text using

     consider form, function, and audience

4)  text critiquing

     Text are not neutral

Botelho and Rudman (2009)  Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children's Literature:  Mirrors, Windows, and Doors

Power Continuum

1) domination

2) collusion

3) resistance

4) agency

CRITICAL LITERACY...   WHY???
The following work should be credited to McLaughlin, M., and DeVoogd, G. (2004)  Critical Literacy:  Enhancing Students' Comprehension of Text, Introduction, p 6-7.

When you were in school, did you believe everything you read?   We did.  We never questioned who was writing the text, who was determining what topics would be included in it, or who was deciding what would be excluded from it.  We never questioned if there was any perspective other than the one presented in the daily newspaper, on the evening news, or in our textbooks.  We were passive recipients of knowledge.  Critical literacy helps us to move beyond that passive acceptance and take an active role in the reader-author relationship by questioning issues such as who wrote the text, what the author wanted us to believe, and what information the author chose to include or exclude in the text.  For example, if we had been reading from a critical perspective when we were students, we would have questioned whether the whole story about Columbus' explorations was included in the text (we now know that the true story extended well beyond what was included in the textbooks), whether historical events such as World War II were presented from multiple perspectives (e.g., victims of the Holocaust, women working on the home front, children, or citizens of various countries who worked to save Jewish people), or whether genders and minorities were represented in equal ways (we now know that the list of great inventors extends beyond white men).

Critical literacy helps us to read texts in deeper, more meaningful ways.  It encourages readers of all ages to become actively engaged and use their power to construct understanding and not be used by the text to fulfill the intentions of the author.  It helps readers understand that there are many ways of thinking about and it helps readers understand that there are many ways of thinking about and understanding a topic and that the author has explained it in only one way.

We need critical literacy because it helps us:  (1) to establish equal status in the reader-author relationship; (2) to understand the motivation the author had for writing the text (the function) and how the author uses the text to make us understand in a particular way (the form); (3) to understand that the author's perspective is not the only perspective; and (4) to become active users of the information in texts to develop independent perspectives, as opposed to being passive reproducers of the ideas in texts.

Current thinking about reading comprehension supports the idea that critical literacy enhances readers' understanding.  It suggests that we can extend our traditional definition of comprehension to understand the author's message beyond what appears on the printed page - to comprehend from a critical  stance.  This critical awareness deepens readers' comprehension of text by enabling them to become actively engaged with the text and question the author's purpose, thinking, and format.  It relates to the reading of traditional print formats, such as books, newspapers, and magazines, but also extends to hypertext, music, movies, conversations, and everyday situations.


CRITICAL LITERACY.....   HOW???

The content below should be credited to Wooldridge (2001: 261) in Botelho and Rudman (2009, p 4-5)

Critical Questions

1. What (or whose) view of the world, or kinds of behaviors are presented as normal by the text?
2. Why is the text written that way?  How else could it have been written?
3. Who is silenced / heard here?
4. Whose interests might best be served by the text?
5. What ideological positions can you identify?
6. What are the possible readings of this situation / event/ character?  How did you get to that reading?
7. What moral or political position does a reading support?  How do particular cultural and social contexts make particular readings available?  (e.g., who could you not say that to?)  How might it be challenged?

Children are invited to read and reread the text, taking stock of their reactions and responses.  The point of view of the story is considered because the perspective determines the position(s) of power from which the reader "sees" the story.  The social processes among the characters are explored to determine how power was exercised along the continuum from domination and collusion to resistance and agency.  The story ending i s considered in this process, examining the assumptions imbedded in the story's closure.  The illustrations may be analyzed to determine how the text and images work together as well as to take stock of how power is represented in them.  The genre of the text is closely examined because these conventions influence how the story gets told.  They have an impact on the reader's expectations for the text.

Other critical questions:

Edelsky (1999)  Making Justice Our Project, p 22

Why is it like this?

Who benefits from it being like this?

Is that fair?

What else do we need to know to get to the bottom of this?

What's left out?

Which voices aren't heard?

What doesn't this material tell us?