Critical Literacy and the A rts

Read the questions and instructions carefully. Write your answers on the space provided. 1. How should arts learning be structured so that students can begin to think like an artist?

2. What are some best practices in teaching that create an active or student- centered learning environment?

3. Why are 21st century skills or personal dispositions important goals for students in arts education?

Choose a grade level and topic. Design instructional plan showing creative classroom activities that will engage learners.

Anderson, M. L. (2003). Embodied cognition: A field guide. Artificial Intelligence, 149, 91-130.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1978). Intrinsic Rewards and Emergent Motivation. In M. Lepper & D. Green. The hidden cost of reward: New perspectives on the psychology of human motivation (p. 211). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Demaris, H. (2012). Motivating music learning through formative assessment and careful planning. In Brophy,T.,& Andreas Lehmann-Wermser, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd international symposium on assessment in music education, The

University of Bremen, Germany. Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc. Dourish, P. (2001). Where the action is: The foundations of embodied interaction.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Eisner, E. W. (2002). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. Retrieved from https://www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_or_ education.htm

Jensen, A., & Palmarini, J. (2014). The national core arts standards: An overview and Q&A. EdTA Conference 2014. Educational Theatre Association: Ohio.

Kress, G. (1997). Before writing: Rethinking the paths to literacy. London:

Routledge. McArdle, F„ & Wright, S. K. (2014). First literacies: Art, creativity, play, constructive meaning-making, in G. Barton (Ed.), Literacy in the arts: Retheorising learning and teaching (pp. 21-37). Cham: Springer-Verlag London Ltd.. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04846-8_2 National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, (n.d.) National core arts standards:

A conceptual framework for arts learning. Retrieved from https://www. o re g o n .g o v / o d e / e d u c a to r-re s o u rc e s / s ta n d a rd s / a rts / D o c u m e n t s / nccasconceptualframework4.pdf. Perso, T., Nutton, G„ Fraser, J., Silburn, S. R., & Tait, A. (2011).T h e A rts' in education: A review of arts in schools and arts-based teaching models that improve school engagement, academic, social and cultural learning.

Darwin: Menzies School of Health Research.

Robinson, K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity? TED talk. Retrieved from https:// www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/ Robinson, K. (2013). Flow to escape education’s death valley? TED talk.

Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_ education_s_death_valley/ Shenfield, R. (2015). Literacy in the arts. Literacy Learning: the Middle Years. 23(1).

CTU-SF L1BPAPY

Photo/Image Attributions:

https://pixabay.com/photos/ballet-swan-lake-ballerina-dance-2124651 /, p 91 https://pixabay.com/photos/artist-finger-painting-art-reliefs-1409714/, p 91 https://pixabay.com/photos/sculptor-steinmetz-arts-crafts-l 791944/, p 91 https://pixabay.com/photos/aladdin-theater-cast-play-drama-886589/, p 91

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to: • characterize critical literacy; • discuss a brief background of critical literacy theory; and • apply principles of critical literacy in designing lessons and classroom activities.

The concept of critical literacy is theoretically diverse and combines ideas' from various critical theories, such as critical linguistics, feminist theory, critical race theory, as well as reader response theory and cultural and media studies (Luke et al„ 2009). Critical literacy is a central thinking skill that involves the questioning and examination of ideas, and requires one to synthesize, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and respond to the texts read or listened to (University of Melbourne, 2018). Critical literacy uses texts and print skills in ways that enable students to examine the politics of daily life within contemporary society with a view to understanding what it means to locate and actively seek out contradictions within modes of life, theories, and substantive intellectual positions (Bishop, 2014). Rather than promoting any particular reading of any

particular group or text, critical literacy seeks to examine the historical and contemporaneous privileging of and exclusion of groups of people and ideas from mainstream narratives (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993). It is a kind of literacy about structures, structural violence, and power systems.

Since the 1990s, critical literacy theorists have outlined emancipatory theories of learning (Freire & Macedo, 1987) that addressed the complex relations of language and power through social critique, advocacy, and cultural transformation (Knoblauch & Brannon, 1993). Educational researchers discuss critical literacy as a theory of social practice, as the negotiation of and the creation of meaning for social justice (Greene, 2008). While there is no single model of critical literacy (as there is no single model of youth organizing), the emphasis on Freire’s (1970) action-reflection cycle of “praxis” has offered participants a concept through which to construct meanings that support their literacy for civic engagement (Lankshear & McClaren, 1993).

History of Critical Literacy Theory

Much of the earliest scholarship on critical literacy is grounded in Freirian pedagogy. In 1987, Freire and Macedo published their expansive volume on literacy and critical pedagogy. In it, they argued that those who are critically literate can understand not only how meaning is socially constructed within texts, but also the political and economic contexts in which those texts were created and embedded (Freire & Macedo, 1987). While Freire and Macedo were perhaps the first to initiate a dialogue around the idea of critical literacy in their collection, it was not until 1993 that Lankshear and McLaren issued what was to become the seminal text devoted to the topic. In it, they stated that literacy is more complex than the traditionally defined skills of reading and writing. Rather, they argued that such a traditional definition of literacy is ideologically aligned with particular postures of normative socio-political consciousness that are inherently exploitative. By contrast, critical literacy emphasized the social construction of reading, writing, and text production within political contexts of inequitable economic, cultural, political, and institutional structures. Lankshear and McLaren argued for critically reflective teaching and research focused on both the forms that literate skills take as social practices and the uses to which those skills are employed.

The authors identified three forms of educational practice that critical literacy can take on, varying by their commitment to inquiry and action: liberal education, pluralism, and transformative praxis. Liberal education here means an approach to disciplinary knowledge where intellectual freedom exists and where disparate interpretations are considered, but inevitably contradiction is avoided and rational argumentation wins out. In pluralism, there is an emphasis on reading to evaluate principles that support a loose conception of tolerance. Tolerance here is aligned with a notion of diversity that is grounded on benevolence toward those who are not mainstream (and in the process

maintains the mainstream). Against these approaches, the authors forwarded “transformative praxis” as that which takes the radical potential of critical literacy into direct emancipatory action in the world. Praxis is here defined through the Freirian (1970) process of naming the conditions of oppression and struggling collectively with others in a cycle of action-reflection-action against such oppression. Lankshear and McLaren argued that a guiding principle behind the processes of transformative critical literacy praxis involves an analysis “attempting to understand how agents working within established structures of power participate in the social construction of literacies, revealing their political implications” (p. 7).

Critical literacy praxis, which Lankshear and McLaren also called “political and social literacies," involves textual studies that are analyzed at the discursive level in which the texts were created and in which they are sustained. While the authors understood that this move might lead to such literacies being seen as “potentially subversive," they forwarded a key distinction centering on the difference between political indoctrination and the development of a critical consciousness-or what Freire (1970) called “conscientization.”

At the turn of the millennium, just before the 2001 re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Janks (2000) posited four possible orientations for future approaches to critical literacy education based on different perspectives on the relationship between language and power: (a) to understand how language maintains social and political forms of domination; (b) to provide access to dominant forms of language without compromising the integrity of non-dominant forms; (c) to promote a diversity which requires attention to the way that uses of language create social identities; and (d) to bring a design perspective that emphasizes the need to use and select from a wide range of available cultural sign systems. Although frequently taken in isolation, Janks argued that it is through the interdependence of these approaches that learners can most fully engage theories and pedagogies of critical literacy.

Critical Literacy and the Arts

The creation of artistic products by an individual and the perception and rejection upon others’ artworks showcase the power of critical literacies at work within Arts contexts. Luke (2000) argues that it is the primary aim of critical literacy to: 1. allow students to see how texts work to construct their worlds, their cultures, and their identities in powerful, often overtly ideological ways; and 2. understand how they use texts as social tools in ways that allow for a reconstruction of these same worlds.

The arts, literacies, and reality are dynamically linked and the understanding attained by critically reading aesthetic texts involves perceiving the relationship between the art, its creator, and its context. Both the practice and understanding of art forms, and being critically literate are interconnected. Indeed, critical literacy makes possible a more adequate ‘reading’ of the world, on the basis of which people can enter into ‘rew riting’ the world into a formation in which their interests, identities, and legitimate aspirations are more fully present and present more equally (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993, cited in Morgan, 2002, p. 6).

Freebody and Luke (cited in Luke, 2000) developed a four-tiered approach to early reading instruction that has now been widely adapted across Australian schools. These approaches are necessary but not sufficient sets of social practices requisite for critical literacy. A recent version of the model offered the following descriptions (Freebody, 1992; Luke & Freebody, 1997): • Coding Practices: Developing Resources as a Code Beaker - How do I crack this text? How does it work? What are its patterns and conventions? How do the sounds and the marks relate, singly and in combinations?

• Text-Meaning Practices: Developing Resources as a Text Participant -

How do the ideas represented in the text string together? What cultural resources can be brought to bear on the text? What are the cultural meanings and possible readings that can be constructed from this text?

• Pragmatic Practices: Developing Resources as Text User - How do the uses of this text shape its composition? What do I do with this text, here and now? What will others do with it? What are my options and alternatives?

• Critical Practices: Developing Resources as Text Analyst and Critic What kind of person, with what interests and values, could both write and read this naively and without any problem with it? What is this text trying to do to me? In whose interests? Which positions, voices, and interests are at play? Which are silent and absent?

There are a number of classroom activities that can be used to apply the aforementioned approaches.

Textual Analysis

Textual analysis can be guided by asking the learners to make their way systematically through a list of questions such as the following: • What is the subject or topic of this text? • Why might the author have written it? • Who is it written for? How do you know? • What values does the author assume the reader holds? How do you know?

• What knowledge does the reader need to bring to the text in order to understand it?

• Who would feel ‘left o ut’ in this text and why? Who would feel that the claims made in the text clash with their own values, beliefs, or experiences? • How is the reader ‘positioned’ in relation to the author (e.g., as a friend, as an opponent, as someone who needs to be persuaded, as invisible, as someone who agrees with the author’s views)?

Another approach for analyzing texts is to use a checklist such as CARS (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, Support), which was originally developed for use in evaluating web sites.

Credibility

Evidence of authenticity and reliability is very important. Tests that help the reader judge the credibility of a text include examining the author’s credentials and the quality of content. It is necessary to look for biographical details on their education, training, and/or experience in an area relevant to the information by asking, “Do they provide contact information (email or postal address,

phone number) ? What do you know about the author's reputation or previous publications”? Information texts should pass through a review process, where several readers examine and approve the content before it is published. Statements issued in the name of an organization have almost always been seen and approved by several people.

Accuracy

Information needs to be up to date, factual, detailed^ exact, and comprehensive. Things to bear in mind when judging accuracy include timeliness and comprehensiveness. We must therefore be careful to note when information was created, before deciding whether it is still of value. It is always a good idea to consult more than one text. Indicators that a text is inaccurate, either in whole or in part, include the absence of a date or an .old date on information known to change rapidly; vague or sweeping generalizations; and the failure to acknowledge opposing views.

Reasonableness

Reasonableness involves examining the information for fairness, objectivity, and moderateness. Fairness requires the writer to offer a balanced argument, and to consider claims made by people with opposing views. A good information text will have a calm, reasoned tone, arguing or presenting material thoughtfully. Like comprehensiveness, objectivity is difficult to achieve. Good writers, however, try to minimize bias.

Support

Support for the w riter's argument from other sources strengthens their credibility. It can take various forms such as writing bibliography and references and corroboration. It is a good idea to triangulate information, that is to find at least three texts that agree. If other texts do not agree, further research into the range of opinion or disagreement is needed. Readers should be careful when statistics are presented without identifying the source or when they cannot find any other texts that present or acknowledge the same information.

Text Clustering

Text clustering involves confronting students with texts which obviously contradict each other. The task is to use whatever evidence they can find to try to make judgements about where the truth actually lies. Sometimes these judgements are relatively easy. News reports, fairy tales, everyday texts are good materials for text clustering.

Wrap Up

• Critical literacy is a vital element to teach pupils in the 21 st century. • Critical literacy is a central thinking skill that involves the questioning and examination of ideas, and requires one to synthesize, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and respond to the texts read or listened to. • Texts are always situated in fields of power, with economic, cultural, and social exchange involved.

Questions to Ponder

Read the questions and instructions carefully. Write your answer on the space provided. 1. Assess your critical literacy skills by answering the following questions with

YES or NO.

a. Do you evaluate your sources before using them in your essays?

b. Do you support your opinions and claims with experts' ideas?

c. Do you read with a critical e y e ?____________ d. Do you manage the vast amount of information you need to read?

e. Do you verify data and information before accepting them?

2. Let us explore your personal literacy histories by recalling and writing below your answers to the following: a. Your first memories of reading (what, where, with whom?)

c. The most important book/s or author/s in your life

d. The main roles and purpose of reading in your life (as a parent, professional, for pleasure, religious purposes, etc.)

Read the instructions carefully. Do what is asked. Write your answers in the space provided. 1. List down the skills related to critical literacy.

Collect a range of reading materials. a. Classify by categories (e.g., requests from charities, public information leaflets). b. When you have worked out five or six broad types, identify: • Who produced them (e.g., public bodies, commercial enterprises, local authorities)

• For whom they are produced

• Why the texts were produced

• Whether each one is relevant to you or not, and why.

c. Choose one text from each category that particularly appeals to you, either because of its style or its content, and discuss with other members of the group.

Bishop, E. (2014). Critical literacy: Bringing theory to praxis. Journal of Curriculum

Theorizing 30(1). Retrieved from http://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/ article/view/457

Freebody, P. (1992). A sociocultural approach: Resourcing four rolls as a literacy learner. In A. Watson & A. Badenhop (Eds.), Prevention of reading failure (pp. 48-80). Sydney: Ashton-Scholastic. Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990) Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), 7-16. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world.

South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garve. Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diversity, and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational Review, 52, 175-186. Knoblauch, C. H., & Brannon, L. (1993). Critical teaching and the idea of literacy. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH. Lankshear, C., & McClaren, P. (Eds.). (1993). Critical literacy: Radical and postmodernist perspectives. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Luke, A. (in press). New narratives of human capital. In S.J. Ball (Ed.), Key readings in sociology of education. New York: Routledge. Luke, A. (1994). The social construction of literacy in the classroom. Melbourne:

Macmillan Australia.

Luke, A. (1996). Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis. In M.W. Apple (Ed.), Review of research in education (pp. 3-48). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Luke, A. (1997). Genres of power. In R. Hasan & G. Williams (Eds.) Literacy in

Society (pp. 308-338). London: Longman. Luke, A. (2001). Critical literacy in Australia. Retrieved from https://www. researchgate.net/publication/285031804_CriticalJiteracy_in_australia. Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1997). The social practices of reading. In S. Muspratt,

A. Luke, & P. Freebody (Eds.), Constructing critical literacies (pp. 185-225).

Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Luke, A., Lingard, R., Green, B„ & Comber, B. (1999). The abuses of literacy. In

J. Marshall (Ed.) Educational policy. London: Edward Elgar. Luke, A., & Luke, C. (in press). A situated perspective on cultural globalisation.

In N. Burbules & C. Torres (Eds.), Globalisation and education: Critical perspectives. New York: Routledge.

Wray, D. (2013). Developing critical literacy: A priority for the 21st century.

Retrieved from http://thegoodproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ critical.pdf The University of Melbourne. (2018). Critical literacy: Developing your critical literacy skills. Retrieved from https://services.unimelb.edu.au/__data/ assets/pdf_file/0011 /2824076/Critical-literacy.pdf

Photo/Image Attributions:

©Photo by: Lowie Guevarra, p 103 John Guthrie [CC BY-SA3.0 (https://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], p 106

A

accuracy, 106 active menu, 95 apologizing, 38 artistic literacy definition, 92 teaching, 95 artistically literate individuals, 94 arts

benefits that education can learn from, 92-93 critical literacy, 103-4 arts education, 92 arts and creativity literacy, 6 attitudes and perspectives, 67

B

background knowledge, 67 Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), 52 bank accounts of Filipinos, 52 basic literacy, 2 “bedlam,” 18 breadth of content, increased, 5 buying goods and services, 49

C

central competencies, 67 co-artist, 95 coding practices, 104 communication technologies, 5, 42 comprehension literacy, 2 compromise, 22 conflicts, 36 contents to patterns, 85 conversation, initiating, 36-37 co-player, 95 Council for Economic Education, 48 cover letters, 42 creative curriculum, 95 creativity, teaching, 94 credibility, 105-6 credit, 50 critical literacy praxis, 103 critical literacy, 66 and the arts, 103-4 approaches, 104 definition, 7, 101 forms of educational practice, 102-3 history, 102-4 reading instruction, 104-5 critical practices, 105 critically literate, 102 cultural education, 18, 19 cultural literacy, 18 challenges, 19-20 in the Philippines, 18-19 cultural sign systems, 103 cyber/digital literacy, 6

D

decoding textual symbols, 2 Department of Education (DepEd), 19, 48 digital immigrants, 68 digital literacy

overlap with digital literacy, 66 teaching, 70-71 media literacy, 6 media messages, 63 motivations, 71 media producer, 63 media representations, 63 Mindanao, 64 money for self-worth, 53 to express power, 53 as social status, 53 morality, subjective standards of, 40 morally responsible person, 81 morally upright individual, 36 movement of people, 17 multicultural inclusiveness, 24 multicultural literacy definition, 6, 20-21 examples, 22 issues in teaching and learning, 23-27 research on, 27-28 teaching, 27-28

N

National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), 18 national strategy for financial education and literacy, 52 nationalistic pushback, 24 necessity, 5 needs vs. wants, 54 negative self-images, 19 new literacies, 4, 5-7 O objective knowledge to contextual knowledge, 85 • objects to relationships, 85 open-ended tasks, 93 Ortograpiya ti Pagsasao nga llokano, 24 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), 17

P

pairing a socially inept child with a socially adept, 38 parents, roles in social literacy, 38-39 * parts to whole, 85 peace, 23 perception, slowing down, 93 persistence of the problem, 25 Philippine Cultural Education Program (PCEP), 18 Philippine educational system, 17 planning, 37 play and playfulness, 95 pleasure seekers, 53 pluralism, 102 political and military dependence, 16-17

political and military interdependence, 16-17 political and social literacies, 103 political expulsion, 17 poly-ethnic origins of knowledge, 21 practical literacy, 2 pragmatic and individualistic view, 40 pragmatic practices, 105

praxis, 103 prejudice, 27 previewing, 37 problem solving, 37 producing media, 64 protecting and insuring, 50 publishing literacy, 66

Q

quality of life, 51 quantity to quality, 85 question of value, 26-27

R

reach, increased, 5 reading and writing, 3 reading, 2, 3 reasonableness, 106 reflective learner, 81 regionalistic pushback, 24 Republic Act 10066, 19 Republic Act 10922, 48, 52 research (Senior High School), 69 research literacy, 66 resource literacy, 66 retirement, 55 Robinson, Sir Ken, 94 Russia, 17

S

saving, 49, 55 selfish gene, 26 selflessness, 22 self-transcendence, 81 situational awareness in the workplace, 41-42 social cues, reading, 37

c o m p o re f'*s 36-37 definition, 6, 35-36 role of parents and teachers, 38-39 strategies, 36-38 teaching, 39-40 technologies and, 42 young adults and, 42 social performance, 36 social practices, 39 social security, 55 social signals, 36 social skills, 36, 41 socially acceptable dress code, 42 social-structural literacy, 66 socio-emotional literacy, 68 somatic experience, 93 spending patterns, 53 spending plan, 54 stock market investing of Filipinos, 52 structure to process, 85 support for the w riter’s argument, 106 surprise, 93

T

teacher as model of compassion, 28 teaching with media, 64 technological communication, 42 text, 2 text clustering, 106 text-meaning practices, 104-6 textual analysis, 105 tolerance, 102 tool literacy, 66 tourism, 18

U

underpinnings, 66 understanding, 2 UNESCO, 3 United Kingdom, 63 United States, 16, 17, 73

V

values, 27 valuing another culture, 26, 27 variable expenses, 53 veracity, 4 Victorian society, 5 viewing media, 64

W X Y Z

wants vs. Needs, 54 Western lenses, 19 white-dominant traditions of education, 21

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