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/

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

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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.

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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

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“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!

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

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.

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

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Change names of people!

Slow Education DOWN!

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Quality of teaching

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Give your students a voice and power to transform