Critical literacy

Critical literacy is a way of teaching students to read any text—whether print, performance, graphic, photographic, artistic, or musical in form—from a position in which the reader questions the intentions of the author, explores the issue from multiple perspectives, considers sociocultural or political conditions, and takes action to interrupt and change current conditions. As critical readers, students are encouraged to reflect upon the content and the intentions of a text and to question and challenge textual authority—rather than simply accept the author’s stance—to understand and respond to an issue, a historical event, a theory, an advertisement, or a call to action. Critical-literacy approaches question relations of power, examine historic and current inequities, and encourage students to seek resources that feature marginalized voices and provide perspectives typically absent in traditional or mainstream communications.

Brief History

Critical literacy has its origins in critical pedagogy, which interrogates schools as sites designed for the development and reproduction of prescribed political identities, fixed historical narratives, and shared social practices produced by the convergence of power, experience, culture, and knowledge. Critical pedagogy invites students to question and challenge the very educational systems and practices that seek to shape them. J. L. Kincheloe locates the foundation of critical pedagogy approaches in the connections between Brazilian emancipatory educator Paulo Freire’s notion of “praxis,” in which one engages in reflection then takes action in the world to transform it, and American educational philosopher John Dewey’s early-twentieth-century ideas of a progressive education founded upon the life experiences of students.

Through critical pedagogy approaches, students learn to question their own assumptions and to notice how their own experiences of the world connect to with larger concerns. In addition, rather than simple reliance upon existing narratives, critical pedagogy values the practice of interdisciplinary inquiry, which produces new questions and prepares students to be skeptical and critical consumers of text.

Louise Rosenblatt’s influential and revolutionary reader response theorywas first introduced in her 1938 publication Literature as Exploration, in which she claimed that each reader brings to the text unique memories, experiences, knowledge, and personality traits to make meaning of the text, thereby interrupting long-held assumptions about the authority of a text to speak for itself. Rosenblatt distinguished between “efferent reading,” in which the reader simply wants to acquire information to find the definitive answer, and “aesthetic reading,” in which the reader engages with the text to make meaning, which results in multiple possible interpretations of any given text. This move away from students’ unquestioning acceptance of the teacher’s explanation of what a literary work “means” toward an aesthetic reader response, in which students engage with a text and contribute their own interpretive theories, played a pivotal role in the emergence of critical literacy pedagogy as a way of preparing students to participate and to contribute thoughtfully in a democratic society.

Overview

H. A. Giroux defines reading from a critical perspective as inviting students to question, challenge, and interrupt the role of schools and of schooling in maintaining hegemonic and systemic power inequities between traditionally defined and bound racial, gender, class, and ethnic groups through textual engagements. M. Lewison, C. Leland, and J. C. Harste explain critical literacy as the practice of encouraging K–12 students to “use language to question the everyday world, to interrogate the relationship between language and power, to analyze popular culture and media, to understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and to consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice.”

Teachers who embrace critical literacy perspectives understand teaching as a political act that is locally shaped, defined, and framed. Students in critical literacy classrooms are encouraged to ask why their world is the way it is and to understand and identify social structures and practices that have resulted in unequal power relationships, whether these power inequities exist in their classroom, in their local community, or in the larger network of humanity. In a critical literacy classroom, teachers work from the assumption that children care about their world and already have the ability to make changes in the world, no matter how young they are; here the teacher is not the transmitter of knowledge but is instead the creator of learning engagements in which students pose questions, analyze texts of all genres and disciplines, question whose interests are served, and notice whose voices are absent or silenced within a social, political, historical, or economic issue.

J. S. Damico identifies “reader reflexivity” as an important critical literacy approach in which readers “evaluate the personal and cultural experiences, emotions, values, beliefs, and biases that they bring to texts and their experiences while reading a text to consider how these inform their meaning-making.” Reader reflexivity thus encourages students to read through what Lewison and others have called the “Four Dimensions Framework,” which includes disrupting the commonplace, considering issues from multiple perspectives, focusing on sociopolitical issues, and taking action. Proponents of critical literacy emphasize that these approaches are important for all students, but are especially essential for populations of students who have historically been marginalized to prepare them to take action that works toward social justice.

As L. B. Soares points out, as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, many pedagogical philosophies and approaches in the United States have tended to privilege the narrowing of the K–12 curriculum to the teaching of disciplinary content that can be readily measured on standardized tests. As a result, many K–12 educators are encouraged to choose, or sometimes required to use, prepared literary texts, standardized classroom assessments, and commercially prepared lesson plans rather than creating their own curricular materials. Educators who adopt a critical literacy stance during a time in which high-stakes testing is the norm are choosing to resist the commonplace practice of limiting the role of teaching to the transmission of discrete facts.

Bibliography

Damico, J. S. “ Reading with and against a Risky Story: How a Young Reader Helps Enrich Our Understanding of Critical Literacy.” Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 6.1 (2012): 4–17. Print.

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Trans. Mayra Bergman Ramos. Reprint. New York: Continuum, 2014. Print.

Giroux, H. A. Interview by Chronis Polychroniou. “Higher Education in a Time of Crisis: Rethinking the Politics and Possibilities of Critical Pedagogy.” CosmoPolis. CosmoPolis, 7 Feb. 2007. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

Janks, H., K. Dixon, A. Ferreira, and S Granville. Doing Critical Literacy: Texts and Activities for Students and Teachers. New York: Taylor, 2013. Print.

Kincheloe, J. L. “Issues of Power, Questions of Purpose.” Classroom Teaching: An Introduction. New York: Lang, 2005. Print.

Lewison, M., C. Leland, and J. C. Harste. Creating Critical Classrooms: K–8 Reading and Writing with an Edge. New York: Erlbaum, 2008. Print.

Robinson, A. “Thinking Better, Whatever One Thinks: Dialogue, Monologue, and Critical Literacy in Education.” Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 6.1 (2011): 21–35. Print.

Rosenblatt, L. M. “A Pragmatist Theoretician Looks at Research: Implications and Questions Calling for Answers.” Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference. Miami, FL: National Reading Conference, 2002. Print.

Soares, L. B. “The Education Students Deserve: Building a Democratic Classroom in Teacher Education.” Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 7.2 (2013): 69–78. Print.