Linking Community Literacies to critical literacies through community language and literacy mapping

In this study, teachers engaged in Community Language and Literacy mapping to understand the resources present in their communities in urban, rural, and suburban schools. Through the ethnographic project, teachers built on their findings to create critical literacies units. As a result, teachers embraced complexity and considered multiple perspectives. However, many found it difficult to push their students to action and social justice. Overall participants broadened their view of what counts as literacy, deepened their understanding of critical literacies, and used community language and literacy practices in their classroom teaching.     

Negotiating a critical agenda in middle years physical education

In this research a number of strategies including physical experiences, physical stories and lab school with guided reflection were used with pre-service physical education teachers in an attempt to foster more critical and inclusive approaches to teaching physical education in the middle years. The strategies were used to illustrate the complex processes that inhibit or enhance an individual’s relationship to physical activity. They served to identify discursive, social and institutional practices, which supported the development of a physical identity for some young people while powerfully denying it to others. Pre-service physical education teachers were asked to respond to these strategies in multiple ways as well as constructing their own knowledge around teaching and learning in physical education. It was concluded that a more complete understanding of young people’s physicality could develop from recognition of the complex interrelationships that occur between school, culture and physical experiences. The strategies used allowed insights into these complexities and worked to develop a deeper appreciation of ‘lived’ experiences, around physical education. Opportunities to explore and critically reflect on teaching and student learning were also found to be significant in considering broadened understandings of pedagogies of physical education.     

Youth and the critical agenda: Negotiating contradictory discourses

Syllabus and policy documents in many states and countries around the world, and more specifically in Queensland are underpinned by an emancipatory agenda, in particular the principles of social justice. Educators are called upon to achieve this through a pedagogy which is immersed in the language of critical theory.     

Academic literacies and e-learning: A critical approach to writing in the online university

This paper adopts an academic literacies perspective to argue for a critical approach to the writing practices of the online university classroom. It describes an on-going action research project in an online Masters in Online and Distance Education (MAODE) programme at the UK Open University, which aims to create an online writing resource to support distance learners in developing a critical awareness of the writing practices on the programme. The paper presents the results of an evaluation study of this resource during the 2005 presentation of the MAODE, and discusses the evidence from this study that such a resource can provide a space for students to critique the dominant literacies of the online university.     

Negotiating critical,postcritical literacy: the problematic of text analysis

Critical literacy has been a particular focus in literacy education in the past two decades. Literacy models such as the ‘four resources’ model provide a significant framework for a critical understanding of texts and the social and cultural practices that inform them. In this paper, I draw on the ‘four resources’ model to argue that the success of the framework in developing critical literacy depends upon focusing adequate analytic attention on those subjectivities used in such practices. The intersubjective classroom dynamics and the subjective engagement of literacy practitioners are of equal importance in determining the meanings co‐constructed among subjects. I argue that beyond being text analysts, reflective practitioners, that is the teacher, and students as a group, can engage in postcritical negotiations of the text, contribute to new meaning possibilities and adopt an ongoing critical stance. Applying this literacy model successfully requires acceptance of a multiplicity of interpretations, collaborative practice between teachers and students and fluid subject positions. The paper concludes by considering the problematic of the classroom as a dynamic site for textual and cultural contestation of multiple perspectives.     

Encouraging extended conversations with young children

It is largely through conversations with more experienced adults that children come to learn about the world outside their own personal experiences.     

A review of critical literacies in preservice teacher education: pedagogies,shifts, and barriers

In literacy teacher education, a small but important group of studies have addressed how teachers can be prepared for enacting critical literacies pedagogies in K-12 classrooms. In this review, we argue that, more than ever, these efforts have a place in the field of teacher preparation. After providing a brief review of how critical literacies are conceptualized in the field, we review the approaches of teacher educators across the reviewed work. We identify approaches in coursework, including text-based and non text-based approaches as well as approaches to preparing teachers through experiences with students. We also identify the barriers that teacher educators face when preparing teachers for critical literacies pedagogy, and finally, provide recommendations for future studies.     

Literacy mediation as a form of powerful literacies in community-based organisations working with young people in a situation of precarity

This paper aims at understanding the complex relations between bureaucratic literacies, the lives of young people in a situation of precarity and the work of employees of two community-based organisations in Québec (Canada). Drawing on the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, the focus of this article is around the role of literacy mediators that can play youth workers. It also endeavours to clarify the meaning of the term precarity (précarité) by suggesting a multidimensional perspective on it. This paper reveals that literacy mediation can be a form of powerful literacies that offer opportunities to counteract dominant literacies and support new ways of learning. Finally, it suggests a reflection on the importance of the work of community-based organisations in countering the situation of precarity experienced by some young people. It underlines the fact that these organisations are also experiencing financial uncertainty and insecurity that affect their services.     

Embracing uncertainty in research with young children

Abstract

This article contests the emphasis that is frequently placed upon child-friendly methods in research with young children. Focusing upon a series of research encounters from a doctoral study of play in an early years classroom, I examine my interactions with the children and their social and material worlds and draw upon these encounters to highlight some emergent and unpredictable elements of research with young children. I argue that these elements call for a decreased emphasis upon the implementation of method towards an openness to uncertainty and an ethical responsiveness to the researcher’s relations with children and their everyday lives. An ethical responsiveness to uncertainty has implications throughout the research process, including through the ways in which we choose to read, interpret and present the data. This article offers original contributions to contemporary debates regarding what might become possible when uncertainty is acknowledged and embraced in research with young children.     

Negotiating

掌握短语动词,丰富口语化表达,一起来学习“谈判”的相关表达。给出的8个单词应该分别填到下面哪句话里？不妨一试。     

Failing with grace: kids,Improv and embodied literacies

In this article, we explore the idea that comedy, with its often unorthodox ways of looking at, experiencing, and responding to the world, offers untold possibility for classroom literacy instruction. The article focuses on the potential of Improv comedy as socio‐materialist literacy in the classroom. It provides an account of Improv as a form of embodied literacy that operates as an assemblage created collectively between many people, practices, and material objects. We present findings from interviews with professional comedians regarding the possibilities of comedy for language and literacy instruction with elementary school children. The article then examines a moment from the subsequent classroom phase of the study to look at ways Improv can help students create stories and ways that laughter can be used to create a cohesive assemblage based around students' spontaneous creation of texts. The aim of the article is to provide educators with a practical means to apply socio‐materialist literacy in their classrooms through Improv, which will, in turn, allow students to create collectively generated texts and assemblages.     

Research on interventions for children and young people on the autistic spectrum: a critical perspective

Developing, implementing and evaluating programmes of intervention for children and young people on the autistic spectrum are challenging endeavours. In this paper, we adopt a critical approach to research in this area, and attempt to offer an alternative perspective for understanding and interpreting empirical evaluations. We outline and discuss theoretical, methodological and practical issues and limitations associated with the current research body, and provide illustrative examples of gaps in the current literature.     

Classroom literacies: young children’s explorations in meaning making in the age of the literacy hour

In this article I explore contrasting approaches to literacy and learning in Key Stage One classrooms. In particular I question whether the approach to writing composition in the NLS Framework for Teaching is consistent with what we know about children’s story telling and writing in the early years. Children are powerful thinkers who constantly strive to make meaningful and playful engagements with their social and cultural worlds, of which texts are an important part. Through composing and writing stories in school the children in this study are often exploring aspects of their identities, having fun in entering into adult and fantasy worlds, and working with their friends to create texts which place them in powerful roles.     

Parental involvement in reading remediation with young children

In an era of increasing educational need and decreasing resources, school psychologists must be aware of alternatives to school-based learning. This article reviews research on the effectiveness of parental involvement in improving elementary school-aged children's reading skills. Studies have shown that parents can contribute to the remediation and maintenance of children's reading ability, but that parents want and need training in specific methods of reading with their children. Direct Instruction and Paired Reading are presented as viable methods to teach parents of poor readers. The authors issue a call for further research comparing various home reading methods. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.