Response 1

FALL 2004

The first two readings as per the Conversation and Uncertainty workshop are wonderful pieces to have begun delving into with regards to Literacy.

I quite agree with Walter MacGinitie when he states that “uncertainty is frightening”. He is quite right. It is this very same fear of the unknown that always seems to invoke our most deep-rooted emotions, thereby putting us on edge. How interesting to read that Andrew Manning correlates this feeling of being on the edge with actual learning. I am beginning to wonder if I can even go so far as to say that existing on this edge might well bring about our best learning.

With regards to literacy and literacy learning, I feel very much in the dark, having never taught in a regular classroom setting. In this light, I feel very much uncertain about this course (in terms of having something illuminating to say), but I am willing to embrace this uncertainty that I feel.

To be a good teacher, one must have doubts. Believe me, I have many of those!

To be a good teacher, one must both accept and acknowledge that he/she will always have much to learn. Believe me, I am far from having all the answers. In fact, I am not sure if I even have all the questions!

There seems to exist much irony between the envisaged (or envisioned) curriculum, as set down by the Department of Education, and the real curriculum. I have often asked myself, how is it that governmental department individuals (whose contact with students is limited or nil) are the ones who create the curriculum that teachers are expected to implement in the classroom? The answer to this very question continues to elude me. I quite agree with Andrew Manning in that it is time to “reclaim the classroom”.

Countless atrocities are committed by individuals who absolutely, and without reservation, believe themselves to be right, as is brought to the fore by Walter MacGinitie. This may invoke visions of war, famine and natural disaster to most. Despite the drastic comparison, can we not philosophically say that atrocities are being committed within our very classrooms when, at the upper levels, regurgitation appears to have more importance than actual learning? This is what creates stagnant learners.

Not only do we all learn different things, but we all have different learning styles. We need to accept and work with these learning styles, be they auditory, visual or tactile/kinesthetic. We need to continue to learn which accommodations best meet these learning needs. This is beginning to happen, courtesy of Pathways, but it is not without its downside. Married with large class sizes and literacy difficulties, can one teach a Math course to 40 students when at least 10 significantly struggle with reading of text? How can we best embrace the Pathways documents? In failing to provide teachers with the much needed supports (i.e. student assistants for academic reasons for the Criteria F and/or Criteria G student), we are also failing individual learners. If, as a result of literacy learning difficulties, they do not meet with success in the school environment, what message of learning does this send?

Life is not a transmission of knowable facts. Life is about learning. As responsible educators, we must learn to create better classrooms that allow for and encourage learning. We must allow for our students to make the much needed connections between personal experiences (what is known) and learning (what is newly experienced). It is only in having experienced this ourselves that allows for the lightbulb moment that Oprah Winfrey is so fond of reiterating.

I appreciate the fact that every new connection changes what we know. How delightful to know that we are dynamic individuals. I welcome the process whereby both the knower and the knowing change on a frequent basis, hoping that I model it well for my students.

How does one do this? By learning to abandon the quest for perfection and certainty.

Response 2

WINTER 2005

Heath: “the culture children learn as they grow up is, in fact, ways of taking meaning from the environment around them”.

Harris: talks about coming to know the world by way of a subject, the knower and an object (the world to be known).

Paulo Freire: states that the world and men do not exist apart from each other; they exist in constant interaction, hence, the world is the context for existing and knowing.

Guba and Lincoln: talk about individuals attempting to make sense of their experiences through interaction (constructivist approach) where making sense of the interaction (engagement with others) leads to the development improved joint constructions with values providing the basis for ascribing meaning.

Marjorie Siegel: states that learning is a social process in which students actively construct understandings, using multiple ways of creating/demonstrating knowledge and meaning: oral language, music, dance, visual arts (draw, paint, collage).

Étienne Wenger: we are social beings who actively engage in the world (communities of practice) in order to construct meaning.

Britton: “We construct a representation of the world as we experience it … a cumulative record of our own past”.

In keeping with each of these points, all of us have ways of talking, listening, acting,  interacting, believing and valuing that are privy to a specific discourse (social identity) as discussed by James Paul Gee in Discourses and Literacies. Our primary discourse (first social identity) is mastered through a combination of scaffolding and interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse.

“As parents and their children interact in the pre-school years, adults give their children, through modelling and specific instruction, ways of taking from books” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 258). In some communities “these ways of schools and institutions are very similar to the ways learned at home; in other communities the ways of school are merely an overlay on the home-taught ways and may be in conflict with them” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 258). Heath speaks to the mainstream where a literate tradition is evident and children succeed in school. She also speaks to the non-mainstream where there exists no literate tradition; hence, these children are not likely to succeed in school.

James Paul Gee (Discourses and Literacies) states that Discourses are ways of being in the world. It is through one’s Discourse that one displays membership to a particular group or network of individuals. It is our primary discourse (first social identity) that is mastered through scaffolding and interaction with people who are Discourse adepts. Generally speaking, it is through exposure to models, trial and error, and practice within our social network groups that we come to control our first language. Gee states that “Discourses are mastered through acquisition, not through learning” (page 138). What happens, then, when one’s primary Discourse is in serious conflict with the secondary Discourse of school, especially as Gee states that “traditional schools/classrooms are poor at facilitating acquisition” (page 146)? I believe this to be connected to what Heath is saying above.

Étienne Wenger states that our personal perspectives on learning matter. Do we believe that knowledge consists solely of information stored in the brain? I, for one, do not. On the other hand, do we believe that the information stored within the brain is but a small part of knowing, and that knowing involves both active participation within one’s social community as well as other communities of practice? This is the perspective that I fully embrace.

I also believe, as Britton states in Language and Experience that we construct (and reconstruct) a representation of the world as we experience it. As experiences change, so does one’s representation of the world. Knowing that we are social beings with differing experiences of the world, we cannot expect that all representations of the world will be the same, for they cannot. “Our world representation is a storehouse of the data of our experience” (page 28).

How can we then, knowing what we know about ourselves as social beings, work toward taking the child from where he/she is to where he/she needs to be?

We speak of the literacy tradition as pertaining to different components; namely, reading, writing and oral language. Each community has “rules for socially interacting and sharing knowledge in literacy events” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 259).

Mainstream

[1] bedtime story, [2] initiation-reply-evaluation (central feature of classroom lessons),[3] what-explanations (utilized in school),[4] any initiation of a literacy event makes interruption acceptable, [5] success in school

Roadville

[1] bedtime story, [2] adults teach them how to talk, [3] cooperative discourse is practiced, coached, rewarded, [4] adults believe in instilling proper use of words,[5] children introduced to bits and pieces of books,[6] adults use print to entertain, inform, instruct, [7] children introduced to pre-school workbooks, [8] adults do not extend content (habits of literacy) beyond book reading … do not engage in commentary upon seeing an item/event in the real world and making a comparison to a similar item/event in a book, [8] require children to repeat from books and answer questions about contents (nursery rhymes, alphabet books, books about animals, simplified Bible stories), [9] coach children in the re-telling of a story (almost as if pre-composed or pre-scripted in head of adult), [10] perform well in initial schooling stages, [11] if asked to write a creative story, they retell from books and rarely provide emotional/personal commentary, [12] begin to fail rapidly by Grade 4

Trackton

 [1] bedtime story, [2] children learn to talk, [3] children go to school with certain expectancies about print,[4] children have a keen sense that reading is something one does to learn something one needs to know, [5] parents do not simplify their language, focus on single-word utterances, label items or features of objects in books or environment, [6] do not decontextualize: heavily contextualize nonverbal and verbal language (they, themselves, must select, practice, determine rules of production and structuring), [7] seem to develop connections between situations/items not by labels and features, but by configuration links, [8] face unfamiliar types of questions when go to school (ask for what-explanations, identify items by name, label features), [9] generally score in the lowest percentile reading readiness tests, [10] do not sit at desks and complete workbook pages, [11] their ability to metaphorically link 2 events/situations are not tapped into, [12] seem not to know how to take meaning from reading, [13] expression of themselves on paper is very limited (oral stories better), [14] continue to collect very low or failing grades and many decide by end of Grade 6 to stop trying

These children, simply because they have learned different methods and degrees of taking from books, respond differently.

Roadville children have less exposure to content of books than do Mainstream children. As they have been trained to be a passive learner, they must “learn to be active information-givers, taking from books and linking that knowledge to other aspects of their environment” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 280). Trackton children use “narrative skills highly rewarded in upper primary grades” and are able to “distinguish a fictionalized story from a real-life narrative” but they seem to have skipped learning to label, list features, and give what-explanations (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 280). It also appears that reason-explanations and affective comments are the next step in the literacy hierarchy.

In keeping with our social natures, can we not assist in directing our students to acquire these pertinent skills through modelling, trial and error and social practice within the school (secondary) Discourse? After all, Gee states that “Discourses are mastered through acquisition, not through learning” (Discourses and Literacies, page 138). This also reflects the enquiry model, in contrast to the transmission model, as proposed by Marjorie Siegal in More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning.

Enquiry Model

• learners see themselves as knowledge makers

• learners find problems worth pursuing

• learners frame problems worth pursuing

• learners negotiate interpretations

• learners forge new connections

• learners represent meanings in new ways

Transmission Model

• instructional routines

• no ambiguity in learning

• no risks to be taken

• no new knowledge to be made

• passive learners

“Instructional strategies involving transmediation, the process of translating meaning from one sign system (such as language) into another (such as pictorial representation), are critical to enquiry oriented classrooms because they promote the kind of thinking that goes beyond the display of received meaning to the invention of new connections and meanings” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 456). Throughout this very course, we have been involved in sketch-to-stretch activities which is clearly representative of transmediation. As an adult, this type of activity can be a very awkward and difficult one to engage in due to the fact that it is unfamiliar. If one were to engage their students in this exercise on a routine basis, one would allow all students (Mainstream, Roadville and Trackton) to display their knowledge/understanding without feeling unworthy. “Learners must actively transform the text to make it their own” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 463). We, as teachers, must give them both permission and space in order to do just this, as transmediation “promotes generative and reflective thinking” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 470). 

Response 3

WINTER 2005

I used to dream of being a teacher and having access to a multitude of books. Even from a young age, books were representative of knowledge, of everything that I wanted to learn. It was a delight for me to go to school because of the many books, and yet, after having read The Importance of Pedagogy, I kept reflecting on the Teacher A versus Teacher B comparison, knowing that I had been educated by many within the Teacher A model, and yet, I still wanted to be a teacher. Why? What was it that I hoped to be able o achieve?

Teacher A

• feels society is generally fair and open

• believes people can succeed if they want to

• believes people can succeed if they make the effort

• believes much is possible when people apply themselves

• discipline, perseverance, effort are the key words

Teacher B

• feels society works against particular groups of people

• believes society rewards the privileged and penalizes the unprivileged

• believes no matter how hard individuals work, success is unlikely for many

• believes social change is what is needed (in order to make society is fairer and more democratic)

In the end, I opted not for regular classroom training but specialist training so as to work with the needier of the school population (mentally and physically challenged). To date, I have dedicated nearly 20 years to the realm of Special Education. Not having taught to the mainstream of the school populace, it is still clear to me that we have been giving too much attention (time) to the content of the curriculum (and is clearly being reflected in the need that our teachers feel must be spent teaching to the CRT’s) and not enough attention (time) on how best to teach the curriculum, given the ever changing needs and belief systems of society.

Pedagogy. An interesting word. Talk about trying to wrap my tongue around how to pronounce the word, let alone assimilate the meaning. One’s method of teaching is one’s pedagogy; hence, one’s method of teaching reflects one’s personal position with regards to power, authority, work and learning. I am in total agreement with the four propositions presented, each of which demonstrated the importance of teaching, or pedagogy; namely, (1) students learn from how we teach as well as from what we teach; (2) students learn critical lessons from how we teach that have lasting effects; (3) decisions made on how we teach reflect basic fundamental philosophical and political choices; and (4) a wider and more varied pedagogy will make classrooms more interesting/rewarding/effective.I quite agree with the connection that K. Osborne makes between “assertive discipline” and education. “No child will stop me teaching for any reason”, the key message behind “assertive discipline” is not a philosophy that appeals to me. Like politics, pedagogy can never be neutral. We all make choices with respect to the pedagogical approaches and techniques we decide upon, which have much to say about how we view both authority and power.

The traditional view of teaching reflects the transmission model, a pedagogy that assigns “one particular role to teachers – active, dominant, powerful – and another to students – subordinate, docile, powerless” (Some Recent Pedagogies, page 27). This is a method that I do not embrace at all for I do not believe that students are “clean slates” or “empty vessels”. It does not sit well with me that our current public school model has attached itself to this pedagogy. I appreciate the philosophy behind the tradition of inquiry and discovery, not because this approach to pedagogy that has had “obvious consequences for the roles of teachers and students” (Some Recent Pedagogies, page 31). I applaud how such has “drastically reduced the importance of transmission, and put much greater emphasis on students’ own ideas and contributions” (Some Recent Pedagogies, page 31). Having learned that our brains our continually learning, it is clear that children are active learners, as are we. We must also remember that this “discovery” learning “does not free the teacher from responsibility. Instead, it makes the teacher responsible for ensuring that what is discovered is educationally valuable” (Some Recent Pedagogies, page 34) for it is this approach that lends itself to “teaching students a problem-solving method capable of general application, both inside and outside school” (Some Recent Pedagogies, page 35).Would we want any less for ourselves? I think not.

For myself, teaching has never been about authority and power, although one does have to maintain a sense of control with respect to the classes they teach. To read Talcott Parsons’ definition of school bothered me; namely, that schools are “a sort of half-way house that moves children from the subjective, personal emotion-laden world of the family to the impersonal, rational, objective world of society at large” (The Importance of Pedagogy, page 17). These very words, impersonal, rational and objective, seem to equate to the prevalent societal view of materialism as opposed to actual understanding (caring for) the individual. Is this what we really want?

In addition, “the way in which students experience authority and power is not only important in itself, it also has important consequences for students’ life beyond school and for society at large” (The Importance of Pedagogy, pages 17 and 18) which arises, largely, from the pedagogy that teachers, themselves, adopt. Like K. Osborne, I believe that education can lead to the creation of active, critical and participatory citizens (students). I feel, very strongly, that this is the issue we need to contend ourselves with.

Response 4

WINTER 2005

I was first introduced to Frank Smith while in attendance at Acadia University. He is most accurate when he talks of there being some extravagant literacy claims, which also encompass both literacy instruction and literacy research.

If I may interject some observations pertaining to the school in which I am employed as a specialist. There seems to exist much controversy with respect to the CRTs. Over the past 4 years, our school has scored extremely low with respect to primary CRT results; so low, in fact, that our previous Director of Programs (Dr. Barbara Barter) became quite involved in the politics of how to “solve” the problem. Our primary teachers were asked to evaluate and critique results while also devising possible solutions in order to “correct” the problem. Weekly visits from the Language Arts coordinator and the district Reading Recovery Training Specialist became the norm.

Literacy is not a set of skills and competencies to be learned. Unfortunately, CRT scores (which can be directly equated to that of normed, standardized tests) seem to indicate otherwise; hence, our teachers are feeling that they have no choice but to teach to the CRTs themselves. A shocking state of affairs, if you ask me!

Quite simply, literacy “is an attitude toward the world” whereby learning to read and write becomes both possible and productive (Overselling Literacy by Frank Smith, page 55) when we fully understand (come to terms with) and accept that literacy is a social practice. The war should not be on the illiterates of the world. This is just a round about way of not dealing with the cultural/economic/social issue as pertains to literacy. To use such terminology that compares illiteracy to a disease to be treated or cured, an epidemic that must be eradicated or an enemy that must be wiped out merely shows emphasizes just how little respect we actually have for each other.

“Individuals don’t become literate from the formal instruction they receive, but from what they read and write about, and the people they read and write with” (Frank Smith, page 57). Not only is literacy a social practice, but such is also true with regards to learning: “a simple consequence of the company you keep” (Frank Smith, page 57).

If we discriminate against minority groups, women, indigenous peoples, low class persons, to name but a few … because they are illiterate and we are not, what is that we are really saying about the company that we keep?

If, indeed, “we wish to create democratic, inclusive schools that make room for the voices of all our citizens” (A Political Critique of Remedial Reading Programs: The Example of Reading Recovery by Curt Dudley-Marling and Sharon Murphy, page 463), then discrimination can no longer be tolerated.

To have read that “… school literacy does not just involve mastering a set of technical skills for making sense of print. It also involves learning to read in ways appropriate to dominant groups. Learning to talk about language, learning to talk like books, and learning to tell fanciful stories are not about learning to read as much as they are about learning to read, write and talk like White, middle class people” (Curt Dudley-Marling and Sharon Murphy, page 464), was an absolutely horrifying revelation. To insist upon such serves merely to maintain the status quo. I find this totally unacceptable.

All of us use literacies to shape our “values, ideologies and identities, and to design and redesign the practices of civic and community life” (Getting Over Method: Literacy Teaching as Work in New Times by Allan Luke, page 306). Who am I to say that my literacies are the correct ones?

Prepackaged instructional programs are not the answer to increased literacy. North American literacy seems to be pre-occupied with the new materials and approaches that are introduced every year. This is merely a “distraction from what seem to be the central issues that ultimately influence who succeeds and fails” (Allan Luke, page 308).

Teaching has become a matter of coping with government downsizing and cutbacks. This will only serve to intensify the workload, leading to additional deskilling of teachers. “The press and politicians have become artists at playing the literacy card, directly and indirectly blaming schools and teachers for systemic economic and social problems, from unemployment and underemployment to linguistic and cultural change in communities, to shifting formations of cultural identity and family” (Allan Luke, page 311).

If we learn to acknowledge literacy as a social practice, we can learn to challenge school discourse on ideological grounds. In keeping, this “enables us to see students not as illiterate, but as differently literate, not as deprived of literacy experiences, but possessing different literacy experiences” (A Political Critique of Remedial Reading Programs: The Example of Reading Recovery by Curt Dudley-Marling and Sharon Murphy, page 464). Surely it is now time for teachers to take back what belongs to them (the classroom) so that education can truly begin to lead to the creation of active, critical and participatory citizens (students).

Response 5

SPRING 2005

Having never been employed as a regular classroom teacher, I have never looked upon myself as a teacher of literacy. In this light, I have never had to apply as much thinking to what literacy entails. This is why I am enjoying this course, despite some of the awkward moments.

As a specialist teacher who works with severe Learning Disabled students, part of my course focus has been to assist these students with skills that will better allow them to break the code (graphophonemic system). In both feeling and seeing how sounds are physically made, we focus on 28 consonant sounds (including the borrowers: c, qu, x and y). We track these sounds by way of mouth pictures, colored blocks and letter symbols. They are introduced to the 15 vowel sounds (vowel circle) and associated mouth picture labels that then lead to CV, VC and CVC tracking of syllables, by way of mouth pictures, colored blocks, letter symbols. Such is applied to both spelling and reading activities. There are also orthographic expectancies to be taught. For each student in question, both Psycho-Educational and S/L assessments indicate a weakness in the area of phonemic awareness/segmentation and pseudo-word decoding; hence, they become a recipient of this program. Generally, they are quite apt with regards to the text participant, text user and text analyst modes of the same model. I enjoy knowing that I am assisting with the remaining piece of the Four Resources Model puzzle, put forth by Peter Freebody and Allan Luke, that they have great difficulty with. In this way, I hope that I am serving to add to their overall literacy education.

Freebody and Luke write that “literacy education is ultimately about the kind of literate society and literate citizens that could and should be constructed”. The emphasis here is my own. A profound statement of this caliber continues to take me back to Paulo Friere and his strong belief system regarding the poor living in Brazil. At some point, I fully intend to do research with regards to Canadian classrooms that may well be applying this model to their classroom teaching.

It is my belief that many individuals do not accurately understand literacy and literacy education, for it is this very segment of the population that believes teaching and learning are mere matters of skill acquisition and knowledge transmission. Therein lies the problem. The question that we must begin asking of ourselves becomes how does one educate individuals to the reverse?

Freebody and Luke state that literacy education is all “about building identities and cultures, communities and institutions … about access and apprenticeship into institutions and resources, discourses and texts”. The Four Resources Model speaks of four practices (code breaker, text participant, text user and text analyst), with each “being necessary for literacy, but in and of themselves, none is actually sufficient for literate citizen/subjects”.

I see this statement as serving to further the job that I am doing. Becoming a better code breaker, in and of itself, will not allow my students to become more literate, but it does build upon the specific area of practice that they show deficiencies in so that they will be able to better round out their overall repertoire of literacy skills.

In Examining Our Assumptions: A Transactional View of Literacy and Learning, the authors make mention of functional language situations where all components (namely, the graphophonemic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic systems) are allowed to transact with other systems (such as art, music, math, gesture, drama) which naturally co-occur. This is the state of the world in its reality. This is what needs to be fully realized by the multitude as literacy. I fully appreciated the fact that these authors also took the time to compare/contrast/define the term ‘scaffolding’ (where one assumes the adult is in charge, simplifying, manipulating, structuring the environment for learning) with ‘tracking’ (processes or strategies actively engaged in by both participants who are seen as actively structuring the event). They also made mention of Vygotsky as having helped individuals see that thought and language transact, together becoming more than their individual and independent selves.

Vygotsky was also referenced in the online article, Further Notes on the Four Resources Model by Freebody and Luke … “all teachers should have a training in: critical discourse analysis and critical literacy, second language acquisition, related critical social theory and Vygotskian sociocultural learning theories” reiterating that the four resources model is “one way of gluing together these approaches.” Just enough to tweak my interest in wanting to do some further research on Vygotsky.

The criteria we hold for what makes a literacy experience good for us cannot be used to judge the value of a literacy experience for another. This must be done by each language learner on his or her own terms. This cannot be stressed enough. Likewise for the fact that the process children engage in is not a pseudo form of the “real” process; it is that process.

In Parallels Between New Paradigms in Science and in Reading and Literary Theories by Constance Weaver, she writes that modern subatomic physics speaks of transactions between entities. What a reader brings to the text (schemata: lifetime of knowledge and experience) is crucial in determining the meaning. Meaning is the continuous process of transaction between the individual and the environment, between old schemata and new. Due to the fact that there exists constant interplay between and among levels, processing being as much (or more) top-down (schemata to words or letters) as bottom-up (letters or words to schemata), each level potentially affects all other levels at the same time. When the reader interprets a text in a particular way, he or she simultaneously negates, for that particular moment in space/time, all other literary works. This is what they refer to as the “quantum leap”. Thus concepts from science parallel a model of language processing.

In Toward A Unified Theory of Literacy Learning and Instructional Practices by D. Taylor, it bothered me to read that “when an individual does not fit the instructional training program, “problems” are diagnosed and “remediated,” using more intensive doses of linearly sequenced decoding skills. Children are labeled and pigeon holed, and their own learning is denied” (page 33), for this has been my experience as a Special Education teacher. They go further to say that we must “give up the security of prepackaged programs built upon stage theories and stop trying to fit children’s early reading and writing experiences into some model or other. This is the only way that we will ever be able to see how language is both constructed and used by children when adults are not blatantly distorting the process” (page 34). This seems to say, to me, that all children will progress at their own pace, if they have not been disenfranchised, if their experiences have not been marginalized. The development of reading and writing is very complex. As educators, we must try to understand literacy from the child’s perspective, as has been clearly evident in the provided examples of literacy biographies that show the functions, uses, and forms of written language in very personal ways.

This article also makes mention of three key questions to ask children in the evaluating of their own literacy development; namely, (1) How have you changed? (2) What do you do well? (3) How do you want to improve?

I appreciate these questions, and see the validity to their very asking, in that serve to show that children and their experiences are valued and have merit. We need to see more classrooms where teachers and children work together, becoming co-informants, as the reading and writing strategies of the “one serve to inform the other”. This particular approach clearly enables teachers to rethink the ways in which they can provide realistic instruction that make sense to the children and to themselves. It also enables the children to become involved in personal evaluations of the ways in which they are becoming literate.

When we arrive at the fork in the road, unsure of which direction to take, clearly, this is the road (approach) that must be taken.

Response 6

 SPRING 2005

I cannot begin to tell you how much I am enjoying this Masters of Education (Literacy) program. Many things are now becoming clear, a key point being that the more I read about the theories and processes of reading and writing, the more I come to the complete realization that I have never truly thought about such until now; hence, I have taken much for granted with respect to the very processes akin to literacy.

While reading and rereading from Beyond Comprehension: Poststructuralist Readings in The English Classroom, I found the first several reading attempts to be frustrating ones in what they were proposing; namely, that ” … readers do not make meanings out of their personal sense of self in conjunction with what a text says, but rather, the meanings readers assign to texts are already available to them before they begin to read the words on the page (page 64).” They went even further to say that ” … experience can be read as cultural rather than as personal and that readers fill gaps not with personally created ideas but with meanings that are already available in their cultural at particular points in time or space (page 71)”.

This was a very different argument proposed by many … that individual readers bring their personal experiences to bear on the texts that they read, which, then, becomes their way of producing meanings for the text in question. I think this may be why I had such difficulty with this particular position. I fully understand that the different ways readers make meaning from texts depend on their access to differing ideas in their culture, and yet I found it reflectively strange to note that, up until this particular reading, I had not really been focusing on culture at all. We are very much a configuration of our culture, but at the same time there exists diversity within cultural unity.

I truly enjoyed reading Readers Recreating Texts, especially with regards to how Evans stated that ” … a text can be seen as a sort of starting point, which gives every reader an idea of the lines to pursue in reading it. But since every reader will bring to the text a different experience of life and different pictures of the scenes, characters, and activities which are being realized in a particular reading of it, the blueprint will never produce exactly the same experience twice (page 27)”. Such fits wonderfully with Unity in Reading: Becoming Readers in a Complex Society where it is written that the published text is very much a reality that does not change its physical properties as a result of being read. How, then, can the published text change during the reading?

“The answer is that the reader is constructing a text parallel and closely related to the published text. It becomes a different text for each reader. The reader’s text involves inferences, references, and co-references based on schemata that the reader brings to the text. And it is this reader’s text which the reader comprehends and on which any reader’s later account of what was read is based (page 96)”, even to the point that it may well take on a different rendering for the same reader at a completely different time, a result of one’s willingness to rethink and revise.

In reading How Texts Teach What Readers Learn, Meek states that children “… read stories they like over and over again: that is when they pay attention to the words – after they have discovered what happens. Adults, generally, go on to the next book, so that how we read is not part of the consciousness we bring to texts (page 103)” basically because as adults who become experienced in reading ” … we become less and not more skilled. We read only what we find comfortable, rushing through novels to finish the story and then going on to another one. We may adopt too easily patterns of work which do not encourage us to inspect what we do (page 102).”

What an incredibly powerful statement, but one that I have definitely been able to relate to. Mind you, with regards to personal favorites (specific genre types) that I often reread, I do take the time to savor the flow and dialect of the words.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the distinction between what has been called efferent reading and aesthetic reading in What Facts Does This Poem Teach You? In fact, this became the focus of my online Google search.

Louise Rosenblatt states that the ” … matter of the reader’s focus of attention during the reading transaction is of paramount importance. We must attend to the sound of the words and pulsations of the phrases as we call them up in the inner ear; we must attend to the sensations and feelings and associations triggered by ideas, images, people, and places that we conjure up under the guidance of the text (page 387).” She also believes, as do I, that the ” … aim is to develop the habit of aesthetic evocation from a text. If the young readers are allowed in the early years to retain and deepen that ability, we can cheerfully leave for later years the more formal methods of literacy analysis and criticism (page 393)”. In fact, ” … the atmosphere and circumstances of aesthetic reading should make the young reader feel free to pay attention to what is being lived through under the guidance of the text. There should also be the opportunity to talk freely about the experiences with peers and with the teacher (page 393)”.

In keeping, the spontaneous comments of children should be welcomed, encouraged, and, as often as possible, made the starting point for further discussion. If the teacher finds it necessary to spark discussion, questions or comments should lead the reader back, to savor what was seen, heard, felt, thought, during the calling forth of the poem or story from the text. “The current interest in developing children’s ability to compose their own poems and stories offers an important means of strengthening the child’s sense of the aesthetic potentialities of language (page 393).”

I believe, as well, that the ” … aim is to develop the habit of aesthetic evocation from a text. If the young readers are allowed in the early years to retain and deepen that ability, we can cheerfully leave for later years the more formal methods of literacy analysis and criticism (page 393)”.

In Reading and Reading Strategies, it was written that “the closer the content of reading material is to the life and experiences of the students, and the closer the concepts of reading material are to what students already know, the easier it is for them to understand the meaning relationship in the reading material (page 12)”. At the same time, however, it is important that reading be seen as a means to expand the knowledge of the students. Teachers should, therefore, encourage students to read material that involves some unique experiences and that is to some degree beyond their own knowledge.

I enjoyed coming to the realization that published reading programs have, for decades, placed an emphasis in learning to read on letter-to-sound recoding (phonics) as well as a word emphasis approach (sight word recognition as well as word-shape-word recoding) Such was clearly stated in The Reading Process: A Psycholinguistic View. I work with students who have a severe learning disability (which says nothing about their overall intelligence). Some teachers naively assume that if a child can translate the written symbols from text into oral speech, he/she is capable of dealing with the concepts being presented. The other side of the coin is equally daunting. Some teachers believe that if a student is unable to read the text material being presented, they cannot possibly grasp the material (concept) being taught.

The focus then appears to become … how does one, as a teacher (or parent), help students (or their children) make their own transactions with the texts that they read? Perhaps this is where we must learn to begin.

Bibliography

Evans, Emyrs: Readers Recreating Texts

Goodman, Kenneth: Unity in Reading: Becoming Readers in a Complex Society

Goodman, Yetta and Burke, Carolyn: Reading and Reading Strategies

Meek, Margaret: How Texts Teach What Reader’s Learn

Patterson, Annette; Mellor, Bronwyn and O’Neill, Marnie: Beyond Comprehension: Poststructuralist Readings in The English Classroom

Rosenblatt, Louise: What Facts Does This Poem Teach You?

Smith, Brooks; Goodman, Kenneth and Meredith, Robert: The Reading Process: A Psycholinguistic View

Smith, Frank: What Happens When You Read?

Response 7

SPRING 2006

I am absolutely astounded at how much I am continuing to learn in association with activities that I have long taken for granted; namely, reading and writing, thereby showing one that such is certainly reflective of the old adage that one never ceases to learn.

In keeping with my Gnostic soul searching, by way of old-fashioned reading and online exploration, I am learning that both critical thinking, creative thinking and critical literacy are important facets related to both mediums. There are many existent texts that simply cannot be verified and/or validated, aside from one’s beliefs. I am beginning to attempt to try and ascertain the agenda of each author that I visit while on my spirituality search.

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning, including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing and critiquing, attributed to the so-called “left” brain function.

Creative thinking involves creating something new or original, the aim of which is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence. Such involves the use of a multitude of skills such as flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing and metaphorical thinking, all of which are “right” brain activities.

Critical literacy pertains to the reader understanding the relationships that exist between their ideas and those presented by the author of the text by focusing on issues of power that, in turn, promote reflection, action and transformation. As per Luke and Freebody and the 4 tier model they employ, readers play not only the role of code breakers, meaning makers and text users, but also the role of text critics; a role that is relatively new to my understanding.

In the course of my readings, I was surprised to learn that critical thinking and critical literacy are two different terms, appreciating that distinction that Knobel and Heath were making between the two, especially when they wrote that “you need critical thinking to do critical literacy, but you can do critical thinking without doing critical literacy” (Critical Literacies: An Introduction, p 8).

After having conducted the required Google search, I feel that I have a more concise understanding as to the difference that exists between these two confusing, and oft-times conflicting, terms.

Knobel and Heath drew an fitting comparison when stating critical literacy to being something of a chameleon, “changing from context to context and from one educational purpose to another” (p 2) for this comment is a remarkably apt one, which is precisely why there are so many differing opinions as to what ‘critical literacy’ constitutes and what it involves.

I find it fascinating to make comparisons between North American and Australian models with reference to critical literacy. “For many North American reading educators, the term “critical literacy” refers to aspects of higher order comprehension” (Critical Literacy in Australia, Luke, p 3). As a means of comparison, Luke goes on to day that “in Australia, critical literacy agendas have traveled a different pathway” (p 3) where they begin “from the assumption that reading and writing are about social power and that a ‘critical’ literacy education would have to go beyond individual skill acquisition to engage students in the analysis and reconstruction of social fields” (p 3). As always, I am amazed at how much farther ahead Australia is with respect to the development of ‘critical literacies’. Why is it that we tend to follow the path of the US when making changes within our own country? How can we go about insisting that Canada look at what is happening, first and foremost, in Australia? Even though there is no set formula that has emerged for engagement of critical literacy within the classroom, we could do well to learn from our Australian colleagues.

I was pleasantly surprised by the conclusion that Luke was able to draw; namely, that “perhaps it is not a question of whether and how government might bring ‘critical literacy’ under an umbrella of state curriculum policy, but rather a matter of government getting out of the way so that ‘critical literacies’ can be invented in classrooms. Perhaps it is absence and silence from the centre that enables” (p 13).

W. Morgan clearly stated that “Freire argued that passive, authoritarian and alienating forms of traditional instruction function to reproduce the material inequalities of a hierarchical society” (Mapping the terrain of critical literacy, p 7).

Does this not say it all? In keeping, it is clear that our schools are in urgent need of reform.

It became even more imperative that something needs to change, at least for me, upon reading that “education is one means among many by which the dominant groups in society almost invisibly, almost unconsciously, maintain their hegemony and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are persuaded to consent to their inequality” (Morgan, p 7). This bodes that a vital and important question be asked.

Is this dominant hegemony actually maintained in a invisible and unconscious manner, or is it just more blatant to those who suddenly have eyes with which to see the existent reality? For me, such has been the very nature of this course.

There exists a “myth of education” that sees education as being a “great equalizer” (Shor, What is Critical Literacy?, p 5). According to Shor, “critical literacy challenges the status quo in an effort to discover alternative paths for self and social development” (page 1) in that “critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of the self” (p 2). As Shor shares, “we can redefine ourselves and remake society, if we choose, through alternative rhetoric and dissident projects” (p1). It is both imperative and critical that we begin rethinking our lives in order to better promote justice in place of inequity. How can we act against this violence, the “violence of imposed hierarchy” (Shor, p 5)?

Shor makes mention of Horace Mann (born 1796) as stating, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” (p 7) due to the fact that “intellectual castes would inevitably be followed by castes in privilege, honor and society” (Shor, p 7).

John Dewey (born 1859) affirmed that “a holistic curriculum based simultaneously in experience and philosophy, in working and thinking, in action and reflection” (Shor, p 7). Dewey saw “any social situation where people could not consult, collaborate, or negotiate” (Shor, p 11) as being “an activity of slaves rather than of a free people” (Shor, p 11).

We could do well to learn from these examples. To be for critical literacy “is to take a moral stand on the kind of just society and democratic education we want” (p 18).

It is also clear that “tolerance and eternal vigilance are the cause for a better world society and environment, now and in the future, for themselves and their fellows” (Morgan, p 15) as I believe this establishes a system of checks and balances that is of the utmost importance. As educators, we have a most evident responsibility to both ourselves and our students to have a hand in producing active and responsible citizens who will critique business, government, the media and other aspects of public life.

Response 8

SPRING 2006

The biggest issue that I am having to contend with is the fact that for the majority of my forty-three years, I have not been a critical literacy reader. I am even more shocked by my admittance, on these very pages, of this revelatory truth. Never having been one to question the accuracy of historical fact(s) and figures, I was merely content to absorb the information (history being my favorite subject), believing and trusting in the role models (teachers, book authors) that were dispersing the facts; hence, I found myself identifying with Gina in the Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years text (p 20). Quite simply, I was simply an empty (and yet eager) vessel to be filled. Mind you, I have learned these last 10+ years that when creating a genealogical database, one needs to be able to verify, validate and source information. Aside from my Gnostic soul searching where I am just beginning to employ critical literacy, I find myself easily relating to comments made by students in both Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years as well as Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice.

The remaining key issue appears to be how one passes along critical literacy knowledge to their children, current students as well as prospective students, for it is imperative that they learn to ……

• examine meaning within texts

• consider the purpose for the text and the composer’s motives

• understand that texts are not neutral (they represent particular views, silence other points of view and influence people’s ideas)

• question and challenge the ways in which texts have been constructed

• analyze the power of language in contemporary society

• emphasize multiple readings of texts (as people interpret texts in the light of their own beliefs and values, therefore texts will have different meanings to different people)

• have readers take a stance on issues

• provide readers with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values

• provide readers with opportunities to take social action

…… if only to

• dismantle old values and reconstruct new ones, thereby challenging the status-quo

• critique portrayals of hierarchy and inequality

• dismiss the myths that exist with regards to various peoples

• eliminate the biases that exist in the curricula being taught

• to reverse the legacy of injustice (especially as it pertains to people of color, women, working-class people, the poor), thereby learning from history

• appreciate the diverse culture of which we are a part

• discover new ways of understanding relationships based on mutual respect and equality

• discover the excitement that comes from asserting oneself morally and intellectually

• encourage social action by dismissing apathy

How one goes about this, I am still not sure, especially as it is so new to me, but endeavor to learn I must.

As Joan Wink writes in Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, “… critical literacy involves knowing, lots of knowing. It also involves seeing, lots of seeing. It enables us to read the social practices of the world all too clearly. Critical literacy means that we understand how and why knowledge and power are constructed. By whom. For whom.”

She goes further to make the comparison between reading the word versus reading the world.

Reading the word pertains to

• decoding and encoding words

• bringing ourselves to the pages of the text

• making meaning from the text as it pertains to our experiences/cultures/knowledge base

Reading the world pertains to

• decoding and encoding the people around us

• decoding and encoding the community that surrounds us

• decoding and encoding the visible and invisible messages of the world

It is clear that I have much to learn.

Critical Literacy Questions

Textual purpose(s)
What is this text about? How do we know?
Who would be most likely to read and/or view this text and why?
Why are we reading and/or viewing this text?
What does the composer of the text want us to know?

Textual structures and features
What are the structures and features of the text?
What sort of genre does the text belong to?
What do the images suggest?
What do the words suggest?
What kind of language is used in the text?

Construction of characters
How are children, teenagers or young adults constructed in this text?
How are adults constructed in this text?
Why has the composer of the text represented the characters in a particular way?

Gaps and silences
Are there ‘gaps’ and ‘silences’ in the text?
Who is missing from the text?
What has been left out of the text?
What questions about itself does the text not raise?

Power and interest
In whose interest is the text?
Who benefits from the text?
Is the text fair?
What knowledge does the reader/viewer need to bring to this text in order to understand it?
Which positions, voices and interests are at play in the text?
How is the reader or viewer positioned in relation to the composer of the text?
How does the text depict age, gender and/or cultural groups?
Whose views are excluded or privileged in the text?
Who is allowed to speak? Who is quoted?
Why is the text written the way it is?

Whose view: whose reality?
What view of the world is the text presenting?
What kinds of social realities does the text portray?
How does the text construct a version of reality?
What is real in the text?
How would the text be different if it were told in another time, place or culture?

Interrogating the composer
What kind of person, and with what interests and values, composed the text?
What view of the world and values does the composer of the text assume that the reader/viewer holds? How do we know?

Multiple meanings
What different interpretations of the text are possible?
How do contextual factors influence how the text is interpreted?
How does the text mean?
How else could the text have been written?
How does the text rely on inter-textuality to create its meaning?