Critical Literacy Teaching - linked to diversity, power of specific literacies, access and race

1. Kamil Trzebiatowski
(EAL Coordinator, Kingston-upon-Hull, England)
#TMLondon, 1 April 2015
Teaching Critical Literacy: Including
Diverse Views in Your Teaching
http://valuediversity-teacher.co.uk/

2. What is critical literacy?
The ability to read texts in an
active, reflective manner in
order to better understand
power, inequality, and injustice
in human relationships.
“Text” is a way in which people
communicate using a society’s
conventions.
Enable to understand messages in the
modern world through a critical lens
and challenge the power relations
within those messages.
Teachers to encourage students to
interrogate societal issues, e.g.
poverty, access to education, equity,
and equality to critique the structures
that serve as norms.
Critical
literacy
Adaptedfrom:http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4437

3. Diversity without…
without powerAccess
• Powerful discourses become powerful without understanding
of why and how they became powerful in the first place
without diversityAccess
• No understanding that diversity affects who gets access to
what – history, identity and value are factors
without design or redesignAccess
• Replication of dominant forms; no consideration of how to
change these.
Adaptedfrom:Janks,H.(2013)CriticalLiteracyinTeachingandResearch.
EducationInquiry,vol.4(2).Pp.225-242

4. Diversity without…
without powerDiversity
• Tokenistic celebration of diversity
• No recognition that not all literacies / languages differ in
power
without accessDiversity
• Diversity with no access to powerful forms of language
segregates students
without design or redesignDiversity
• Diversity provides different alternatives and ideas for change
• Without transformation, diversity can be seen as pointless
Adaptedfrom:Janks,H.(2013)CriticalLiteracyinTeachingandResearch.
EducationInquiry,vol.4(2).Pp.225-242

5. “We were doing Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy.”
Acknowledge the various cultural connotations!
She’s dressed in white… a wedding dress.
She’s dressed in white.
… we were talking about the significance of purity and innocence…
I said, “There is something really bothering you… what is it?”
“I can’t get my head round this white connotation.”
“Why?”
“In my culture, white is what a wife wears when she buries her husband.”
It opens up an avenue of interpretation.
Looked at colours from such a different context!

6. Problem Posing
•Who is in the
text/picture?
•Who is not?
Question 1
•Whose opinions are
taken into account?
•Who is marginalised?
Who is not being
listened to?
Question 2 •What does the
author want?
•What does the
author want the
reader to think?
Question 3
•Think of an
alternative
text/picture – what
would it say/show?
Question 4 •How could a reader
use this information
to encourage
equality and equity?
Question 5
Inspired by: Critical Literacy: Enhancing Students’
Comprehension of Text;
http://educationalleader.com/subtopicintro/read/
scholastic/scholastic_343_1.pdf

7. Switching
Gender Theme
Setting Race
Language Emotion
1. Selected
comprehension
questions
2. Then,
imagine an
alternative
version of the
story by
switching race
/ ethnicity /
gender. etc.

8. Images and excerpts:
Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2854377/244MILLION-s-staggering-sum-pay-year-help-children-British-schools-speak-
English.html
[Accessed 30 March 2015]

9. QUESTIONS
BLANKSFORANSWERS
Change
names of
people!

10. Slow Education DOWN!
Recognizetalentsofall
students Deep
learning
Don’trunscaredoftests
Quality of
teaching
Don’tmakeassumptionsand
slowdownyourteaching!
Give your
students a
voice and
power to
transform