Critical Literacy

I see connections among the prominent schools of pedagogic thoughts actively talked about in the U.S. and international community and wish to bridge them as I move further to learn about a more innovative and peace-oriented education. I hope to be able to use the insights into all these interconnected issues in informing educational policy making processes in which I may have an opportunity in the future to participate.

Critical thinking started off as some sort of a way to enrich the pursuit of knowledge and truth.  It used to be more of a literary, or epistemological, tradition, but has recently been developed to be more sociopolitical.  In that light, critical thinking marries more happily with critical pedagogy and critical literacy.  Critical literacy, to me, seems to be most loosely defined when it stands alone, but when it is combined with the more radical ideology of critical pedagogy and the latest version of critical thinking, which has become more sociopolitical (e.g. Paul, Elder, and Ennis), it becomes a very interesting field.

I have tried for the past few years to bridge the gaps that exist between the pure language learning and teaching pedagogy and the three schools of thoughts above.  In TESOL (Teaching English as a Second or Other Languages), the emphasis was, if not has been, placed predominantly on linguistic and cognitive and inadequately on the intellectual and spiritual aspects of social practices that are related to and often embedded in language use in the real world.  I believe language education can go much further from where it stands now toward the more exciting, meaningful endeavors that move or change the world at all levels: personal, group, national, regional and global.   I will share my work here when my reflections materialize.

New! My recent reflections on the present and future of critical literacy in relation to structural violence

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

What is critical literacy?: A definition

"We are what we say and do. The way we speak and are spoken to help shape us into the people we become. Through words and other actions, we build ourselves in a world that is building us. That world addresses us to produce the different identities we carry forward in life: men are addressed differently than are women, people of color differently than whites, elite students differently than those from working families. Yet, though language is fateful in teaching us what kind of people to become and what kind of society to make, discourse is not destiny. We can redefine ourselves and remake society, if we choose, through alternative rhetoric and dissident projects. This is where critical literacy begins, for questioning power relations, discourses, and identities in a world not yet finished, just, or humane."-- Ira Shor
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Some resources I consulted when I was first exploring critical literacy and its applications with Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) as a scaffolding tool:

 

  
        My start page

 

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Friends for Peace: Learn about and share with our friends from many parts of the world

  
 
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