Critical Literacy

The practice of language teaching and learning inside the classroom is, in fact, under the circumstance of philosophical assumption or ideological framework. Teaching program and curriculum set are absolutely written on the basis of particular assumptions about the nature and value of knowledge. These assumptions mainly determine actual decisions in listing important items to be taught and learned along with the way those items are delivered. Approaches in language teaching have always been developed, in one hand, under consideration of linguistic and psychological theories of learning and educational objectives along with the expected demands of classroom teaching and learning in another hand.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with current events. Drawing from data generated following the 2016 presidential election, this paper focuses on three racially and linguistically diverse children's persuasive compositions. Within a critical literacies writing unit focused on (im)migrant experiences, children called on legislators to act on the Republican administration's policies. Building on the understanding that all literacies are political and that teaching and learning are value-laden tasks, the author engaged a cultural rhetorics orientation-grounded in the understanding of texts, bodies, materials, and ideas as interconnected aspects of communication-for data generation and analysis. The findings highlight how children strategically employed rhetoric to persuade. They used logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as story, a central tool for meaning-making and building practices in the world. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how children, when properly supported, can agentively participate in critical literacies and act on real-world politics. Through the stories of young children, this study emphasizes what children have to tell adults and what a cultural rhetorics orientation, through its emphasis on story, enables literacies researchers and educators to understand about children's composing.

The research project carried out in one primary school in Scotland was guided by an intention to discover and provide up-to-date data on what literacy teachers knew about critical literacy and whether this knowledge was promoted, achieved, and enacted in praxis. By specifically focusing on reading and teachers' approaches to texts, this study explores to what extent critical literacy makes its explicit or implicit appearance in the early years' reading classes as a result of teachers' understanding of it-their content knowledge, personal and professional beliefs. The findings have fueled the discussion about the preconditions for greater and more direct utilization of critical literacy in language classrooms. The knowledge and practices the teachers in this study revealed, reflect a promising springboard for developing new, more unified ways of teaching reading. After being reminded of and exposed to some of the central concepts of critical literacy, the teachers became more interested and confirmed that they would teach for it if they only knew how. This is also one of the main implications of the study for teacher educators, curriculum developers and researchers.

Children's names play a critical role in early literacy learning at home (Martens, 1999) and in classroom settings (McNair, 2007). However, children who are linguistically and/or racially minoritized often experience the denigration, mispronunciation, or changing of their names in schools. In this study, we examined how second-grade students composed poetry about their own names using the poem "My Name Is Jorge" / "Me llamo Jorge" (Medina, 1999, pp. 6-7) as a mentor text. Drawing on critical orientations to the elementary writing workshop (Lewison & Heffernan, 2008) and theories of translingual writing (Canagarajah, 2013), we used qualitative methods to document how young children wrote across languages and modes to enact resistance against the changing and/or mispronunciation of their names. However, we also describe how a small group of children wrote in ways that seemed to reinscribe dominant discourses, asserting preferences for names more closely associated with English and whiteness. This study suggests that young children can intentionally and skillfully draw on the breadth of their communicative repertoires to enact resistance in and through their writing. It also underscores the complexities and tensions associated with enacting a critical approach in elementary writing classrooms.

Governments, educators and the public often believe that combining English language with information technology skills is important to be successful (Tuan, 2011). WebQuestsare a framework for learner-centered instruction in teaching English as a foreign language when using Internet resources. This study investigated the effect of WebQuests on Grade 11 reading comprehension in a secondary school in the UAE. It also investigated perceptions of WebQuests as a study tool. A quasi-experimental research design was used with control and experimental groups. In addition, a Likert scale questionnaire examined perceptions of WebQuests. An analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The results indicated a statistically significant improvement in reading by the experimental group. Additionally, positive attitudes were reported towards WebQuests. Students felt that WebQuests enhanced collaboration, language skills, reading and higher order thinking...

In the post-truth era we are constantly bombarded with " news " which is fabricated, distorted, and massaged information, published with the intention to deceive and mislead others. Such " news " has come to be known as " fake news ". The influence of fake news can have profound socio-political and cultural effects when translated into action. The ability to distinguish between real facts, fabricated stories, rumours, propaganda, or opinions is of paramount importance. The rapid proliferation of information through social media is now the norm. In this paper we consider the challenge of preparing students, in developing skills for recognising mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We argue that critical thinking for evaluating information should now be considered a basic literacy, equally important to literacy itself, as well as information and information technology literacies. In this paper we revisit Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive s...

What is Universal Design for Learning? "Disability exists in the curriculum and the environment not necessarily in the learner" (Meyer, Rose, and Gordon 66). Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-informed theory and pedagogy for addressing the diverse needs of learners in the classroom. Universal Design is a concept from architecture where the purpose is to create spaces accessible for all (e.g., ramps instead of stairs; braille and text for signage; open, clutter free spaces for mobility). UDL builds from the theory of Universal Design and applies it to the classroom and to pedagogy. While UDL has emerged from researching and teaching students with disabilities, researchers and teachers of UDL have found that it actually works for all students, and they have thus constructed a theory and pedagogy that addresses the broad and diverse range of learner needs in a classroom. UDL is not just for special education teachers; it is a pedagogy designed for use by all teachers and for implementation with all students.

As the title of the novel suggests, what “all-American” means—and those who are excluded from it despite the seemingly encompassing term—becomes an issue. The narrative shows the apparent similarities between the two boys to further emphasize the underlying differences in their situation. This novel did not present racism in essentialized terms. Rather, the internal conflicts that Rashad and Quinn experience are central to the ways in which they work through understanding their own racial identities. Rather than blaming an entire group or community, the narrative encourages readers to see how prevalent and pervasive issues of racism are and to act to make a difference. The book stresses the importance of each person recognizing his or her role in these problems and taking a stance. Being “neutral” is an option that is discouraged.

RESUMO:Este trabalho pretende mostrar como a poesia de Henriqueta Lisboa e a poesia de Sophia de Mello B. Andresen possibilitam um diálogo com o pensamento de Maurice Blanchot sobre a fazer poético. O entrecruzamento desses três textos, literários e teórico, se aproxima por reflexões acerca do processo da escrita literária, Há concepção de escrita simbolizada pela morte, não a morte em um espaço físico, em sua possibilidade soturna, de mundo real, mas dentro do espaço literário e em sua polissemia. Assim estaremos diante da construção de um novo olhar: indeterminado, mas plenamente liberto, independente, propondo-se pensar o lugar da literatura como espaço para além do infinito, do absoluto, no caminho do qual o escritor renegaria o mundo físico e sua existência real para a autonomia da escritura, da obra de arte. Concepção esta somente possível pela linguagem literária.

Palavras-chave: Henriqueta Lisboa, Sophia de Mello B. Andresen, escrita literária.

Nos dias atuais, as teorias fundamentadas nos Novos Letramentos representam uma importante referencia para o ensino de Lingua Inglesa no Brasil, propondo uma educacao linguistica que, ao mesmo tempo, possa fortalecer a consciencia critica e favorecer a agencia cidada. Nessa perspectiva, o presente artigo relata a experiencia de um projeto de extensao voltado para o ensino de ingles para adolescentes e jovens, com foco na profissionalizacao e no letramento critico, com o objetivo de evidenciar de que forma a proposta curricular e metodologica do projeto,alem de promover o desenvolvimento do conhecimento da lingua inglesa, constituiu-se um espaco de engajamento dialogico e de expansao de perspectiva dosparticipantes. O estudo foi desenvolvido com base na analise de fragmentos das aulas, registrados em video, dos planos de aula e material didatico utilizado, alem das postagens dos jovens participantes acerca dos temas abordados em uma pagina do projeto em uma rede social. As categorias...

Perceptions of black representations in literature and other visual mediums as positive or negative continuously cause consternation and debate (Fleetwood, 2011). Because African American children are literacy participants and consumers, they are not immune from experiencing this tension. This essay considers the effects and affective threads of racism and racialization connected to visuality (Foster, 1988), and how educators might support and nurture children’s roles as aesthetic critics and critical readers of books featuring racial imagery and representations. The young African American readers in this study resist a picturebook using colorist logic and macro-level social indexing of phenotypic traits. The author argues that negative social messages about blackness within the larger ethos of society, as well as the absence of diverse representations in children’s literature, contribute to such interpretations. She suggests explicitly teaching African
American children about counter-visuality and the ways in which ‘‘art works’’ to shape and transform understandings about complex experiences like racism.

Drawing from autoethnography, the authors examine a Muslim teacher’s experiences as she encounters several closed doors in her journey to become an educator. They reflect on building “visible” critical literacies and social justice curricula that center the cultural identities and experiences of teachers as well as students.

Mark Roxburgh’s research over the past decade has focused on the evolving conceptualization, discourse and development of research methodologies for design. This has lead him to question the historical pattern of design whereby the methods and epistemologies of other disciplines are used without addressing the differences between them and design. Design is a complex activity enmeshed in many aspects of our lives. In his article in Design Issues (1992), ‘Prometheus of the Everyday: The Ecology of the Artificial and the Designer’s Responsibility’, Manzini foregrounds the relational nature of this complexity by conceiving design (the artificial) as having an ecology. Roxburgh has written about these matters but his critique has conformed to the conventions of academic publishing and he has found articulating aspects of such complexity constrained by the limits of written language. Increasingly, in design, visualization is used to map complex relationships between things, ideas and actions. In this essentially visual essay, Roxburgh is attempting to graphically identify and explore the relationships of some of these concepts in a manner that echoes these trends and his own research practice. He is aware that sketches of complex phenomena, through a process of interpretation and abstraction, become somewhat reductive. The moments he draws on in crafting the depictions of his views are presented episodically rather than chronologically.
Roxburgh sketches out three key historical conceptions of design and the ramifications they have had on our perceptions and practice of it. He depicts these conceptions as being drawn from traditions outside of design and suggests that an alternative strategy may lie within design itself. This strategy calls for an engagement with what he calls the aesthetics of research. He suggests that it is imperative that design encompasses an aesthetic engagement with the world at all levels, and most importantly at the point of design research and conception, for our experience of design is fundamentally aesthetic. He is aware that there is an apparent irony in his use of non design theories to frame aspects of his view but this is a necessary strategy to critique the ontological assumptions inherent within the conceptions of design that he characterizes (one could even say ‘caricatures’). Roxburgh takes the position that there is nothing essentially given about design consciousness. Rather, the characterizations of design consciousness that he outlines all carry (usually implicit) ontological assumptions that may be inappropriate and/or limit design practice. The depiction of design that he offers is based instead on an alternative ontology. While this cannot be empirically verified (no ontology can), he proposes it as a way of extending and critiquing usual conceptions of design practice. No doubt this in turn will be found to have shortcomings of its own.

One of the key tenets of critical literacy that I operate from is that it works to disrupt normalized social practices. In keeping with this tenet, I have crafted this paper in such a way that it somewhat disrupts the normalized format of academic writing by creating an audit trail comprised of artifacts that represent significant moments in my life as a teacher researcher and academic researcher that demonstrate Allan Luke's influence and why, over 25 years after my first step in the dance of critical literacy, critical literacies continue to have relevance in my work with classroom teachers and young children.

The Internet is the dominant text of this generation, and through intentional use it may provide opportunities for the critical literacy infused pedagogy. As we consider the online and offline literacy practices that our students will need as future events warrant, the one constant is change. This requires a continual re-defining, and re-examination of our notions of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions utilized as we read and write online. To empower students using the Internet we need to consider opportunities to move learners from consumers to producers of digital content. More to the point, we need to move learners from content consumers to content curators to content constructors. The next three columns will focus on informing those aspects as they relate to the challenge of moving learners from readers, or consumers to writers, or producers in the digital informational space.

This study aims to reflect on English education from and to the twenty-first century. Therefore, the study examines the concepts of digital literacy and critical literacy and the roles of technology, foreign language and English teacher in the contemporary scene. The study also analyses an initial education course of English teachers from a federal university of southeastern Brazil.  The research methodology is qualitative ( DORNYEI , 2007), and data were collected from a literature to form a corpus of classroom observation in the discipline of Estágio Supervisionado, required for the degree course in Languages – English, and questionnaires and interviews applied to students and teachers of this discipline . The results of the analysis in this study suggest that the teacher education in the university investigated falls short of what is expected for the teaching of English and of the twenty-first century.

School systems in the U.S., particularly in urban contexts, often mirror, reinforce, and maintain the systemic oppression that exists outside classroom walls. As teachers committed to justice and equity, the authors attempted to resist the historically oppressive institution of schooling and imagine new possibilities for learning. The authors found strength and direction by collaborating with each other, listening to their school communities, and reflecting on the work of esteemed educators, particularly educators of color. In this chapter, the authors share their struggles, successes, and new understandings to contribute to ongoing conversations about education justice.