Six - First impressions & 6 reasons….

It’s been a little while since I added content for various reasons, not the least of which is the extended impact of the pandemic and then the local floods. Beware when you take on ethnographic research! The barriers are not always predictable. ;) But I can now happily say that data is finally being collected in the two schools! It is very exciting.

First, because the four teachers are eloquent about how they understand critical literacy and how they utilise critical literacy approaches. Stay tuned.

Second, in observing 2 of the teachers teach (so far), I can see deliberate choices being made for critical literacy concepts and pedagogy and there is an interesting range depending on what they are teaching. It may not always be a full blown, blockbuster of a crit lit lesson (whatever that is), but given the constraining conditions within which teachers work, this is no surprise… and I’m not here to teacher bash.

In one school, I popped up unannounced to see the EAL/D/literacy support team and to my delight I saw hand written on the whiteboard something like the following: “2022 - Revisit Critical literacy - Define it; Where is it in the syllabus?; Fun activities for the kids”. This was refreshing because everywhere we are hearing that teachers don’t teach critical literacy; it’s not in the curriculum anymore….etc etc etc. I argue that this is not necessarily the case, not with English language teachers anyway. We just don’t have enough empirical evidence of what is going on. My own research has shown that it is in the Australian curriculum, although in disguised ways that requires teacher knowledge and experience with critical literacy to draw it out. This is not the case in all jurisdictions. In England, there is paltry evidence of a critical approach to learning about language and literacy leaving teachers to go against the grain and develop their own professional learning around critical literacies, or ignore it all together. There is similar evidence in parts of the USA although teachers’ agency to do what they know is right/relevant always thrills me. Critical literacy clearly remains relevant for many reasons which teachers themselves understand, as listed below. The danger is we leave it to the busy teachers to do their own PD and mentoring rather than formalising this so that it is valued.

I asked an experienced teacher of EAL/D learners why she uses critical literacy in her teaching:

If you are a teacher, take some time to write down the ways you think you use a critical literacy approach in your lessons. And how do your learners respond? I’d love to hear from you! jh.alford@qut.edu.au/j/alford@griffith.edu.au

More updates: I will be presenting analysis of some of the emerging data at the AATE/ALEA ‘Hearts, Minds, Stories- Landscapes of Learning’ conference in Darwin in July, 2022, and at the Literacy Research Assoc’n conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in Dec 2022. Yes, I am planning to bust out with the Jimmy Webb song!