Talk:Critical literacy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of education and education-related topics. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to featured and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.
Portal
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

There wasn't an entry for "Critical Literacy" in Wikipedia. I thought since many Australian schools teach this stuff, it should be. I'm not saying I agree with it, I just thought it would be a good idea to at least have an entry for it. I just cut and paste from a handout my school gives to the kids when they hit year 9. I'm really interested to hear any comments.


It is interesting, but for copyright reasons: to satisfy Wikipedia's licensing requirements, you would need your school to license the handout under the GNU Free Documentation License to include so much content from it, see the notice at the very bottom of every page you clicked save on while editing a document: "DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!". --Mysidia 14:35, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

jj

Contents

[edit] Playing around and adding citations

Hey there. I'm just mucking around with this page in my spare time. It obviously needs some quotes from reputable sources. I'll get around to deleting the lame adds for the crit lit chick's page when I get to that paragraph..

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm not afraid. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.45.245.46 (talk) 12:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Deleted the advertising and tried to tidy some more

I'm amazed at how time consuming this is. And for some bizarre reason I want to continue to work on it! As I work out how to do things I'm trying desperately to make this article a little less embarrassing than it was to start out with. I fear I've made it worse. I deleted the links to the person's site about crit lit. I doubt they were making a profit. But it didn't help in a basic understanding of the concept being explored.

I gave the part which looks at concepts associated with critical literacy a title.. It doesn't really suit.. But it's better than how it joined originally.

Considering the power this approach to teaching English has in contemporary society, I'm surprised more people haven't tried to fix it up.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.45.245.46 (talk) 12:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Section Headings

The history section is very short. It either needs to be developed and expanded, or, if it's not a logical heading for this subject, the content needs to be combined with another section. The Details section needs a better title. The Details section also needs references. There are a lot of ideas there (discursive background, intertextuality, dominant reading... to name a few) for which no sources are cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlwelsh (talk • contribs) 21:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


I think this article needs a good overall organizational structure. I'm looking for a well-organized article about a similar topic so that I can borrow the structure. I keep finding more poorly organized articles on related topics. This kind of topic seems much more difficult to organize than articles on things like bridges or species or cities.

Jlwelsh 23:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Related Articles

The "See Also" section of this article lists a number of articles that are closely related and in some cases overlapping. For instance, there are separate articles (with very different approaches) for Critical literacy, Critical pedagogy, Media Literacy, and Multimedia literacy. I'm not saying that these should or shouldn't be separate topics, but there should be some acknowledgment of the relatedness of the concepts, if only to make the scope of each topic more clear.

Jlwelsh 12:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, one good option is to create an infobox and then place this box into the relevant pages. What is the whole topic called? Pedagogy? I'm sure that's too big, but what are these different items that you list above a part of? Hires an editor 12:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
So in doing some checking, it seems that the overarching topic is Literacy. So we should create not an infobox, but a template for the bottom of each page dealing with literacy topics. Hires an editor 12:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Whew! After doing more research, there is a Reading Template which includes Literacy, but I'm thinking that Literacy deserves its own template. I will be creating one soon. I also should get some consensus from the community about this, too, since there will be a literacy template on lots of pages. I don't really see that as a problem, though.
That's also something that deserves consideration: where should the template go? The Reading Template is on the side to the right, whereas I'm considering the template be a footer at the bottom of pages. I'll ask that question as well. What do you think? Hires an editor 13:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
There is some disagreement within the research community over the use of the term literacy for things other than reading and writing. However, some would say that reading is a form of literacy, one among many, and so the literacy template would make sense overall. I suppose the main question is about usability. What grouping will help people access the informaiton that they need? Reading is a broad enough field to need its own structure and organizational aid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlwelsh (talk • contribs) 01:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template Created

So, following Wikipedia's guidelines, I decided to Be Bold!, and created the Literacy Template. I realize that in doing this, I've gone a bit afield of the intended scope, but I'm not exactly sure where. I'm still not sure of the scope, but hopefully this is a good start in any case. Hires an editor 15:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

How did you choose the people to include in the "Major contributors to literacy" section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlwelsh (talk • contribs) 01:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I used the "See Also" section of the main Literacy article as the basis for the template. I'm hoping that others will add on to this base. There were only two to start with, and their articles are short, and I added a third after looking around a bit, but the third person's article is short, too. I'm copying this discussion to the template's discussion page. Hires an editor 14:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major Divisions Proposed

There are multiple perspectives on Critical Literacy and part of the ambiguity between this article and other similar articles lies in this ambiguity. I'd like to propose that we reorganize this article to reflect the major schools of thought around the topic.

The text currently under the heading "Details" seems to describe specifics of work by Allan Luke, Michele Anstey, Geoff Bull, J. Elkins, Peter Freebody, and the New London Group, among others. This represents major work being done in this field in Australia in recent years. The bulk of that text was posted by someone working in an Australian school in 2005.

Another approach to Crit Lit is Frierian, springing from the works of Brazillian Paulo Freire. This could also be described as neo-Marxist, and this perspective is reflected in the works of Peter McLaren and Jean Anyon, among many others. (This is also the perspective most strongly represented in the current version of the Wikipedia article on Critical Pedagogy.)

A third perspective could be headed Critical Utopianism, as described by Henry Jenkins and others.

Acknowledging that there is still considerable overlap between these three perspectives, I think it is useful and accurate to describe Australian, Neo-Marxist/Freirean, and Critical Utopianism as three major schools of thought within the field of Critical Literacy.

Jlwelsh 02:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that by rearranging the text into these perspectives, it will take away the dry text/list feeling, and contribute to the discussion that makes an encyclopedia so useful and accessible. Hires an editor 15:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I haven't found enough published about Critical Utopianism yet, so I haven't included it in the revisions to the article. I think that at least one more major division of thought could be added, possibly Critical Utopianism, but I need more references to make the argument convincingly.

Jlwelsh 18:26, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the section title "Australian". While it is true that many major authors and theorists are working there, there are also major authors working elsewhere, and this kind of critical literacy is practiced in many places. Canada is particularly notable. In fact, this article definitely needs to include a discussion of what's going on in Canada. Jlwelsh 19:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Observations pertaining to changes

Hey all,

Things are looking good here at the moment. The article still needs a lot of work but it's much better as it currently stands.

I'd like to give my support to the person who provided an "Australian" section. I think that's a valid idea as the version of Crit Lit taught in High Schools in English in Australia is a version unto itself. In fact it varies from state to state.

A comment: Ultimately Critical Literacy isn't about "books" it can also refer to pictures, movies buildings.. Anything.

Of interest is the fact that it's currently being phased out in Australia as schools put greater emphasis upon grammar.

Thanks for the comments, particularly supporting the "Australian" section. I have found more support for the idea, so I think it might be appropriate. It's interesting that Australia is phasing out crit lit, though. I wonder what the reasoning is there. Jlwelsh 01:02, 29 October 2007 (UTC)