About a year ago, I read an article called “A Critical Literacy Perspective for Teaching and Learning Social Studies” (see citation at the end of this entry). As a social studies teacher who believes I have the responsibility to teach reading skills, regardless of content area, and an advocate of critical pedagogy, I looked for an article that would combine the two ideas. This article was a perfect combination.
When I began my student teaching this past January, I re-read this article in the hope I could work with my cooperating teacher to figure out how to apply the suggested framework to my classroom teaching. The article’s authors explain Ciardello’s (2004) instructional model for “enlightening readers on issues of social justice.” The five themes of the framework are: 1) examining multiple perspectives; 2) finding an authentic voice; 3) recognizing social barriers; 4) finding one’s identity; and 5) call to service. Although I did not have a formal opportunity to apply the framework, I still find it helpful in making decisions about how to teach social studies to high school students in ways that would contribute to developing critical thinking, citizenship and reading skills while learning historical content. My goal is to make our classroom process also our classroom content. Students reflect on how we are learning the content and how we are interacting with each other. The article serves as a strong starting point.
The article begins with a story about a student named Amanda who is reading out loud the poem, “We Wear the Mask”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. After another student asks her, “Is color a problem for you?,” Amanda replies, ‘it seems that I am a color first and then I am Amanda.’ After further discussion, Amanda proclaims, ‘this poem is about racism’ (p. 486). The article’s authors, Lina Bell Soares and Karen Wood, use the example to argue why it is important for teachers to deal directly with issues of race, class, gender, culture and power in and out of the classroom. Soares and Wood assert that many students, even elementary students, are aware of these issues and live them everyday. I completely agree. If we ignore these issues in the classroom, we risk losing students and losing their respect for the relevance of what happens in school to their everyday lives.
Often, Soares and Wood explain, the ways students are marginalized along lines of class, race, gender, sexual orientation and ability are invisible to teachers and administrators. In my brief experience, e are so busy moving from topic to topic, we can miss they dynamics happening right before our eyes. They argue for teachers to take up these social issues in social studies classes through a critical literacy framework. McLaughlin and DeVoogd (2004) identified the following four principles of critical literacy:
1. Critical literacy focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action.
2. Critical literacy focuses on the problem and its complexity.
3. Techniques that promote critical literacy are dynamic and adapt to the contexts in which they are used.
4. Examining multiple perspectives is an important aspect of critical literacy.
Soares and Wood believe students must examine social studies material from a global perspective and read social studies texts with a “critical eye.”
It is very clear that social issues are at the forefront of the social studies curriculum. So why do so many of us see them as a distraction from the curriculum, rather than central to preparing our students for life in college, a democracy and the workplace? Teachers, according to the authors, must find ways to help students connect the past to current issues and events. They believe this is important in developing engaged citizens who care about issues of social justice. The authors believe teachers must help students learn to read “in opposition” to the text because questioning the author’s intent helps students clarify their own values, but, I would add, also contribute to their understanding of history and contemporary events from multiple perspectives.
Soares and Wood provide a powerful explanation of the purpose of critical literacy in the following passage:
“Accordingly, the goal of critical literacy is to raise students’ responsiveness toward societal problems in their world and to prompt students to ask why and for what reason are things the way they are, to question who profits the most, and then to act on making the world a better place (Beck, 2005; Comber & Nixon, 1999). Furthermore, critical literacy allows students to bring their own lived experiences into discussions, offering them opportunities for participation, engagement in higher levels of reading and discussion, and to understand the power of language” (p. 487).
They explain each theme and provide examples for how to introduce and teach the theme in elementary classrooms. In the first theme, examining multiple perspectives, the objective is to teach students how to ask questions and look for the voices that are missing in the text. The working assumption is that one text cannot tell the whole story and teachers must provide opportunities for students to read multiple texts. The authors explain their use of The Devils Arithmetic (Yolen, 1988) in a classroom literature circle. They prompt students with the question, “what does the author want you to know from reading this text?”
For the second theme, finding an authentic voice, the authors assert that “some voices are more privileged than others and it is essential that students learn to speak out against unequal power relations that exist in all forms of text” (p. 489). They introduce the concept of voice with historical examples of people speaking out individually and collectively. They ask students to read a photo-biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, examine the relationship of Native Americans and white settlers and read the text Only What We Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience (Inada, 2000) about interned Japanese Americans during World War II.
Authors introduce the third theme of recognizing social barriers by asking students to share an experience when they have been treated unfairly and felt excluded. They ask students to explain how that felt and how they should have been treated. Again, students read a story, Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez (Krull, 2003) and examine the experience of Japanese Americans during World War II to demonstrate how negative stereotypes lead to oppression.
Finding one’s identity, the fourth theme, is about teachers finding texts that reflect their students lives and experiences. The authors assert, “when students do not find themselves reflected in the texts they read, they are more likely to interpret this omission as a message that school is not for people like them” (p. 491). The authors introduce the concept with the story, Chrysanthemum (Henkes, 1991), about a small mouse that had always thought her name was perfect until she began school. Teachers ask students about the origin of their names and if they have had similar experiences.
Finally, the authors bring the fifth theme, call to service, into the classroom by introducing the concept of service learning and guide them to appropriate volunteer opportunities. They see the social studies classroom as the ideal place for students to grapple with complex social issues like freedom, citizenship, social responsibility and personal identity. In my application of this theme, I make a small change. Instead of call to service, I ask students to think about what actions they could take individually and collectively to address problems we learn about in the historical and contemporary texts we read in the classroom. In my view, a call to service often hinders critical reflection on the root causes of social problems. A call to action will require students to truly comprehend the nature of a problem and evaluate the potential efficacy of actions and solutions.
My intention is to introduce Ciardello’s framework as part of a “Building Community” unit at the beginning of the school year. The purpose of this unit will be to learn about each other, explore definitions of community, agree on expectations for each other that will guide our interactions and introduce democratic skills we will practice during the year in content-based activities. IN addition to the above-mentioned application, another way I could use the framework is to help find a selections of texts that students could choose to read and write about.
The questions I am left with are: Will this approach resonate with students? What will I do if and when I meet resistance?
REFERENCE
*Soares, L., & Wood, K. (2010). A Critical Literacy Perspective for Teaching and Learning Social Studies. Reading Teacher, 63(6), 486-494. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.
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