On the Road to Becoming More Critical Researchers/ Teachers/ and Information Consumers

A Progress Report

on

A Cooperative Project-Based Inquiry
On the Ways to Becoming More Critical

 By

Snea Thinsan, Rani Park, and Rita Chen

Introduction

This progress report describes our group efforts to understand how Critical Literacy (CL) can be realized through a cooperative project-based inquiry and seek implications for research into CL and for teaching practices.  We are now still at the initial stages, but we have learned quite a lot from our brief experiences. With our limited exposure to research in CL yet growing understanding about CL, we hope to learn more and carry on this project after the end of L750 and plan to write an article and present it at a conference in the near future.

In this project, guided by the conception that there are four dimensions of CL practices (Lewison, et al., 2002), we picked an issue that clearly involves several sociopolitical factors—views of male visitors to Thailand on Thai bargirls—and used group reflection to a story taken from a website run by a white man living in Thailand who elicits stories about Thai bargirls from visitors from all over the world.  Adopting two roles, researchers and participants, it was hoped that the experiences will inform us of what it means to try to reach CL, which is defined by Professor Harste as “a moving target” that involves varied interpretations and details of practices, but generally falls within the four dimensions that Lewison, et al have put forward. We also hoped that our involvement in this project would give us insights into research issues surrounding CL and some pedagogical implications.  More details about the project and what we have learned so far will be described in the following sections.

About the project

Rationale

As students who are taking L750 and are relatively new to the conceptions of CL, we are motivated to explore CL further. Essentially, we are inspired by the knowledge that CL “is a moving target” which generally involves efforts in “disrupting the taken for granted, interrogating dominant perspectives, exposing the political in what was thought to be innocent, and promoting social justice in all kinds of forms” (Jerome C. Harste, L750 Course Syllabus, Fall, 2002).

We set out with an idea that these moving targets might be better realized by exposing ourselves to a task in which a critical, but taken-for-granted issue is studied in a group of three. We believe that the interactions among us will yield insights into what CL can be.  We adopt an approach we call “a snowball approach,” which means that we start with a critical issue and let ourselves roll according to our realizations guided by the four dimensions of CL Dr. Harste offers. We planned to record the activities, our thinking, and reflections that take place during the project. Essentially, a next step in the project is determined by what we as a group have realized through an earlier task and reflections while taking critical stances in an effort to understand the selected issue. After certain time, we will analyze such the data in order to understand CL better, hoping we can see CL differently or at least better. We also hope that the analysis will inform us about research into CL as well as some pedagogical implications.

Goals

We use articles written by foreign visitors to Thailand about their experiences with Thai bargirls, which are made available online on a website hosted by an American expatriate in Thailand, as a starting point. Then, adopting the snowball approach guided by CL conceptions, we set our goals as follows:

1. To explore if and how our views about stories surrounding Thai bargirls change over time
2. To gain insights into what are involved in the process of trying to become critical consumers of web-based materials

For the purpose of this report, we have narrowed down and reshaped the goals to two questions:

1. How did our views about stories surrounding Thai bargirls change over time?
2. What did we do as researchers trying to understand CL better?

We hoped that by trying to answer these two questions, we will find ideas that offer implications for research into CL and for teaching practices.

Procedure

We roughly planned our project as follows:

Stage I:

·        Each of us read an article about a Dutch who has been married to a Thai ex-bar girl and been living with her in Thailand.

·        We wrote a poem and a reflection about the story by trying to allow our culture and biases to drive our writing as responses to the given story.

·        We discussed in the first meeting our roles in and tentative plans for this project.

Stage II:

·        The team met for the second time to:

- Discuss what we each take from the first story and how different or similar our views are.      (The conversation was taped for later analysis)

- Look at the cultural models and issues still left untouched in our reflections, then, write questions we need to ask to understand the issues better and discuss how we can further explore these issues more critically.

- Decide on the final outcomes of this project. Snea sent out a proposal to the group for a later meeting, including:

• A short article on “A critical look at Thai bargirls” to be submitted to the website in which the original stories are published.
• A report on the approaches discovered and our learning experience as a team working toward becoming more critically informed.
• A conference paper and presentation

We then read the second article from the same website containing different views.

In a recent meeting on Nov. 5 from 8:15-11:15 p.m. we agreed on the following:

1.      We see our roles as researchers, teachers and students on the road to becoming more critical consumers of information.

2.      Our final products will include:

2.1 An article to be submitted to the website from which stories about Thai bargirls are taken. The goal is to provide a critical perspective(s) on the issues surrounding bargirls in Thailand, which is also to take a social action.

2.2 A report for L750 describing the process of our experience working as a team in an effort to becoming more critical consumers, well-informed researchers, and better-prepared teachers who will promote critical literacy.

2.3 Continue the project after the class in order to produce a conference paper

Stage III:

The team met for the third time to repeat Stage II, but also bring in new approaches and ideas for the project work. We agreed that we would continue this project until we’re satisfied with the views we have collected on the issues of bargirls and better understood the practices of CL within the four dimensions.

Stage IV:

For the purpose of this report, we met recently to analyze the relevant data (see a list of the data used in this project under Data, Analysis and Discussions). All the conversations have been taped. One member also summarized the major points arisen from each meeting. Each member keeps journal of what he/she learns during the process. All these data will also be analyzed.

Data, Analysis and Discussions
 

The data that we have collected so far include the following:

1.      Summaries of four meetings in which we, the participants, discussed issues that arose and reflected on our learning experiences as researchers and information consumers

2.      Email exchanges in which we shared and/or discussed the following:

• Conceptions and theoretical ideas about CL and research into CL

• Perspectives about Thai bargirls, prostitution, and related sociopolitical factors

• Our reflections on what we read, heard, or thought in response to our exposure to the stories about the Thai bargirls

• The summary of feedback, suggestions and reflections we received from peer discussions conducted in an L750 class

• Reflections on how our views about Thai bargirls changed over time

• Record of what we did and learned as researchers

• Record of our struggles and communications

We try to analyze the data by categorizing the above information into different files and print them out. Each of the participants, now acting as a research team member, separately analyzes the data. We each used the project goals as framework for our analysis. Each of us then wrote up a draft report. After that we all met to compare, refine and merge our analyzed results before we wrote this report. However, this is more like a progress report than a final report.

To make it easier for us to analyze the data and to report and discuss the findings, we handled the analysis and report based on the following questions, which reflect our project goals.

How did our views change over time?

We started by reading the same printed out (with some editing work) article about the Thai bargirls titled “Generalizations about Thai Bargirls,” which was available at http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/reader.html. We then met for the first time to discuss the story and agreed on the next step we would like to take. The snowball was begun and it continued to roll as described in the Procedure section.  What we have found are as follows.

All three of us realized soon after our first discussion of the first story we read that we had known so little about the issue about bargirls or prostitutes. We saw the existence of prostitution as normal and did not feel the need to ask any questions about it. Having read Generalizations about Thai Bargirls we became aware of the gender issues, which later dominated our discussions. Essentially, we started to see prostitution, with regard to Thai bargirls, as related to other forms of women exploitations, including the use of women in ads, the imposed roles on women, and gender inequity.  In the same light, we felt the needs to explore the male voices which dominated the forum on the target website. So, we, in the second meeting, thought that we would need to find answers to the many questions that arose. Importantly, we asked a number of critical questions, which were also asked by our L750 peers during the story discussions in class, including:

• What are the purposes of the website in which these stories are submitted?

• Who is ‘Stickman’—the website owner? What does he do? What else are contained within his website?

• Who are these men who have shared their stories?

• Could we get the missing voices--those of bargirls—on this website?

• What forced these Thai women to become bargirls?

• What do we need to know to understand bargirl situations better?

• ·What’s the background information about this website from which we’ve retrieved stories?

• Was Stickman one of the bar costumers? What’s his intention or motivation through this web site?

• Is “marriage” THE only goal for a woman?

• Can’t women rescue themselves, without men on top?

As we looked back, we felt that we needed to bring in multiple perspectives on issues surrounding the stories about Thai bargirls. We, therefore, agreed in the second meeting that each of us would read more stories on the website, explore the website more closely, and share our findings and reflections through a shared Yahoo email account.

Up to present, there are not as many exchanges as we would like because of time constraints, but having looked at our experiences (the data), three of us appear to grow at different rates and in varied ways.

Snea, despite being a Thai with a lot more background knowledge about Thailand and sociopolitical factors there, admits having been ignorant about bargirls’ issues. Before this project, he seldom challenged these taken for granted issues. He did not ask many questions that he constantly raised in the forum. In all, he admits failing to practice any of the four dimensions of CL in regards to the bargirl issue. However, as the project progresses, he has been asking many questions he never asked. His reflections show that he tries to echo the voices of the bargirls based on his prior knowledge. For instance, he shared in his later email:

-How about a customer whose body odor is so strong and whose breath smells sour!!!  Do these girls have choices? 
-I wonder if these girls also know that they can't sell their bodies forever. Would this awareness affect the way they treat their customers or act the way they are claimed to have done?
-Does being a bargirl sending money to their parents make the patents proud and happy?
-How can the men who went to this country to BUY girls' bodies expect love and spiritually nice treatment? These girls know they do it for money. They need to make money before their bodies are no longer sellable. They cannot trust men who buy flesh and soul for their pleasure.

He has also brought in voices from various perspectives to share with the group. We are all agreed that his demonstrated sensitivity to the issues, or the ability to see many hidden issues and the ability to translate them into questions and actions (of bringing in multiple perspectives), is a result of his richer background knowledge and understanding about the Thai contexts. He, however, sees them as both beneficial and restrictive—restrictive in that he may assume too much based on the knowledge that he claims or thinks he possess adequately.

Meanwhile, Rita expresses how taking two roles in this project confused and frustrated her. However, her reflections after looking back at what she had done and written to the group demonstrate her very interesting interactions within herself and her realization about CL. She wrote to conclude her experiences as follows:

Rani, like Rita, found taking double roles in this project difficult, but has learned a lot from it. She wrote to conclude her experience up to now:

2. What did we do as researchers trying to understand CL better?

Following the stages described under Procedure above, we were to led take several steps that we believe would make the project as instructive to us as possible. The Snowball Approach that was fueled by our group decisions based on our accumulated experience as participants was really helpful in allowing us to see the influences of CL over what we have done in order to become critical information consumers. Stepping out of the role of information consumers to adopt the role of researchers has been a fruitful experience because, based on an initial analysis of what we discussed in our meetings and exchanged through our shared email account, a lot of interesting issues emerge that reflect our progress in learning and perspective change. However, it was not all that easy for the three of us with limited research experience to participate in this project which imposes two roles at the same time. The remarks by Rani and Rita above show how each of us did certain things and developed in different ways based on both our research experiences and beliefs about CL.

To answer the question at hand, here is a list of activities our group has done over a period of about one month.

1.      We read stories as information consumers and reflected our thinking and planned the next step for the project.

2.      We looked out for the relevant issues in the literature on CL to feed in ideas about our research project and to understand CL better.

3.      We met regularly to review what we had done and to discuss what we wanted to do next. We taped most of our meetings for later analysis.

4.      We shared our individual thinking and progress via our shared email account.

            We are still struggling to find ways to analyze our data systematically for this report. Yet, due to our limited research experience and time constraints, the analysis only involved rereading all the data we have and discuss them in light of the two questions we have for this report. Future efforts will include accumulating more data and create a system of coding them.

Implications

Pedagogical implications in CL:

1. Our experiences inform us that web resources, powered by search engines, has a very high potential in providing multiple perspectives and background information on any given issue. The easy, 24-hour access to the resources made available by people of all walks of life makes web resources ideal as a promoter of CL.
    
2. The reliability of the vast amount of information on the web is questionable because anybody can publish their opinions online. We see the need for both the teachers and the students to be able to analyze what they see, hear and read on the web. At the same time, we see the problematic nature of the online materials as a good stimulus for questioning and discussions to promote CL.
    
3. Since the social issue such as that about Thai bargirls motivated us so much to read more about the target issue, we have now come to a conclusion that EFL/ ESL teachers can consider introducing more contents that involve sociopolitical factors in their curriculum. We have noticed how inspired we all were to read more stories about the Thai bargirls, get involved actively in our meetings, and reflect on our thinking and progress. In other words, our group interactions through conversations with peers and discussions among ourselves strongly encouraged us to reexamine our own thoughts and views as well as encourage us to challenge the status quo in the society by asking critical questions reflecting the hidden sociopolitical factors’ roles in a given issue in ways that we never did before. We believe that motivation will be enhanced among students, too.
    
4. The snowball project-based inquiry that we are using is very beneficial in terms of its flexibility which has allowed us to see an issue from many perspectives, question both the others’ and our views, and, especially, negotiate the methods to push the project ahead and the desirable goals as the project progresses. We believe that this same approach can benefit the students very much in ways that will promote critical literacy among them.
    
5. In order for teachers to encourage students to develop their critical perspectives, they should provide a new avenue for students to question and talk about social issues that traditionally were not an acceptable school topic. When social issues are explored and examined on the basis of students’ inquiry, critical literacy instruction will not be limited to only the teachers’ imposition of their own views on the students. Furthermore, providing an avenue for students to conduct the inquiry-based learning will support learner autonomy and ownership in learning of critical literacy, and motivate them to develop the critical perspectives.
    
6. Our experience indicates that background knowledge about the target society / culture seems to be reasonably critical for a better understanding of a given issue. In our case, this need was well met because our team consisted of both outsiders and an insider of the target culture. Even though one person’s explanation or opinion could not represent the whole society / culture, the person could help us see certain aspects that outsiders may not do so by themselves and vice versa. If this is the case, the teachers need to take a role of an informant of an unknown issue or a moderator on some difficult issues less exposed by the students.  In cases where teachers are not knowledgeable enough about a given topic, experts from outside schools should be consulted.

Implications for research on critical literacy:
 

1. Reflective research: During this project, we attempted to examine the feasibility of a new research phenomenon in that we as researchers reflected on our experiences as information consumers and examined any changes in our perspectives of the given issues by using the four dimension of CL to monitor our thinking and movements. This uncompleted research has already suggested a new area of research for us: the effects of using double-roles (as a researcher and participant) in a project-based inquiry on the participants’ growth in light of CL practices. 
    
2. Through the activities we’ve done, Ownership/autonomy in learning was fostered: Keeping in mind that we were to follow the four dimensions, we constantly tried to question the accountability of reading sources and of the providers, and wanted to learn more.  The bargirls stories gradually bridged us to further learning about not only Thai society but also social issues over the world, such as gender issues, social/external factors of prostitution, and typical products of capitalism (money, power, class, and so on)------We started with reflection on stories and expanded it further, based on team members’ inquiry. Later, we wanted to learn about the origin of prostitution. While searching for the relevant information, we learned more about the interwoven influences (e.g., religious principle and its influence on people’s value and belief) on prostitution in Thai society. We obviously got deeply involved in the new knowledge we have acquired. Whether ownership/autonomy contributes to CL and/or language learning achievements, at this stage, appears to us as an interesting research topic to pursue.
    
3. In developing critical perspectives, social interaction with others played a fundamental role. Conversations and discussions both in class and at team meetings led us to reexamine not only the status quo, but also our own thoughts and views. Of course, in the process, we had to struggle with all kinds of confusion and complexity in social structure and belief / value system. Our belief and value systems were disturbed, and we at a point felt so lost that we could define neither the threshold of any problems we were facing nor the possibility of finding solutions.  We think this might be the experience that students may all face similarly along their path to being critically literate. So, a research project to prove or disprove it would be very interesting and the findings will be very useful for both learners and teachers.

Final remarks

We started this project with CL spirits fired up by L750. Many definitions of CL had not offered much of what we could relate to either because of our lack of experience and knowledge in the areas of practices (e.g. K-12, Language Arts, young children) or simply because of our lack of adequate exposure to CL practices to appreciate the discussions and practices we had encountered before the project. Therefore, we eagerly expected that we would be able realize the dimensions of CL through our hands-on experiences. Being greedy for knowledge and insights at different levels, we decided to treat this project more as an inquiry project than as a formal research task so that we can also find some implications for both research and pedagogic practices.  The snowball will continue to run and we hope to be able to find a more solid framework for our next steps. Our dreams are to be able to experience the four dimensions of CL and share the unexplored and unsaid with the respective communities, including CL, TEFL, TESOL, and language teacher education.

To end this report in a fashion that may satisfy the L750 course objectives more, we would like to share the tentative perceptions that we have about CL. Having exposed ourselves to the tasks to promote the offered dimensions of CL, we see at least two hidden dimensions among or within, or maybe outside, the four dimensions.

First, we think that to be able to have an awareness of the problems with the taken for granted and thus ask the right questions to bring in the relevant multiple perspectives, the learners need to have an ability to see the hidden issues in the language used and its linguistic context/elements, too.  This is a dimension that is required among the EFL teaching and learning communities, but is missing in the four dimensions.  Our initial feeling is that EFL students may find it difficult to move on to any of the four dimensions unless they have an adequate understanding of the issue they are reading, listening or viewing.  Language and cultural barriers come with the strange texts written by people from a different culture for the hidden purposes that students and teachers may not be aware of. Our final take on this at this minute is that there needs to be an initial dimension of CL practices in EFL context, as which we name “Enabling the learners’ to perceive both the explicit and hidden meanings of given texts.” We can include efforts to help the students understand the text adequately with the help of linguistic clues and other tools such as dictionaries, L1, and the teacher/expert as an informant of the unfamiliar.

Second, our experience in this project informs us that the first three dimensions led all of us to a stage in which we were drowned in the pool of contradicting realities. We were led to see the ignored problem as a real problem, and we then felt the need to find answers to the many questions we inevitably had to ask. At a stage, we became shocked by the many sociopolitical factors that are involved. Worse, we were presented with moral dilemma. The reality appears to be gray instead of black and white. Now, the problem is, to take social actions, we need to compromise between the two or more options within the moral dilemma. The need to make a wise compromisation is therefore a hidden dimension somewhere before we can take actions to promote social justice.

We hope to be able to understand these two emerging dimensions more closely as we proceed with this project.  Thus, we are so grateful for what L750 and this project have led us to. Thank you very much, Professor Harste.

Reference

Harste, J. (2002). L750 Course Syllabus, Fall, 2002.

Lewison, Flint, and Van Sluys. (2002). Taking on Critical Literacy: The journey of the newcomers and the novices. Language Arts V. 79 (5), pp 382-392.

Appendix

Appendix I: The Snowball Effect Chart

Please click to enlarge and close the window to return to this page.

Appendix II: A Simplified Snowball Chart: Dimensions of the issues