Hello Bloggers! I have discussed the practices of critical literacy and how to engage students in critical literacy in the past two posts. The purpose of today’s post is to explore more deeply the purpose or aim of teachers and students collaborating using critical literacy learning. Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to communicate and learn about topics relating to the world to solve injustice. The diversity of teachers and students’ experiences allows them to learn from each other by scaffolding or building upon their knowledge by connecting old and new knowledge. Unlike high stakes education that I have discussed in previous posts, critical literacy learning has meaning to students because they make personal connections, engage in topics, and perform higher order thinking other than memorization. As a result, students become problem solvers that have the knowledge and skills to fight injustice.
Part of educating students to become critical thinkers or problem solvers involves teaching them to make connections with their experiences to understand and gain new knowledge. This concept is based on the well known Vygotsky. He believed students learn by scaffolding from their experiences and interacting with their surrounding environment. Also, teachers should start at students’ zone of proximal development. Below is a diagram to help you visualize his theory.
In connection, Freire proposes, “Problem-Posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming –as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” (65). In other words, people are constantly evolving and learning through their interactions with their environment. They need to be treated not as empty containers, but as people have knowledge that can be built upon. Furthermore, the title Freire creates for his suggested education shows that teachers and students aim should be to problem solve. Moses’ Algebra Project is an example of how Vygotsky and Feire’s pedagogies are being used to by teachers and students collaborating to find a solution to social injustice. Moses explains, “The Algebra Project is not about simply transferring a body of knowledge to children. It is about using that knowledge as a tool to a much larger end (15). The teachers and students set a goal which is like the zone of proximal development. Also, the teacher is not making students memorize math facts; they are using math literacy as a tool in their environment to fight injustice. Moses states, “It is the floor, not the ceiling, We’re not trying to put constraints or limits on what any group of children might learn” (15). In other words, the teachers have students start from the base and then they are encouraged to build on their knowledge. Jackson and Cooper, who I mentioned in a previous post, also support Vygotsky and Freire’s works when they claim, Teachers show belief in students “by bridging required content to students’ personal frame of reference” (246). The bridging of content and students frame of reference is the same as Vygotsky’s concept of students scaffolding from their Zone of Proximal Development.
Collaboration and communication is vital to helping students and teachers problem solve. As I discussed in my last post, teaching talking is a major aspect of critical literacy learning. However, it can be a challenge for teachers to teach conversation. Hilliard states, “We have a major communication problem, especially since few professionals understand language issues either” (102). So, a problem that has to be solved is miscommunication. Similarly, Kohl states, “It has everything to do with the way in which language is heard and interpreted, with tone, presentation, attitude, implication, and an understanding of how to convey complex meaning in a way that is understood by the spoken-to” (Kohl 151). I believe miscommunication can be solved by teachers and students practicing conversation. As I mentioned previously, we have to reflect on the way we and our students are talking. Teachers can help students become better talkers and problem solvers by, “Pushing the discussion further with your questions doesn’t ignore or diminish the significance of the students questions if you’re cautious –it simply indicates that you, too, wonder, question, doubt, speculate. In other words, you, too, are a reader who sees the possibility for inquiry in anything you read and seeks others with whom to discuss it” (Probst 54). In other words, teachers have to model the type of question one asks when analyzing and solving problems. Probst digs deeper in the skills required for collaborative problem solving stating conversation “…includes such matters as listening more carefully; calling for, providing, and questioning evidence; accepting and examining other points of view; and dealing tactfully with one another” (59). Delpit, discussed in a previous post, also supports the use of collaborative conversation stating, “I believe students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not only by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills, but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own ‘expertness’ as well…” (45). Like Moses and other authors, Delpit suggests that minority students can fight injustice through meaningful conversation. It requires collaboration between teachers and students using their knowledge. Collaboration is also discussed by Jackson and Cooper who state “relationships that are built on genuine dialogue in which students and teachers communicate what’s meaningful and relevant to them both” (246). All in all, teachers and students need to collaborate together through conversation if they are to solve problems in education and other social spheres. It is the teachers job to design an environment that students feel they can talk in.
I have mentioned inquiry as an element in critical literacy learning before, but I am discussing it again because it sparks problem solving conversation. Wilhelm and Smith argue, “Teachers can meets these situational condition of engagement or flow by constructing inquiry units that both address students’ needs for personal relevance and promote disciplinary understandings that clearly count and have functional value in the world” (233). That is, students engage in a deep flow of learning when inquiry is used in relation to students’ worlds. Moreover, they explain, “Inquiry is not simply thematic study, but the exploration of a question or issue that drives debate in the disciplines and the world” (233). Once again, students and teachers engage inquiry to explore problems found in the real world. Gutierrez describes “A visitor to the school would hear children speaking bilingually in English and Spanish, working collaboratively across subject matter areas” (120). In this case, students are encouraged to connect all of their language and content knowledge to problem solve across disciplines. In connection, I discovered this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyucHMifto which is on five year olds that create unit themes, problem solve, critically think, and make meaning from authentic activities. When you watch the video you will see these small children fully engaged in learning and solving real world problems, such a dealing with death. Although the students are having great fun doing inquiry activities the teacher points out that they are not nonsense games. The video also points out that questions from peers help these students develop their story telling or talking skills. In many ways the five year olds in this video are learning the same ways that the older students do in Gatto’s butterfly unit, which I discussed last week. Lastly, I want to show my support for this pedagogy by sharing my own experience of collaborative inquiry activities. Like many of my classmates I found trigonometry and geometry difficult to grasp because they are abstract concepts that held no meaning to me. However, when my teacher and my class developed a unit using the math concepts to build bird houses I began to learn and enjoy math. We asked each other questions and worked together problem solving to construct a useful object. Learning had meaning then.
I believe writing functions as a form of communication and help both teachers and students make inquiries and formulate connections. Reif supports this stating, “Writing is one way of representing and communicating our thinking to others, using experiences, our knowledge, our opinions, and our feelings to inform and negotiate our understandings and misunderstandings of ourselves and the world in which we live” (191). To put it differently, writing is used to “talk” to authors about our feelings, experiences, knowledge and problem solve. This idea relates to Freire’s theory that people and the world are not static. Teachers and students develop or evolve together through conversation. A strategy from my readings that inertest me is the use of Post-it notes to mark thoughts and questions on readings. Gatto and other experts have explained how this form of writing prepares students for meaningful conversation. In fact, I too use Post-It Notes to help me understand academic reading. I would introduce this to a class by modeling my thought process out loud, so students learn the type of questions and comments that are useful to mark on readings using Post-It Notes.
It is clear that modeling is a part of my pedagogy. Therefore, I think teachers should model how to collaborate, communicate, and problem solve. Egawa states, “When coaching is part of a coordinated and interdisciplinary literacy program, all of these educators can work together to create the real changes needed to support all struggling students” (296). Teachers practice what they preach when they practice the same skills they ask their students to perform. The work from Egawa demonstrates how literacy coaches and teachers can work together to solve the problem struggling students getting the education they deserve to succeed. Specifically, Egawa explains “Teaching includes about one’s practice, and coaches can support that thinking by bringing learning and literacy expertise to enhance your subject matter knowledge” (298). Just like we ask students to connect their knowledge of multiple literacies and disciplines, we also must practice sharing and connecting our content knowledge with our coworkers to make a change in the present failing education system. I will be student teaching next spring and I know I would love to have the support from teachers and my peers to problem solve issues that come up when I students teach. The following video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4ZnMLflGq4 demonstrates how student teachers communicate and inquire with the use of technology. If teachers are educated in college the importance of talk and problem solving then they will be better prepared to teach their students how to perform these skills.
In this post I have described the importance of collaboration and problem solving among teachers and students through conversation, writing, and authentic activities. Thus, it only makes sense that we evaluate our students based on these skills. Gatto states, “I fill out report cards with each child and we decide together what the grades and comments should be. This way, report cards are meaningful documents to the children, and when parents receive them, their children can explain and discuss the grades and comments” (86). Again, communication and meaningful learning is integrated in how students are graded on their performance. Allington also argues, “If we are interested in a broader view of “intellectual life’ (Vygotsky 1978) that is exhibited on standardized achievement tests, then we will also have to consider the use of other tools to better assess a variety of potential outcomes” (284). He also supports the idea that high stakes test based on memorization skills are not valid and that teachers must think of ways to evaluate students on higher level thinking skills such as problem solving and critical thinking. It is also evident that Vygotsky’s theory plays a major role in changing/improving education and is the base of many author’s theories that I have talked about in my blog.
I hope by reading this point you gain new insight in the importance of collaboration between teachers and students and that higher learning involves communication, inquiry, and problem solving. Through critical literacy learning teachers and students gain meaning from experiencing the world together and education is no longer about filling students up with facts. Ultimately, the new aim for education is creating problem solvers that can change the world and stop the injustice created by neoliberal policies, high stakes test, miscommunication, and sameness as fairness. As always, please come back soon for a new post on literacy!
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