Putting together crit lit and multicultural ed

From the culmination of my research for my capstone course in International Training and Education and my wanderings in critical literacy, things seem to really be fitting together. I have mostly been focusing on marginalized groups in formal education systems in different countries. This includes many different groups of people including indigenous populations in post-colonial countries, ethnic/linguistic minorities living within a dominant societies, rural and urban poor (often child laborers) . To make a long story short I found a central issue to be not only the inclusion of all learners cultures, values, experiences into the curriculum and classroom, but using them as another classroom discourse. This is where critical literacy comes in, and where I found Hilary Janks' work and her interrelated model especially pertinent. Her example of using an interview project where students gather information from their families and communities and then bring it back to the classroom for exploration and dialogue is a way of not only bringing in, but validating the varying perspectives and experiences. Another valuable and I feel, crucial part of allowing a receptive space for all students' experience is that it helps the educator learn about his/her students and who they are. Teachers will inevitably have different cultural/societal backgrounds than at least some of the students in their class, they must build in ways to learn about their students, their perspectives, discourses of meaning and the way they learn. In this way I see Critical Literacy as a process of group learning in which the educator is learning as well.

As our discussion (in class) went further on the topic of marginalized groups in formal education some of my classmates mentioned the different registers of English used by their students. They discussed how other educators that they had worked with or had classes with at AU, saw other registers of English besides what we would call standard American English simply as incorrect and not only admonished students for using it in school but told the students that it was wrong altogether. The results were disastrous as these teachers failed to relate to their students and thus had serious issues gaining their respect and managing the classoom. Some others brought up the resistance in students to use "standard English" at all, even though they show respect for students home and out-of-school language (be it another register of english or another language altogether). Students saw that type of English as "trying to be white" or as "being too academic or nerdy" . I thought immediately of Vivian Vasquez' article on using critical incidences to construct critical literacy curriculum and activities. I thought of perhaps playing some audio selections of different types of English, or having students bring in texts or audio (could be recordings or TV, music, or whatever) that display different types of English and use them as the basis for a discussion on what the differences in language mean to them. In what situations and contexts do they see the different types of language used? How does power come into play? They could even take it a step further and examine the structure of some different selections of English, how the words are used, omitted or abbreviated. I think this would be a great to for students to focus on the different types of English that they hear and use, and examine how different language usages may be chosen explicitly to affect the opinions of the audience.

Yes, things are really coming together...and I can see how critical literacy is in some way a micro-level tool to address macro-level issues that education systems all over the world are facing.

Erin

An evening with Jane Vella

Last Tuesday I had the good fortune to attend a presentation (though that's not really the right word to describe it) by Jane Vella, a leading theorist and practioner in the field of adult education and training. Through the 90 minute interactive session she walked us through the finer points of the methodology she created, or as she would say "discovered" for educating adults. In a way Jane Vella is to adult education and training what Vivian Vasquez is to children's literacy education. Jane has worked with participants all over the world in vocational training, literacy training and training of trainers. She calls her method "Dialogue Education." Though she's not technically working on "critical literacy" as her topics vary, a cornerstone of her approach is to ensure that the material and language are accessible to all of the participants. In this way she hopes to mitigate the potential power imbalance between the "teacher" and the "learner." Another cornerstone of Vella's Dialogue Education, is input of the learners at every stage of the lesson, or learning program. This reflects the methodology of Vivian's critical literacy classroom as well as the methods suggested in "Teaching to the Fourth Power" where activities involving artistic and personal expression were used make the curriculum more culturally relevant for native Hawaiian students.
In general, Vella works within an experiential learning and dialogue structure to put the learners in the driver's seat. She also emphasises the evaluation step (which is necessary in adult education program, but approached differently in children's education) and the importance of putting the learners in the position to evaluate their own learning, instead of the typical way of having the learners complete an evaluation for use by the trainer to improve their own programs in the future. She outlines strategies for this type of evaluation in her book How Do They Know They Know? Though she may not be using contemporary texts, media and literature as a basis for her programs, her ideology and methods really aim at addressing power inequalities, challenging learners to critically examine their own experiences and accepted norms, and empowering learners to employ what they've learned. It's interesting to see the development of learner centered and critical pedagogy in adult education vs children's or formal education. In a way, adult educators have more freedom to enact new and often unorthodox methodology than teachers in the formal education system. More information about Jane's work, methodology and her books can be found at her website:http://www.globalearning.com/janevella.htm

On a separate note I came across some the Global Fund for Children 's website and saw they have some very interesting children's books as well as educational materials.

Deja-vu

Reading Sumida and Meyers' "Teaching to the 4th power" brought back in waves bits and pieces of my training and education as a teacher and trainer. It's strange how, throughout my career and my studies the same ideas keep coming back with different labels. Perhaps it's not strange at all but in fact verifies the value of these ideas. The interdependent types of learning described by Sumida and Meyers, Transmission, Transaction, Transmediation, and Transformation reminded me of the methods I was taught to use in my first educational training as a teacher of English as a second language. The methodology of "communicative" language teaching was all the rage. In my opinion, it worked. In the school, where I first taught, only "transmission" was present. The communicative methods I used built on that in adding "transaction" as well as "transmediation" to an extent. Students were finally given the space to use the language in a somewhat natural context....to communicate with each other. Go figure. I don't know that we went so far as to include transformation.

The 4T model also nested in rather well with the experiential learning cycle as well as the methodologies of other theorists (like Jane Vella) who represent the heart of Adult Learning Theory and Training. What I liked about this article is how it highlighted different aspects of the different parts of the learning cycle as well as synthesing it in my mind. It addressed an important question that always came up for me when considering multicultural education, education for marginalized groups and indigenous education. Sumida and Meyers finally answer with conrete methods the question of how to incorporate and even build the education around the learner's personal experience and culture, they create the spaceand the inlet for the students personal experience. They use the arts and creative activities for this. In the article this part comes at the end in the Transmediation and Transformation stage, however I think in reality it also comes at the beginning, with the learner making choices about the project they will undertake and then seeking the "tools" (tansmission) to accomplish it while using the newly acquired tools all along the way (transaction)

I definately found this article informative, it helps place critical literacy in a wholistic picture of education. (oddly the 4 competencies of literacy model coincides with the 4T model, too) More than a model for providing education to indigenous children, or children of other marginalized groups, I think this is a new way of defining the goals of education and of creating an education that brings children of all societal groups to the table.