New literacies & criticality

1. New literacies & criticality BEd Year 2 Teaching and Learning New Literacies Session 4

2. Social orientations to literacy • The New Literacy Studies (Gee 1996, Street 1995 and others) • Literacy as a social practice, not simply a technical and neutral skill • Literacy is embedded in Discourses,i.e. socially recognised ways of using language, thinking and acting in the world (Gee,1996) • Literacies, Multiliteracies, New Literacies • Critical literacy

3. ‘Traditional’ orientations to literacy • Single (print-based) modality • Emphasis on decoding and comprehension (rather than critical analysis) • Emphasis on one, single ‘correct’ reading • View of the reader as passive receptacle rather than active agent • Notions of language as potentially objective

4. Activity: Objective language? • The following two texts are taken from news articles, written in the context of the closure of Hong Kong primary schools due to budgetary pressures: • How do the language choices work to construct particular meanings? • What are other possibilities for talking/writing about these topics? “Can you stand idly by while Comrade Li takes a bloody axe to the sole source of social and economic advancement for our community’s isolated and underprivileged, our poor and our needy?” “The rationalization of primary schools leads to short-term disruption but long term benefits.”

5. Social & historical antecedents • Social change & upheaval • Awareness of oppression/suppression of groups and minorities (e.g. women, ethnic groups) • Changing economic patterns (the ‘knowledge economy’, globalization, casualization of work) • Technological innovations • New forms of information production • Increased access to information • The combined effect of these changes resulted in: • Concern about mass ‘indoctrination’ (Frankfurt school) • Challenging (hitherto) dominant truths (Feminism, Postcolonialism) • Questioning ‘truth’ per se (Poststructuralism)

6. Key critical ‘social’ concepts • Ideology (Marx, Althusser) • Discourse(Foucault, Gee) • Power(Foucault)

7. Key concepts: Ideology • Ideologies purport to be the ‘natural’ order of things, or ‘commonsense’: • “It’s well known that…” • “Of course, we all recognize that..” • “Nobody would dispute the fact that…” • Ideologies involve the “recognition of legitimacy through misrecognition of arbitrariness”. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 168)

8. Key concepts: Discourse • Discourse refers to “ways of behaving , interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, reading, and writing…ways of being in the world…forms of life.” Gee, 1996, p. viii • “Discourse is a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning.” Fairclough, 1992, p. 64

9. Key concepts: ‘Discourse’ • Discourses are meaningful & recognizable ways of organizing meaning • Discourses both represent and constitute (produce) ‘reality’ at multiple levels: • Knowledge • Identities • Social relations (including relations of power) • Discourses are multiple and overlapping, existing in relation to other discourses • Discourses may complement, compete, or contradict each other

10. Key concepts: Power • A Foucauldian view of power (1977, 1978, 1980) • Involves a set of relations rather than a possession • Circulates throughout society rather than being a system of domination of the ‘powerless’ by the ‘powerful’ • Is productive rather than merely repressive • Has no ultimate origin or source • Always entails resistance • Is interconnected with knowledge in discourse

11. Critical literacy assumptions • Texts are made and read in particular cultural, historical, and political contexts that condition what meanings can be made. (Mission and Morgan, 2005:15) • There is no clear divide between facts & values • Language-as-discourse and ‘reality’ are mutually constitutive. (Language doesn’t merely reflect ‘reality’ but also shapes reality) • All text participants are ‘positioned’ within discourses

12. Critical literacy practices • Readers adopt a “resistant reading” positions and challenge meanings and messages in texts • Writers can create and circulate texts which counter, challenge, resist dominant discourses • Critical text users take up a social justice agenda, challenging racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, exploitation, poverty, environmental destruction, coercive relations of power (Cummins, 1996)

13. Four Resources model of literacy (Freebody and Luke 1990)

14. Critical strategies • Analysis: deconstruct, interrupt, disrupt, challenge • Counter-posing alternatives • Irony, satire • Emotion / outrage

15. New literacies: Culture jamming • Challenges mainstream cultural institutions, particularly consumer culture, corporate greed • Multimodal, new media texts • ‘memes’ e.g. texts which go ‘viral’

24. Activity Look at the two letters in the SCMP about native English speaking teachers • What ideologies or ‘common sense’ assumptions are expressed in these texts? • What discourses are being drawn upon in this text? • What kinds of oppositions (e.g. good/bad) structure the arguments of this text? How might these oppositions be challenged or broken down? • How does power operate in this text?

25. Dark Ages vs modern, trained Highly regulated, internationally recognised Gifted professionals Get by with native proficiency Regional accent vs Queen’s English Exposure Authentic, useful Valid… if the first language is English positive images of English teaching professional up to date legitimate backpackers vs qualified professionals Accent and social class Professional ELT discourse Native speaker model and dominance Critical textual analysis of SCMP letters

26. Birmingham factory worker, Irish farm labourer Standard English Understood all over the world/ not be understood Low level teachers Strong regional accent Teaching prof easy to enter Accent and social class Regional = working class Myth of “Standard English” Risk/ caution Regional accents = low level teachers Regional accents = low level profession Critical analysis of SCMP letters

27. Critical analysis: A classroom activity • Look at this teachers’ worksheet and instructions • Consider the context in which this worksheet was used • How do ideology, discourses and power operate in this text? • Is the students’ response a critical one?

28. Activity: Critical textual analyses Task 1 In groups of 3: critically analyse one text Write your analysis on the wiki page Task 2 Create a critical multimodal text which challenges, resists or interrupts a dominant discourse in the text you analysed http://bedyear4newliteracies.wikispaces.com/

29. Critical analyses of everyday texts • What is the text type, social purpose, creator/producer and audience? • How do the different modes employed contribute to the meanings that are being made? • What discourses, ideologies and power relations are expressed in the text?

30. Ideologies: assumptions about/ representations of the social world • Discourses: knowledge, identities, social relations • Power: truth claims and assumptions, silences and gaps, inconsistencies • How can these be resisted or challenged? For what social ends or consequences?

31. References Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatus. In L. Althusser (Ed.), Lenin and philosophy and other essays by Louis Althusser (pp. 127-188). London: Monthly Review Press. Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society. Ontario: California Association of Bilingual Education. Dimitriadis, G., & Kamberelis, G. (2006). Theory for education. New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. Brighton: Harvester. Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). 'Literacies' programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect, 5(3), 7-16. Gee, J.P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Falmer

32. Liberal Studies classroom activity • “Write your definition of success in the tulip below.”