Critical Literacy
Critical Literacy reveals that students critically examine, analyze, and assess the meaning of a text as it refers to issues of equity, power, and social justice to alter a critical stance, response, and/or action (What Do We Mean by Critical Literacy?, n.d.).
McLaughlin and Devoogd (2004) define the critical literacy as below:
It is a process of learning, understanding, and changing over time.
Critical literacy helps teachers and students amplify their logical thinking, seek out multiple perceptions, and be active thinkers in the future.
Learners reading from a critical posture propulsion question about whose are represented, whose are missing, and who gains and who loses by the reading of a text
Reading from a critical stance requires not only reading and understanding the words but "reading the world" and understanding a text's purpose, so readers will not be manipulated by it (Freire, 1970 as cited in McLaughlin& Devoogd, 2004).
They determined the following questions that promote reading from a critical stance
Whose viewpoint is expressed? What is the author's perception?
Whose voices are missing, silenced, or discounted?
How might alternative perspectives be represented?
How would that contribute to your understanding of the text from a critical stance?
What action might you take based on what you have learned?
Television or photographs, who is in the video or photograph?
Why are they there? What does the videographer or photographer tend to influence the audience's perspective?
Who or what is missing from the video or photograph?
Who is silenced or discounted? What might an alternative video show?
What might an alternative photograph look like?
How would that contribute to your understanding of the video or photograph from a critical stance?
What action might you take on the basis of what you have viewed?
What is critical literacy?
What is critical literacy, (Jena Claros, 2020)
Critical Literacy: Children as Changemakers in their Worlds
Critical Literacy: Children as Changemakers in their Worlds, (Okanagan, 2018)
Principles of critical literacy:
McLaughlin and Devoogd (2004) declared, that there are fundamental understanding and notions regarding the relationship between the reader and author to sustain critical literacy. They include the following principles:
The main focus of Critical literacy is power related issues, and it boosts reflection, transformation, and action
Critical literacy concentrates on the problem and its complexity
Reality is complex
• Do not reduce things to the most simple
• Problematize simple statements
• Multiple perspectives help understand any situation
Approaches that evolve critical literacy are dynamical and contextualized in which they are used.
• There are no specific methods of developing critical literacy in all contexts and conditions. However, it depends on the specific context and the time.
• As Freire (1998) observed, this is not possible to export the pedagogical practices without recreating them
Providing an appropriate environment to foster the critical literacy is also an essential key
• Teachers play a multifaceted role in a classroom to promote critical literacy skills in students. First, the instructors need to understand the use of critical literacy and disseminate it to the students.
Methods/ How to start critical literacy?
Juxtaposing texts, photos, videos, and lyrics
Problem posing
- Readers question the author's message from a critical perspective. This technique works well in a variety of instructional settings, including student-facilitated literature circles and online discussion boards.
Alternative texts
Making critical literacy a habit
- Readers have to establish new patterns of thinking to do this
- Readers need to model critical thinking
- Teacher modeling by questioning
- Student lead discussions and online discussions