English and the Curriculum

Food for thought

Politically incorrect, politically literate? Watch the clip below from The Office.

1. What is critical literacy? There is no one precise definition of critical literacy - see Knobel's chapter in your Reader, however, if pushed, a reasonable definition is that critical literacy is an approach to the teaching of language, text and literacy that examines how language and texts shape how we view reality, how we think, and how we act in the world. A critical approach, for instance, examines texts as products of social, political and historical 'contexts'. It examines how language can be and is used to construct certain views of the world, events and people. It examines how 'normative' power shapes language and text and our ideas about what is true and normal. It illuminates how there is no single reading of a text - that our reading of texts is shaped by such things as individual, group or social knowledge, values and beliefs.

The following video and PowerPoint slideshow provide introductions to critical literacy. View these and the answer the following: what kinds of questions does a critical literacy approach encourage teachers and students to ask of texts?

2. A critical literacy approach encourages teachers to ask certain questions of texts, such as:

• What is the purpose of this text?
  
• Who was involved in its production and how might this shape how it has been constructed and the ideas it promotes?
  
• Who is the text’s intended audience?
  
• What is the social, economic and political context of the text’s production and how has this affected its construction, and how people read and use it?
  
• What are the ideas, values and belief embedded in this text?
  
• What assumptions does this text make?
  
• What assumptions does the reader need to make for this text to make sense?
  
• What versions of reality does this text and our readings or interpretations of it promote? 

3. Critical literacy approaches often examine the representation of social groups, events and issues. Race, gender and class are common themes in these analyses. Often critical analysis invites the reader or viewer to question and interrogate commonsense representations, to examine how texts position to reader to think and read in certain ways, and to reflect on the assumptions made by readers or viewers in their reading of texts (because these assumptions often contribute to the text making sense - change the reader's assumptions and the text might not make sense anymore). Below are some clips to get you thinking about the influence of 'norms' in how we see and act in the world.

4. Below are some critical literacy strategies: