LLED 459 Literacy in the 21st Century: Response 3: Critical litERAcy

Critical litERAcy
Module 4: Critical Literacy

Listening to Luke’s (2011) speech, Critical Literacy (module 4), on why critical thinking and critical literacy development is not an “optional” life skill was inspirational. A critically literate society is something we can all build through simply adjusting our teaching strategies to share with our students the power of questioning.

Many students face everyday barriers including financial, language and transportation in neighborhoods I have worked in. Critical literacy is a skill that may assist these children break the cycle within their own lives. As educators, I agree with the Luke (2011) that with our autonomous freedom and some imagination on how we teach the curriculum, critical literacy can be integrated seamlessly.

Luke (2011) shares numerous examples of how to teach skepticism and how to look behind statements and images to find the function of meaning. What I really appreciated is that he is not trying to add to the workload of teachers. Rather, he is trying to change the way teachers approach their topic and generate educational interest in his craft.

Critical thinking is something I am interested in. I have worked with the critical thinking consortium (TC2) and worked on creating critical challenges using curriculum specific content and grade appropriate teaching strategies. As I was reacquainting myself with the TC2 website and publications I saw a unit on Understanding Images which would be a nice fit with some of the other visual literacy strategies I had read about last week.

http://www.tc2.ca/wp/ - Critical Thinking

I am not exactly sure what Luke’s (2011) approach is to critical thinking. He does not define in detail what his “definition” includes, I think it is more of a perspective be believes students must have. He gives many reasons students must share this perspective but I thought he just glossed over the curriculum connections. He is quite right that students need to question everything.

I think Roland Case (2011) makes it clear that he teaches the habits of mind, which are intellectual tools through a content embedded approach in order to support critical thinking development. I have attached a link for an older interview with him where he explains the need for critical thinking and his approach. It is similar to Allen’s approach but very content specific and has units and lessons to peruse.

http://www.canadianteachermagazine.com/ctm_life_skills/winter05_critical_thinking.shtml

Another strength in the video was Luke’s (2011) explicit reference to the Google phenomenon and the plea for critical literacy development. When he stated the dangers of students not using reliable references could lead to exposure to different political viewpoints and pornography on the web, then people paid attention.

Classrooms today must concentrate on building visual and critical literacy through inquiry based curriculum content. Website accuracy is an area that we all need to build a toolbox for. With the onslaught of websites and images one can retrieve from a single search term in five seconds it is “critical” critical literacy is embedded in the curriculum.

I see a strong theme woven through these first four modules and course readings, which embraces inquiry based learning and language development, visual and critical thinking while acknowledging the diverse use of multimodal materials. As I think about my house analogy I see how space can be configured differently. I see the appeal of an "open" floor plan and the gift of being able to take down walls to "see" the same space used functionally. This picture reminds me of possibility.