Looking for Critical Literacy With Postbaccalaureate Content Area Literacy Students

© 2004 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 320–334) doi:10.1598/JAAL.48.4.5

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 8 : 4 D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5320

Mellinee Lesley

Looking for critical literacy withpostbaccalaureate content area literacy students

Looking for critical literacy withpostbaccalaureate content area literacy students

Critical literacy developed in a content area

literacy class for teachers, who are now able

to teach critical literacy to their

students.

Certification-seeking students who arerequired to enroll in content area liter-acy classes often question the useful-ness of such a requirement (Nourie & Lenski,1998). Resistance toward literacy pedagogy is ahallmark of student attitudes in content area liter-acy courses at the beginning of the semester andoften continues through completion of the classand into the student’s teaching career (O’Brien &Stewart, 1990). Despite years of research on thesubject, resistance toward implementing contentarea literacy in secondary classrooms persists. Inturn, this resistance perpetuates generations ofstudents who have no practical experiences withcontent area literacy methods and thus see littleuse for such methods in their future instruction(Bean, 1997; Draper, 2002).

My experiences with teaching content area lit-eracy in teacher preparation settings bear out theassertions from the cited studies. I decided to ap-proach content area literacy instruction from theperspective of a critical literacy philosophy to seek asolution to the historic recalcitrance of students to-ward content area literacy. This approach requireda degree of teacher imposition, a dialogic process

(Freire, 1993), and a great deal of practitioner re-flection. The data from this experience raise ques-tions about viewing critical literacy as a goal for

content area literacy instruction.

“Struggling readers”and the story of theresearch question

The story of my research question (Fecho, 2001)began when I was first introduced to Freireanpedagogy and the concept of critical literacy(Freire, 1993, 1995; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993;Shor, 1996, 1999). Theoretical writings on criticalliteracy inspired me to question the pedagogicalpurposes levied on students within formal struc-tures of “schooling.” Critical literacy also resonat-ed with my epistemological questions of how andby whom curriculum was valued and constructed.Through years of reading about critical literacypraxis (e.g., Bigelow, 1990; Fecho), I grew insistentthat critical literacy should do more than provokestudent anger (Bigelow; Ellsworth, 1992) and pos-tulate conceptual aphorisms. But, what preciselyshould critical literacy do for students and teach-ers? Was it enough to instigate inquiry throughcultural conflict or “threat” (Fecho) in the class-room? Don’t all students (and teachers) experi-ence feelings of belonging and not belonging tovarious discourse communities residing withinand around classroom contexts (Beavis, 2001)?

Lesley teaches at TexasTech University (College of Education, Box 41071,Lubbock, TX 79409, USA).

E-mail [email protected].

My research question took further shapewhen Laura, a student in my elementary lan-guage arts class for preservice teachers, soughtmy assistance (pseudonyms are used for all of thenames in this article). Laura was working as a tu-tor at an alternative high school in a rural com-munity in the southwestern United States. Oneday Laura approached me after class to ask myadvice. She was deeply concerned about Carmen,a 15-year-old girl she was tutoring. Carmen wasin the second trimester of her third pregnancy.She had a history of using drugs and beingabused as a child. My student proceeded to tellme Carmen’s story of how she was molestedfrom a very early age by her mother’s boyfriendsand then impregnated three times by her step-father. Eventually, her stepfather was prosecutedand imprisoned for statutory rape. Laura ex-plained that Carmen was confused by the arrestand still wanted to be with this man who wasboth her stepfather and the father of her chil-dren. I remember Laura lamenting that she“wanted to help this girl” who was a year olderthan her own daughter but that she “didn’t knowhow to get through to her.” Laura asked me if Iwould come to one of her tutoring sessions toobserve and see if I could offer any suggestions.

A week later, Laura and I met with Carmen.I was immediately struck by the soft-spoken, com-pliant, petite girl seated at the other side of thetable. There was something extremely innocentabout Carmen, and yet I, like many concernedadults in her life, looked upon her situation with asense of frozen dread. Laura began the tutoringsession by telling me that Carmen was working ona presentation for her child development class.Carmen had been assigned a chapter from hertextbook that covered the developmental stages oftoddlers to present to her class. Laura then sug-gested that Carmen create an outline of the chap-ter to begin preparing her presentation. Lauraasked Carmen if she had read the chapter, andCarmen eagerly nodded her head.

“OK, then, let’s begin with the first mainidea in the chapter for Roman numeral one,”

Laura coaxed. Carmen hesitated, fidgeted, andglanced furtively at me. Laura suggested she lookat the chapter again to refresh her memory.Carmen slowly turned the pages. She appeared torecognize the text, but she did not know where tobegin in formulating an outline. Laura suggestedthat maybe the first item in her outline should bederived from the title of the chapter. Carmenslowly began writing the title of the chapter afterthe Roman numeral one. This recopying was apainstaking process. After she completed thetask, Carmen could not think of another point toput in her outline. With resignation, Lauralooked to me and asked if I had any suggestions.I nodded my head as Carmen’s eyes turnedsilently toward my face.

“Carmen, let’s put away the outline for aminute,” I suggested. “Did you like reading thischapter?” Carmen stated that she did. “What didyou like about this chapter? What stood out foryou in this chapter?” I asked. Carmen said sheliked the chapter because it was “so true.” She toldme that she had a baby and a toddler and that hertoddler acted exactly the way the chapter de-scribed. I asked her to tell me how her toddleracted that demonstrated one of the developmen-tal stages described in the chapter. Carmen be-came animated, retelling an event from her son’slife. I told her that her story was a terrific exampleof the theory described in the chapter and sug-gested that this story might make a great way tobegin her presentation. Carmen liked the idea. Isuggested she write this anecdote as the openingto her presentation and then base the rest of herpresentation around the ideas in the chapter thatseemed important and true to her own experi-ence as a mother.

Carmen picked up her pencil and began writ-ing rapidly. She filled up two thirds of a page withnarrative and notes before the half-hour tutoringsession ended. When Carmen departed for her nextclass, my student looked at me with stunned, wideeyes and asked,“How did you do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

Looking for critical literacy with postbaccalaureate content area literacy students

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“Get her to write like that? Do you knowhow long I have been working with this student?Getting her to write is like pulling teeth,” Lauraexplained with mock frustration.

The truth was I hadn’t done anything forCarmen except give her permission to make per-sonal connections with her reading assignment.At the time that this event took place, I thoughtthat the great lesson for all three of us in this tu-toring session was that pedagogical relevance andstudent interest are some of the most effectivereading comprehension strategies. Later, as I re-flected on the hollowness with which Laura and Ilooked upon Carmen’s situation, I had very dif-ferent thoughts. Not only did Carmen need in-struction in content area literacy strategies, butalso she needed these content area literacy strate-gies to lead her to someplace more significantthan an exercise in completing a graphic organiz-er would take her.

Carmen needed literacy tools that wouldhelp her understand her vanished childhood. AsFreire (1995) observed years before I encounteredthis teenager’s plight, someone like Carmen need-ed to read the world around her as well as thewords on the pages of her child developmentbook. She needed literacy strategies that would of-fer her and her children a plan for survival. Notonly did the layers to her learning in this alterna-tive high school setting need to encompass thecontent and the literacy strategies that would besthelp her understand the content, but also herlearning needed to be filled with the reasons whythis content was so important to her. The child de-velopment textbook was not only to teach Carmenabout being a good mother, it was also aboutteaching Carmen that her own childhood hadbeen stolen. Carmen had been violated in waysthat she could not fully understand as a child.Carmen was a single mother with three childrenbefore she turned 16. Carmen and her children’slives would forever be defined by these crimes.

As I reflected on Carmen’s situation yearslater I wondered about the role of critical literacyin Carmen’s life. How would pedagogy fueled by

critical literacy have affected her circumstances? Ialso began to think about the role of critical liter-acy in teacher preparation programs. I decidedthat I needed to make space for critical literacywith the students I taught who would one day beteaching students like Carmen. To test this belief,I launched my inquiry into critical literacy with asecondary-level postbaccalaureate content arealiteracy course. Because the classroom is a site ofcultural overlap and “texture” (Fairclough, 1995),I positioned my inquiry to consider student ex-change as critical literacy.

MethodologyThe primary methodology for the research pre-sented here was developed through the stance ofa teacher researcher (Baumann & Duffy-Hester,2002; Fecho, 2001; Hobson, 2001; Hubbard &Power, 1999). As a teacher researcher, I collecteddata with a postbaccalaureate content area litera-cy class during the fall 2002 semester. Datasources for the study included field notes, a re-flective journal, an archive of student writing,transcriptions of key class discussions, and ananalysis of student questions. I analyzed thesedata sources through the methods of constantcomparison of field notes (Lincoln & Guba,1985), coding for themes (Hubbard & Power,1993), analysis of vignettes (Fecho), and periodicmember checking (Seidman, 1998). I also usedthe themes arising from each data set to analyzethe other data sets in order to conduct a cross-comparison analysis.

I drew on critical discourse analysis(Fairclough, 1995) as a theoretical framework toguide my understanding. Critical discourse analy-sis (CDA) provided me with a lens to understandthe dimensions of classroom interactions. In par-ticular, CDA enabled me to see connections be-tween language, power, and identity (Fairclough).Analysis through CDA allowed for “attention toprocesses of text production, distribution andconsumption” (p. 9).



The primary research questions guiding thisstudy were the following:

1. What happens when postbaccalaureate studentsenrolled in a content area literacy class experiencecontent area literacy methods in conjunction withcritical literacy praxis?

2. How do postbaccalaureate students’ responses in acontent area literacy course reflect their sense oftheir roles as literacy practitioners and theoriesabout literacy?

To answer these questions, I analyzed a se-ries of key vignettes and transcripts of class inter-actions at beginning, middle, and end points inthe semester. I also analyzed (a) the questionsposed by the students at similar points in timeand (b) my reflective journal throughout the se-mester to gain insights about the configuration ofthe students’ and my work together. I examinedthese data points in light of critical literacy theo-ries to look for evidence of students’ understand-ing of agency and advocacy.

Critical literacyCritical literacy has been defined in the field of ed-ucation as reading and writing pedagogy that ex-amines an omnipresent, unstated social agenda ofpower. Teaching students to give voice tooppressive experiences within oppressive socialsystems is a unifying goal of critical literacy defini-tions (Freire, 1995; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993;Shor, 1996, 1999). Within such definitions, literacyis not seen as a series of decontextualized subskills(Rose, 1989). Rather, literacy is defined as a highlycontextualized “emerging act of consciousnessand resistance” (Giroux, 1993, p. 367). For teach-ers enacting critical literacy in their classrooms,the pedagogy is a complicated weaving together ofstudent awareness of power issues or “conscienti-zation” (Freire, 1993), student resistance to issuesof power (Luke & Gore, 1992), and often student(and teacher) frustration (Ellsworth, 1992).Critical literacy is difficult to put into practice

because it embraces multiple and conflicting per-spectives of learners (Luke & Gore).

When teachers invite critical literacy theoriesinto their classroom practice, the most compellingtext in the course becomes that of the students’lives and the ways they are socially, culturally, andpolitically mediated (Haas-Dyson, 2001). Not onlyare students’ voices and life experiences includedas valid sources of knowledge, but also notions ofpower, oppression, and transformation found inthe students’ life experiences are presented aspieces of the framework of thinking that form thecourse curriculum. In other words, critical literacyis context specific. As Haas-Dyson (2001) noted,“Critical literacy is always a local as well as a socie-tal matter because it is something we do in re-sponse to others’ words and actions, includingtheir voiced views on the social world” (p. 5).Critical literacy is a response to social construc-tions of one’s peers, culture, family, classrooms,neighbors, communities, and world.

Content area literacyContent area literacy seeks to use literacy in threeprimary ways: (1) making the discourse expecta-tions explicit within the content area, (2) usingliteracy as a tool for learning content matter, and(3) improving students’ acuity with literacy skillsthrough content area learning (Alvermann &Phelps, 2002; Stephens & Brown, 2000; Topping& McManus, 2002; Vacca & Vacca, 1999). In thisrespect, content area literacy strategies are aboutempowering students as learners and thinkersthrough a participatory model of learning.However, as good as these strategies are, if theybecome too excessively teacher driven they turninto little more than the rote learning encoun-tered in transmission model instruction (i.e.,Read the chapter and answer the questions at theend). In preservice teacher education courses,students are saturated with content area literacystrategies, but rarely are these same students giv-en the opportunity to explore theories of critical



literacy alongside the metacognitive learningstrategies they encounter.

Implementation

Scene I: Resistance to learningliteracy pedagogyAlthough I had begun my teaching career 14years prior to the beginning of this class, every-thing seemed starkly new about teaching as Istood in front of 25 students in a secondary-levelcontent area literacy course for the first time dur-ing the fall 2002 semester. As I looked at theirmotionless faces, my mind was filled with ques-tions about my students’ expectations for thecourse. By the end of the class, I learned that thestudents in this course represented a range of dis-ciplinary backgrounds, ethnicities, learning dif-ferences, and ages. Fifteen of the students weremale; 10 of the students were female. Twenty-fourof the students were Anglo; one student wasAfrican American. Some were classroom teachersteaching on waivers. Some had just graduatedfrom college and had no teaching experience.Others had worked for years in a career otherthan teaching but had made the commitment tobecome secondary teachers.

Colleagues had already warned me thatnone of the students wanted to be in the class.Because of this warning, I thought I should try toease into the subject matter with my students. Idecided to accomplish three simple tasks on thenight of the first class: (1) collect general studentinformation, (2) review the syllabus, and (3) con-duct an icebreaker to help establish mutualrespect among my students and a sense of com-munity. In my reflective journal, I wrote the fol-lowing first impressions:

My small classroom is stuffed with 25 adults who donot seem anxious to be in this class. With the excep-tion of 2, my students are all certification-seekingpostbaccalaureate students. Half of my students arealready teaching in secondary settings. When I asked ifany of them knew what content area literacy was, one

made a shaky guess. “Is it teaching the importance ofthe content?” asked a veteran middle school teacherwho is working on a certification in reading. “That’spart of it,” I responded. Looking at the room full ofpuzzled faces, I went on to explain that content arealiteracy is about viewing literacy as a tool for learningand viewing content areas as a rich context for literacydevelopment. This seemed to quell my students’ con-fusion until we discussed the first assignment on thesyllabus—place-based writing from primary sources.

(Journal, August 27, 2002)

On this evening, everything occurred prettymuch the way I had anticipated until I finishedreviewing the first assignment in the syllabus andasked if anyone had questions. The first assign-ment students would complete in the course wasa place-based essay drawing on primary sourceresearch. Susan, a high school English teacher andgraduate student who declared that she was tak-ing this class as her last class before completing amaster’s degree in curriculum and instruction,raised her hand and began, “So, you just want usto write about a place?”

“Yes,” I answered, “using information yougather from primary sources.”

“I am a left-brained person,” Susan’s voicewas raised and registered contempt. “I needeverything spelled out for me, and I don’t getwhat you want us to do with this assignment.”

Susan’s argument with the assignment con-tinued as I tried to explain the purposes of usingwriting as a tool for thinking and drawing on pri-mary sources as a way to expand our notions ofcontent area writing assignments, content arealearning, and content area research. I also statedthat this assignment would help us see the con-nection between place-based writing and theways learning is deeply situated in context. ButSusan was not satisfied by these explanations.

Visibly angry, Susan snapped, “So, can Ichoose my backyard to write about?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“If I choose my own backyard, then I’msupposed to just sit there and write about it?”



“Yes.”

“But nothing happens there except my dogruns around,” Susan steamed.

“That sounds like something to observe tome, but if you don’t think this would be a goodthing to observe then maybe you should selectanother place to write about,” I suggested. “Ifyour backyard is a place where ‘nothing hap-pens,’ then select a different place.”

“I’m not saying that my yard’s a pile ofdirt; I’m saying I don’t get the point!” Susan ex-claimed in utter exasperation.

While this exchange took place betweenSusan and me, the rest of the class was silent.Trying to maintain composure in the crampedclassroom, standing two feet away from Susan, Iturned my attention to the rest of the class andasked if anyone else had questions. Silence. Iasked my class if they all understood the assign-ment. Half of the class shook their heads “no,”so, I began to try to explain the assignmentagain.

“For this assignment, you can choose anyplace to write about. Gather information aboutthe place you select through observation, inter-views, reflection, and artifacts,” I reiterated. “Ialso want you to think about the place you selectfrom the perspective of your respective contentarea. Does that make sense?” I paused andglanced at each of my students’ faces. “For in-stance, your observations might include mathe-matical aspects of a monument or musicalsounds nature creates.” Then, I asked again ifthere were questions about the assignment.None surfaced. In fact, very few additional ques-tions were posed as I went through the rest ofthe course assignments. Susan looked sullen butdid not say anything further.

In the “icebreaker” activity that followed,students revealed unusual facts about themselvesto one another on notecards. These introduc-tions increased my understanding of the com-plexity of the compilation of students in termsof life experiences and individuation. Joe was a

local sportscaster, Bob was a high school footballcoach, Susan grew up on a farm, Allison had a 7-month old baby, and Peter was fascinated withserial murders and serial murderers. Ironically,the one thing they held in common was confu-sion about the purpose of content area literacyin their pursuit of master’s degrees and teachercertification. While the students in this class rep-resented a great deal of diversity in life experi-ences, they also represented a great deal of unityin their expectations for the course. By the endof the first class, I sat alone with piles of studentcomments and questions on the student infor-mation pages. My students’ questions reflectedtheir confusion and resistance to the course.Their questions are included in Table 1.

In analyzing these responses, I discoveredthree primary categories for the questions: defi-nition, relevancy, and application. Definitionquestions led the other categories with 11 out ofthe 22 questions and statements seeking clarifi-cation about what constituted content area lit-eracy. I found that 5 questions addressedrelevancy and 4 questions addressed aspects ofpedagogical application.

I also had the echo of Susan’s angry ques-tions about the place-based essay assignmentand my own questions about teacher and re-searcher imposition floating around my mind.Lather (1991) wrote of imposition that “ourchallenge is to use [student resistance] in a non-impositional way” (p. 75). I wanted to useSusan’s resistance to the place-based essay as-signment and the students’ resistance to takingthe course as a means through which to developcritical literacy pedagogy. To arrive at a new un-derstanding of secondary teaching, I did not somuch want my students to entrench themselvesin a “pedagogy of the opposition” (Giroux,1983) as I wanted them to transact with the textsof their lives, the texts of their content area sub-ject matter, the texts of content area literacypedagogy, and the subtexts of social power re-siding within each of these texts.



That night as I sat alone in the vacated

classroom, I decided that I had to create space in

the course in which student resistance, teacher

imposition, content area literacy methods, and

critical literacy philosophies could transact with

one another. My students and I would all need to

be present in the curriculum. Questions would

need to be raised, addressed, and raised again.

Constructs of student empowerment would need

to be validated through literacy practices that

present opportunities for voicing resistance andallow for multiple perspectives.

Scene II: Navigating a sense of selfwithin writers’ workshop

Two weeks later, we had our first writers’ work-shop for the place-based essay assignment Susanhad been distressed about on the first night ofclass. I stepped back and observed my students’



Ta b l e 1Q u e s t i o n s a t t h e b e g i n n i n g o f t h e s e m e s t e r

Student questions Category

1. How will this apply towards my teaching field (Spanish)? Relevancy

2. Will this [class] actually help me pass the teaching test? Relevancy

3. Can the information learned in this course be directly/indirectly Relevancy

applied to the science field?

4. How can I best use content area literacy in government? Relevancy

5. Why is this a required course? Relevancy

6. What does content area literacy refer to past being literate/illiterate? Definition

7. I’m not sure what content area literacy is, so I feel ill-prepared to ask Definition

a question regarding it.

8. What exactly is content area literacy? Definition

9. Is the focus on teaching strategies or texts we might be teaching? Definition

10. What question should I ask about content area literacy? Definition

11. What is content area literacy and how do I apply it to my content area? Definition

12. What is content area literacy and what are some ways to improve literacy Definition

in other content areas?

13. What is the focus of this class? Definition

14. What is content literacy? Definition

15. How is it that one can gain a clear understanding of what Definition

content literacy is?

16. What is content area literacy? Definition

17. How much, if any, did the content area change [on state tests]? Application

18. What is the most effective way to teach a course so students remember Application

what they are taught?

19. How can a teacher identify the student(s) who can read, but not really Application

absorb the material?

20. How is the grade level of a book determined? Application

21. No questions at this time.

22. I don’t have a question right now.

interactions with one another around their place-based essays. I jotted down the following fieldnotes during this time.

I look out at my students who are clustered in self-selected groups workshopping rough drafts of theirplace-based writing papers and hear a couple of stu-dents advising their peer to “put himself” in the intro-duction of his paper. “We need to know who youare,” states one student. Another student asks, “Dr.Lesley, do we need to give these papers [peer reviewforms] to the author?” I answer yes and the studentturns to his group and says “That’s what I thought.Otherwise, it doesn’t help the writer.”

“The backyard of my childhood home was very large,”Susan reads to her group.

Words move about the room in compositional clus-ters interspersed with moments of silence between mystudents’ reading, writing, talking, and listening toone another.

“It’s been about seven years since my dad passedaway,” a student reads to his group. Another grouplaughs about a peer’s proposed Cinderella contest forlost articles of clothing. Space. My students need spaceto know one another, to learn things about one an-other that a place-based writing assignment evokes.Creating relevancy and advocacy requires such space.

(Teaching field notes, September 10, 2002)

In this excerpt from my teaching field notes, Ibegan to wonder about student advocacy and stu-dent agency that emerge in the process of a writer’sworkshop. When Jake and Carlos asked Tim to puthimself into his writing, I realized that my studentswere seeing the importance of personal relevancyand voice in writing. In this writers’ workshop, mystudents were agents of their life experiences andadvocates of one anothers’ experiences. I view suchinteractions as a beginning stance for students ex-periencing critical literacy.

The following week, I received final versionsof the place-based essays. Students had selected awide range of places about which to write. Theovertone of this work was descriptive in nature asopposed to critical (Gruenwald, 2003). But, Ideemed it a good start toward noticing the worldfor content area learning as well as “educationalconcern for local space” (p. 3). Upon reading the

essays, I was brimming with questions. For in-stance, I wondered how much time we have to cre-ate space in a secondary education curriculum forcontent area literacy and critical literacy. I alsowondered in what ways a place-based essay en-countered in writers’ workshop moves studentscloser to an understanding of what is critical aboutliteracy in their future content area instruction.

Scene III: A pedagogy of questionsCritical literacy in my content area literacy classbegan on the first night with the questions Ielicited from students. Throughout the semester,I continued to (im)pose and seek questions.Periodically, I asked students to give me feedbackon the course in the form of questions they hadabout content area literacy. This enabled me tomonitor my students’ evolving thoughts onteaching content area literacy methods in theircurrent and future classes. The first night’s ques-tions were largely about the nature of the class. Acouple of weeks later I asked my students to writeone question they had about content area literacyat this point in the semester. On September 10,2002, I received 19 anonymous questions and oneanonymous statement from my students. Table 2provides an analysis of my students’ thoughts.

I was able to see that students’ questions hadshifted from favoring definition questions tofavoring application questions. I categorized thequestions as containing 14 application questions,4 relevancy questions, and 1 definition question.

Through this list of questions, my studentsdemonstrated the extent to which they wantedthe course material to be both pragmatic and rel-evant. In general, my students wanted images ofthe dailiness of classroom practice. In reviewingthese questions later I marveled at the fact thatmost of the class was seeking detailed informa-tion pertaining to content area literacy instruc-tion. Specific questions about methods andclassroom scenarios dominated the list.

The following week, September 17, 2002, Ityped up the anonymous questions and distributed



them to the class to read, discuss, and rank in or-der of importance. I planned to use this informa-tion to create a frequency count. To begin thisprocess, I asked my students to complete the fol-lowing task individually.

Look at the list of questions contributed by yourpeers. Select the three most important questions from

this list in descending order with one being the mostimportant of the three questions. Give a brief ration-ale about why you chose and ranked these questionsas being the most important questions from the list.

After students completed this part of the exercise,I divided them into groups to discuss one ques-tion that their group deemed to be the most



Ta b l e 2F o l l o w - u p q u e s t i o n s

Student question Category

1. How do you tie this stuff in with first year second language learners? Application

2. Besides street signs, menu planning, and job applications, can you Application

help me address other literacy avenues for students with special needs,

for example, life skills, survival tips etc.?

3. How would the reading in Mosaic of Thought [Zimmerman & Keene, 1997] Application

apply to high school kids? Is it too late to apply at such a late age?

And, is it fair to work on reading in a science class? Relevancy

4. How can I use some of these comprehension strategies in a Application

science classroom?

5. What can we learn about content area literacy in more of

a high school setting? Application

6. Do the rules of imaging and defining points apply to a nonfiction textbook, Application

and how?

7. How can I implement exercises that would hook my students to past history? Application

8. How can a reader do a better job of recalling specific matter and titles? Application

9. What is the hot topic in content area literacy and how often does Definition

that hot topic change?

10. How can I determine what grade level of reading each student is at in a class Application

of 30 or so? I find difficulty in interpreting others’ ability to read.

11. What specifics will be able to apply to my content area (Spanish)? Relevancy

12. I don’t understand content area literacy. Definition

13. Are there any additional suggestions for enhancing comprehension Application

of nonfiction text?

14. How do I help my students increase their comprehension when reading Application

in class?

15. Most of the topics we have discussed have applied to elementary students, Relevancy

when will we get to high school students?

16. How can I use content area literacy in a mathematics class? Relevancy

17. Could this be applied to college, freshman-level classes? Application

18. How do you deal with one student who is obviously far behind the rest of the Application

class in terms of literacy?

19. How would you integrate technology into content area literacy? Application

important. As the conclusion to this activity, I askedstudents to share their most important questionand attempt to answer their question for the class.

The activity moved along with a positiveexchange until one group in the class selected “Idon’t understand content area literacy” as theirmost important question. When the spokes-person for the group shared this decision, David,a student from another group, burst out laughingand several other students spontaneously giggled.The group spokesperson explained that theychose this question because of the importance ofunderstanding content area literacy in order toimplement it. Upon completion of the activity,Allison raised her hand and addressed the class, “Ijust wanted you to know that that question wasmine. And I don’t appreciate people laughing atit.” Fighting back tears, she continued in the sud-denly silent room, “And, some of you who are go-ing to be teachers—how are you going to treatyour students when they ask dumb questions?I’m sorry. I just had a baby 7 months ago. Myhormones are still—I just don’t think someonewho is going to be a teacher should behave—OK,now I know how to answer this question, but lastweek I was still trying to figure it out.”

David blurted out sarcastically, “That’s whywe’re in this class!” Allison glared at him and reiterated her statement about being fit to be ateacher. I did my best to validate Allison’s right toexpress her feelings. The students who had gig-gled apologized to Allison, but David did not.While I felt bad about Allison getting her feelingshurt, I was heartened because she felt empoweredenough to speak up in class to advocate for her-self and for future students. I was interested inAllison’s ability to defend her question whilereading the subtexts of the exchange from astance of advocating for struggling learners.

The results of the frequency count indicatedthat the questions that were ranked as one of thetop three by students individually consisted ofpragmatic considerations in content area literacystrategies. The three questions most selected byindividual students were the following:

1. What can we learn about content area literacy inmore of a high school setting?

2. How do you deal with one student who is obviouslyfar behind the rest of the class in terms of literacy?

3. How can I determine what grade level of readingeach student is at in a class of 30 or so? I find diffi-culty in interpreting others’ ability to read.

Question 1 was cited with the highest fre-quency as being the most important question.Question 2 was ranked highest for placement inboth the second and third ranks. In fact, thisquestion had been chosen by 24 of the students asone of the top three. The students’ ranking indi-cated their concern with struggling learners. Thelikely possibility that they would have studentswho could not succeed in their content areas be-cause of literacy skills was worrying the class.They were also seeing the responsibility theywould bear for becoming literacy teachers withintheir content areas and beginning to view literacyinstruction as a form of advocacy.

My postbaccalaureate and graduate studentsnever heard about Carmen and students like herthat I had encountered in secondary settings;nonetheless, they were beginning to imagine strug-gles like hers, causing fissures to form on the sur-face of their ardent beliefs about content areacurriculum. Collectively, students were grapplingwith the question I had framed as the topic for theirpapers,“What is it that we think we’re teachingwhen we define ourselves as content area teachers?”

Two weeks before the end of the semester, Iasked my students for final questions they hadpertaining to content area literacy. Their ques-tions are included in Table 3.

Several of the questions showed leanings ofthinking about the theories and ideologies fuelingcontent area literacy instruction. In essence, stu-dents moved from “What is it?” type questions to“What does it look like?” type questions to “Whatis its purpose?” type questions. In analyzing these17 questions, I discovered that 9 of the questionsfocused on application of content area literacy, 7of the questions focused on both application and





Ta b l e 3Q u e s t i o n s a t t h e e n d o f t h e s e m e s t e r

Student question Category1. Can anyone, no matter what their level of development Application/Philosophy/Advocacy

or understanding, achieve literacy in any given content?

2. What if you are employed in a school that does not use Application/Advocacy

content area literacy techniques?

3. What does research say is an emerging trend in Application/Philosophy

content area literacy?

4. Why have there not been more content math strategies Application/Philosophy/Advocacy

in math classes?

5. How often would I use content area literacy strategies Application

in a history class?

6. I still have questions about how to deal with a complete lack Application

of literacy in say a high school science class. I am currently

observing this same class at [X] high school and it is hard to

tell if they can’t or just won’t read. How can you even tell?

7. What is a realistic expectation for a teacher to have of students Application

(high school) on both number and length of papers to be

turned in and essays on tests?

8. What are some resources that concentrate more on the Application

writing aspects of literacy?

9. It’s not really a question. It’s more of a subtle hint of how Application/Philosophy/Advocacy

to sway “die hard” content area teachers still living in 103

B.C. that reading is not their job or their area. In other

words, how does one approach this brick wall point of view?

10. How long has the push for content area literacy been around Philosophy

(i.e., the math reform with constructionist approach is very

recent—2002)?

11. How can we balance content area literacy with other Application

class activities?

12. How will students respond when I try to incorporate Application

some of these strategies?

13. How do you help students understand the importance Application/Advocacy

of content area literacy and how it pertains to them?

14. Why is so much of the content area literacy literature Application/Philosophy

focused on elementary school? Is this because traditionally

reading instruction has taken place in elementary school or

because secondary educators are in denial?

15. What is the best method, if there is any, of keeping your Application

concentration in a boring reading you have little interest in?

16. What are some good resources for new teachers to use to Application/Philosophy

make sure we are continuing our education in content

area literacy?

17. Do content area literacy strategies correlate with learning Application/Philosophy

styles just as teaching strategies do?

philosophies driving content area literacy, and 1question focused exclusively on content area liter-acy philosophy. Five of the questions indicatedleanings toward student advocacy. Similarly, withquestions like “Why have there not been morecontent math strategies in math classes?” I sawtheir understanding of resistance becoming moresophisticated. They were still dealing with a senseof incongruity in educational goals between con-tent area curriculum, content area literacy strate-gies, future students, other teachers, and researchin content area literacy. Increasingly, content arealiteracy stood as a symbol of student advocacyand a relational bridge between content matterand learning, literacy, and student voice.

Challenging practices of hegemony is a longand unruly process that moves unnoticedthrough one’s subconscious and erupts in mo-ments of distilled realization. Freire (1993) posit-ed that the process is begun through the act ofquestioning. I learned that questioning, like manyeducational strategies, is best taught through ac-tive modeling, discussion, reflection, and analysis.

Scene IV: The Socratic methodOn October 8, I invited the students in my class tosit in a large circle that encompassed the majorityof the room. I informed the class that we wereabout to embark on an activity together thatwould require active listening, writing, reading,and speaking. For the first step in the activity, Iasked everyone to write the words to the nationalanthem of the United States from memory. Halfof the class launched into writing; the other halflooked around the room smiling at one anothertrying to jog their memories. Jokes floated aroundthe circle about having to sing the song and know-ing only three lines to the song. As the writingstopped around the circle, I asked the group tothink in writing about the process they just wentthrough and to pose a question this experienceraised for them to share with the group. Beforeeveryone shared their question, I told the class tolisten carefully to each other because after weshared our questions, we were going to select

someone’s question to respond to in the next ex-change. We went around the circle and everyoneshared his or her question. Then, I asked the classto go around the circle again, this time with a re-sponse to someone’s question. After these roundsof question and response, I passed out copies ofthe national anthem for everyone to read andasked students to go through the same three stepsof thinking through writing about the lyrics, pos-ing a question, and responding to someone’s ques-tion. After this process, I invited open discussionabout the activity and the national anthem.

The discussion that ensued became heatedas two students lingered on a question posed byLenny about why the national anthem was a warhymn and wondered what that said about theU.S. culture. In response to Lenny’s question, Iasked the class if anyone was thinking about theprospect of the United States going to war withIraq. In response to my question, Susan statedthat she didn’t “want to know every little thingthat was happening in Washington, DC.”

Debbie challenged Susan, asking, “How canyou think what happens in other places doesn’taffect you?”

Susan retorted, “I live on a farm. I don’t carewhat happens halfway around the world.” Debbiewouldn’t let up on Susan, stating that she foundher attitude incredible and naming people sheknew personally who had been profoundly affect-ed by war.

Frank stepped in, offering, “Look, I tell mystudents that world events affect all of us. Thinkabout gas prices.”

Susan spoke with angry words, “I don’t havetime to worry about this stuff. I’m just trying tokeep my kids off drugs and keep from gettingpregnant.”

Debbie softened in her tone, “Are you talkingabout your own children or the kids you teach?”

“I’m talking about my students.”

After this statement, several students com-mented that they understood Susan’s stress as a



teacher. An understanding emerged of Susan’sseemingly callous remarks. Members of the classhad argued with Susan and listened critically andempathetically to her opinion. The interrogationof proximity as a key component of advocacycrystallized through this exchange. Sense of placeas defined by geography arose. Debbie presenteda sense of pedagogy as questions and problemposing. Susan’s earlier sense of place as nonconse-quential had transformed to guarded territoryand demonstrated a growing understanding ofadvocacy.

In this exchange, students were coming toterms with viewing teaching as self-advocacy, ad-vocacy for others, and global advocacy. Studentswere viewing their lives in relationship to others’lives, twisting a common rope with each thread ofwords. If critical literacy is predicated upon theunearthing of calculated, invisible oppression,then what is the logical understanding thatshould result for students? Are reading, writing,and talking about oppression enough? When dostudents demonstrate transformation in thinkingand responding to one another? How do we see itas teachers? Is critical literacy realized, asLankshear and McLaren (1993) wrote, when“concerted efforts are being made to understandand practice reading and writing in ways that en-hance the quest for democratic emancipation, forempowerment of the subordinated, the marginal-ized Other” (Preface)?

DiscussionTeaching in 21st-century secondary settings is ademanding enterprise. Not only must teacherscontend with the realities of “struggling” readersand increasing accountability mandates thatmeasure student learning within content areas,but also secondary teachers must contend withthe worldviews and experiences students bring tothe classroom. Given this situation, all contentarea pedagogy should incorporate methods thatpermit space for exploring student-driven issuesin relation to the curriculum.

Critical literacy as a body of research has of-fered a glimmer of hope for educators who donot want to ignore the social realities their stu-dents present. Although critical literacy has beenimagined in a variety of educational settings, fewstudies have linked critical literacy to content arealiteracy methods. That content area literacy in-struction has not been the recipient of such aresearch endeavor raises questions about our un-derstandings of the demographics of the studentswe teach. Namely, how will the best content arealiteracy strategies affect student learning if thegoals of the curriculum are irrelevant and thusinaccessible to students?

By the end of the semester, my certification-seeking students were no longer asking questionsabout the relevancy of content area literacy to theircontent area teaching. For example, in a paperwritten in early November, a student seeking certi-fication as a science teacher wrote the following:

Content literacy enables people to blaze paths tothinking that would otherwise be shut off to them.People who do not have a working understanding of alanguage or an understanding of the language a par-ticular field of study uses become largely cut off fromever advancing their knowledge level in that particularfield of study. Their difficulties with language lead todifficulties with learning that trap them, but they canbe unleashed from the trap by improving their lan-guage skills.

(November 4, 2002)

Sharing critical questions, encouraging student ex-ploration of diverse perspectives, and facilitatingdeep discussions kept leading students to the needfor advocacy in teaching and for viewing literacy asa tool for advocacy. Throughout the vignettes ofstudent exchange, critical literacy emerged throughan understanding of literacy instruction in contentarea settings as advocacy. This advocacy in turn en-hanced these students’ potential to reexamine andre-create their imagined roles for teaching and be-liefs about literacy. In the responses of my studentsto the course pedagogy, I saw a shift in student atti-tude from recalcitrance toward viewing themselves



as literacy instructors to a sense of viewing contentarea literacy as advocacy.

When Freire (1993) wrote Pedagogy of theOppressed, he established an unbreakable connec-tion between human voice, relevancy, and advocacy.He further argued that this dialogic exchange reliedon scenarios in which education was viewed as liberating. It was pedagogy derived from the “op-pressed.” In a teacher certification course, studentemancipation transpires from years of oppressiveexperiences derived from a variety of individualvenues. Unlike workers in a mining camp experi-encing a shared form of oppression meted out by acommon enemy, students in a certification coursehave to look deeper to find common ground. Assuch, I found that the dynamics of student exchangeproffered the development of common ground, col-lective purpose, and a sense of critical literacy.

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Documents

Looking for Critical Literacy With Postbaccalaureate Content Area Literacy Students