3 Critical literacy
See also section on Functional, cultural and critical literacies in Andrew Stables’ background paper.
Considering issues of sustainability as represented in literature and the media means developing a critical – that is, analytical – approach to all texts. Freebody and Luke argue that effective readers draw on a ‘repertoire of practices’ including being able to:
critically analyse and transform texts by acting on knowledge that texts are not ideologically natural or neutral – that they represent particular points of views while silencing others and influence people's ideas – and that their designs and discourses can be critiqued and redesigned in novel and hybrid ways.
http://www.readingonline.org/research/lukefreebody.html accessed 10th September, 2007
There is also an implicit suggestion in ecocriticism that understanding involves wanting to make changes in respect of environmental issues. These ideas align with recent interest in critical literacy, much of it drawing on work from Australian academics and educators. The Tasmania English teachers’ website has a clear and thorough section on critical literacy and how it might be introduced to pupils, beginning with a list of what it includes:
- examining meaning within texts
- considering the purpose for the text and the composer’s motives
- understanding that texts are not neutral, that they represent particular views, silence other points of view and influence people’s ideas
- questioning and challenging the ways in which texts have been constructed
- analysing the power of language in contemporary society
- emphasising multiple readings of texts. (Because people interpret texts in the light of their own beliefs and values, texts will have different meanings to different people.)
- having students take a stance on issues
- providing students with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values
- providing students with opportunities to take social action.
http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/English/critlit.htm accessed 10th September 2007
It would be worth suggesting that student teachers visit this website as a means of alerting them to the role of critical literacy in English. Building on the work from Section Two where they collected their views on How sustainable development relates to English/literacy teaching ask them to work in pairs or small groups to add to the list. Are there any points on the Tasmanian English teachers’ list above that they disagree with? Once they have debated these aspects of the English/literacy teacher’s role, they might recall recent classroom work that they have observed and consider how far the pupils were being asked to take a critical stance. If there was not much evidence of criticality, how might the lesson(s) have been adapted to allow for a more critical approach?
What is this text about?
Generally, a critical approach to a text asks questions like:
- Who wrote/directed this text?
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is it intended to do? Did the author aim to entertain, inform, persuade, express a view or preference…?
- What is the point of view of the central character(s)?
- What is being taken for granted? What is not being said?
- What connections are being made with other events/arguments/ideas?
- Is it complete? Has it been altered or edited? Is it an extract? If so, who selected it?
This approach can be used for texts which are made entirely of words but equally for picturebooks or screen-based texts.
Student teachers can be asked to look at a picturebook with an explicit environmental theme. For example, Jeannie Baker’s Window, which is a wordless text where each double page spread shows the view from a window looking out on a landscape which changes over time from the point of view of a young person growing up. The reader is invited to look through the child’s eyes as s/he grows up and watches the encroachment of buildings on what was previously open land. However, taking a critically analytical view invites taking a different perspective. What might be the point of view of:
A person who has no home of their own and who has been looking forward to being able to live in one of the newly developed houses?
An environmentalist who fears that the development is destroying the habitat of already diminishing numbers of rare plants or animals?
Someone who is native to the area whose traditional way of life is threatened by the development of the new town?
This activity can be directly transferred to the classroom when studying a text with environmental implications. A novel, short story, poem, film, picturebook or information texts of all kinds can offer opportunities for seeing the other point of view.
How does the text work?
A key issue in any critical analysis is about how the author/director has constructed the text. Traditional text analysis can come into play here, examining:
- the subject matter
- the implied relationship between the writer and the reader: for example, whether the text is written in the first or third person and whether it directly addresses the reader or takes a more impersonal tone
- whether there is dialogue or reportage
- chronological or non-chronological organisation of material
- the structure of the sentences and their effects
- the use of language, for example:
- imagery
- emotive/restrained
- verbs: active/passive; past/present/future; action/stative; modal…
- the text cohesive devices used:
- connectives
- conjunctions
- pronoun patterns
- repetition …
- features of layout, organisation of material, use of pictorial or diagrammatic detail
- the structure of the text as a whole.
Critical scrutiny of the internet
Any print-based text can be used for critical analysis of its stance on sustainability, but the explosion of information available on-line means that there is a pressing need generally for pupils (and, indeed student teachers) to develop critical approaches to internet sources and sites. Information on the internet is not subject to editorial scrutiny so that the most carefully researched information about sustainability sits beside wild polemic.
Ask the student teachers to visit sites which feature sustainability and, in pairs, to use the checklist above (in How does this text work?) to analyse the material offered. They should consider how reliable the source seems to be as well as identifying the value stance of the text.
To support this activity they might visit the November site (http://novemberlearning.com accessed 13th November 2007) which offers a series of useful suggestions about sites which are suitable for this kind of activity.
The student teachers might plan sessions on critical reading for their classes, adapting the various checklists offered in this section as supporting prompts for pupils.
Besides on-line materials, other multimodal texts (texts which are constructed by any combination of the modes: image, gesture/movement, sound/talk or writing) can also be analysed critically for the contribution made by each mode to the effect of the text’s message. The following sections have further suggestions about critical analysis of poetry, film, picturebooks and internet texts.
References
Jeannie Baker (2002) Window. Walker ISBN 9780744594867
See also
Muspratt, S. Freebody, P. and Luke, A. eds. (1997) Constructing Critical Literacies: Teaching and Learning Textual Practice, New York: Hampton Press, pp. 353–387.
 
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