This week you will be reading about creating students who are critical consumers and producers of digital texts as well as tools that can help them organize and critique their research. Before we get into that, I'd like to respond to some questions that came up on the VCI.
How often do your small groups meet? I believe that we determined that your writing groups will meet 3 times: Sometime in Week 8, sometime in Week 11 and sometime in Week 14. You all decide when and just send me a summary of what you did/talked about. These meetings are supposed to be a place to bounce ideas, get feedback, be supportive to each other. You decide how they run and what you all do. You can meet via Hangouts, a chat, Skype, or I'll set up Adobe Connect. You just need to meet synchronously. See the notes from Sept 26 which I uploaded on D2L in the Module 2 section. I know that there are more questions that would be of interest to all, but as I write this (Friday afternoon at 2:30), Google Drive seems to be having an issue and although I can see the spreadsheet with your responses, I keep getting a page that says the file is not there. Hopefully by Saturday I can find it and will then respond.
You will be reading about critical literacy as well as critiquing. What does critical literacy mean to you? How is it different from critical thinking? How might it be important to inquiry and research?
There are 5 articles and 1 chapter of BABR to read this week. I'd like everyone to read the BABR chapter and the IRA Critical Literacy piece. Divide up the other 4 articles so each person reads 1 of the articles. If there is only 3 in your group, leave out the Digital Lit Circles piece. Then, the blog leader will lead a discussion on the common readings and summarize key points of his/her article and ask for connections to inquiry, research, critical thinking and the main readings. The rest of the people in the group, as part of your response to the blog and your participation in the discussion will need to summarize your unique article and make connections to the theme of the week and the other readings. Please use the following vocabulary in your discussions: multiliteracies, curator, constructor, critical response, critique, online collaborative inquiry, searchability, annotations, integrate ideas, triangulate data.
Have a good week, and don't forget to have an online small group meeting and send me a summary of what you did by Saturday, Oct. 17. I"ll send out an e-mail with responses to the rest of your questions as soon as I can access the response sheet from the VCI.
Critical literacy has become my new awakening. I still struggle to be able to explain critical literacy as articulately as I would like, but here goes. Please steer me in the right direction if I’m not targeting my explanation well. I really want to be able to be clear about the central focus of this topic. I explain critical literacy as awareness with the application of reflection to critique social realities. The reflection leads to action, and action leads to change (change being the optimum result). It is the use of language, as a tool of strength, that provides ones ability to question and challenge economic and political systems, and those that control those systems in order to maintain an equal and just society.
ReplyDeleteCritical thinking is having the abilities, skills, and disposition to apply language through reflection and awareness of multiple perspectives, bias, evaluation, and a capability to synthesize information to problem solve and form reasoned opinions. It is through one’s ability to think critically that enables the dialogue to take place to question and challenge the status quo, policies, and decisions of those in positions of power.
Critical literacy and the abilities to think critically is important to inquiry because society acts as a mirror to oppressions or contradictions that take place within our world. Inquiry targets the relationships of those in power and keeps the focus on providing justice in a world that reflects many injustices. Critical inquiry is essential to maintain cultural awareness, just societies, equality, and freedom for all people. Critical literacy and critical thinking skills are essential topics of research if our goal is to strive to empower students with the abilities and knowledge to become active participants within societies and the world.
When I think about critical literacy I automatically made a connection to it and critical research. I always remember critical research as having a call-to-action in the take away, meaning you have to anaylize and think it over. Again I feel like if you are being an effective teacher and promoting the idea of multiple perspectives being accepted in the classroom by also promoting critical thinking and problem skills than these things will easily transfer into critical literacy practices.It is important to use critical literacy to spark inquiry in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective critical literacy is looking at texts through a critical eye, in light of actively analyzing the language through the lens of social interactions and social change. Critical thinking seems to be a way of thinking that looks analytically or in a discerning way at materials read and prior knowledge about a topic. Critical literacy always involves critical thinking, but critical thinking doesn’t always include critical literacy. Critical literacy always involves a social part. I am not sure that I have a firm grasp on the definitions or the interworking of the two. Inquiry and research begin with wonder and questioning. This question develops first by looking at a topic through a critical eye and analyzing the interworking of things, formulating a strong question about the topic. After the questions are formed, research to answer them begin. This critical thinking is continually used in the process of inquiry which can lead to critical literacy.
ReplyDeleteWhat does critical literacy mean to me? I think critical literacy means that you read critically. In other words, that you apply your critical thinking skills to your reading and not just accept ideas or concepts that you read… but question them.
ReplyDeleteHow is it different from critical thinking? I think critical thinking means that you think critically and apply logic and reason to new ideas. You don’t just accept the idea or statement, you actively question it. This would be a part of the literacy component…but you don’t have to be reading to think critically. You could be involved in a class discussion and apply critical thinking skills but not be reading (literacy). Maybe? Is this as clear as mud? Lol
How might it be important to inquiry and research? Critical thinking and critical literacy is very important to inquiry/research because it is questioning information and being curious to research the facts. By applying critical thinking skills in the questioning step of the inquiry process…you will get much deeper questions, not just surface-level ideas. Then by researching those questions, you could apply critical literacy skills to your reading which would encourage higher-level thinking skills.
After some thinking to get it into the correct wording I believe that critical literacy is the moving away or changing of the norm of acquiring or disseminating information in order to change the way something is done or viewed. It is altering while improving the way of development. However, critical thinking involves looking beyond the surface, giving more thought and ensuring different strategies are used to generate unlikely but meaningful answers to a particular situation. Critical thinking deals with thought. Consequently, critical literacy and critical thinking are important to inquiry and research in that they both provide ways for one to furnish new knowledge. Without critical thinking there is no inquiry thus there is no research and as a result there is no critical literacy.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, critical literacy is the ability to think and read between the lines of a text or problem. It is the ability to understand and discover meaning beyond the surface meaning unlike critical thinking which is the ability to conclude your own opinion after evaluating a text/problem. In my opinion I think critical literacy may be important to inquiry and research because it allows for persons to analyze, interpret, rethink or restructure thoughts first made.
ReplyDeleteWhat does critical literacy mean to you? How is it different from critical thinking?
ReplyDeleteCritical literacy is an instructional approach that encourages students to think critically about the text. Students look beyond the words and think about hidden meanings and the author's purpose for writing. They think about how the text relates to their own lives and how the text affects them and the world.
How might it be important to inquiry and research?
A critical literacy approach encourages questioning and inquiry. This can lead to research and the students deepening their understanding of the topics in the text. It is important that students learn how to think critically and analyze the text - otherwise the students will not question and will not further their learning.
What does critical literacy mean to you? How is it different from critical thinking?
ReplyDeleteI think that critical literacy is a way for students to develop and use their critical thinking skills in terms of what they reading and/or learning about in school. It is a means to where they don’t just accept whatever their teacher is saying to them or whatever they are reading in books. It gives them the opportunity to question and decide whether or not they agree or disagree with whatever is being fed to them. It also gives them the opportunity to research what is being said and how they can either back up or go against that information. I think that it is different because it is more of an approach using those skills (critical thinking skills).
How might it be important to inquiry and research?
I think that it is important for inquiry and research because you need to be a critical thinker in order to understand your point of view in a research topic. You also need to be able to critically think about what is being said about that certain topic so that you can build your own opinion of it.
When students read texts through the eye of critical literacy, they are making connections to their own lives, adopting multiple perspectives, and thinking of ways to solve a problem or make a change. Students use critical thinking as they use comprehension strategies like predicting, monitoring comprehension, or summarizing. Through the inquiry and research processes, students use critical literacy to determine what questions are important to them, to evaluate information as they gather it, and to decide what actions to take as a result of their learning after their research has finished.
ReplyDeleteI think critical literacy is the way we interpret and analyze communication between ourselves and the world around us, in order to add literacy tools to our toolbox of knowledge. Critical Literacy is a process we constantly undergo each day as we analyze the conversations, text, images, and sounds we interact with in order to make sense of them in our own lives. This is different from critical thinking in that critical thinking results in the creation of a new idea or concept. You analyze in order to make a judgement about it. Both critical literacy and critical thinking are important to inquiry and research because you will need to analyze the information gathered in order to 1. make sense of the language, and find a way to use your own literary style to restate or create something new with those ideas and 2. form an opinion and connections between them.
ReplyDeleteCritical literacy is the ability to extract the true meaning from a passage, regardless of however imbedded, manipulated, unclear, and even deceptive it is. Interestingly enough is that the Latin root criticus means "judge" or "literary critic", while the Greek root kritikos is affiliated with the root krinein, which means to "separate" or "decide." I find this relational definition to be an excellent descriptor because it demonstrates the necessity of going beyond the superficial presentation and determining "truth."
ReplyDeleteIf you analyze the term critical thinking in the same manner as above, the meaning sits relatively close to that of critical literacy. Perhaps critical thinking would be a more broad term because it relates to the analysis of information gathered in a variety of ways (experience, communication, observation, etc), rather than just the information gathered through text/print.
Both pieces play a significant role in inquiry and research. As a learner gathers information from a variety of sources they are forced with a decision to make (although many do not even realize that they are actively making a choice)- to take in the information at face value OR to push beyond the presentation and look for the "truth" in the message and/or the experience. Once the information has been analyzed, the learner must then determine their own perspective on the issue or topic. An individual's perspective can vary from a regurgitation of the information/ideas presented to a "generative synthesis" in which the learner is moving beyond any ideas that were stated or presented and generating their own ideas altogether.
First off, I think that critical thinking overarches critical literacy and other branches. Critical thinking is a way or a mindset of critiquing about phenomena with critical minds by thinking in this way, for example - “wait a minute, what is missing here?” Basically, critical thinkers think outside the box and go beyond what it is.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, critical literacy, to me, is a brach concept of critical thinking; and, it is mainly about critically thinking about literate aspects, e.g., a book, a writing style, a messaging type, data archiving ways, and etc. For instance, critical literacy fosters readers to critique a given text to find out any biases, drawbacks, or limitations. To some extent, the paradigm shift from literacy 1.0 to 2.0 could be based on the critical literacy concept I think.
Critical thinking and critical literacy play very important role in inquiry and research, because both are the starting point of analyzing, evaluating, and re-creating meanings from texts. To research and inquiry, people must think about what is missing, what could be better, and what are still there waiting for us to discover and make change out of it. We want to note that critical inquiry and Maxism has somewhat historical connection. To my understanding so far, people's diverse needs for a “change” based on the given circumstances are a generating force underlying the critical thinking and inquiry. However, I will read more and would like to better articulate my thoughts for the two notions.
Critical literacy, to me, means not only being able to understand and synthesize the information from a reading, but to also be able to continuously vet the information being read. Now that we have the Internet, we have the ability to constantly fact check other people's assertions, and as an editor, I know that a lot of writing, no matter how well sourced it is, end up being stated incorrectly or uses misleading figures to prove that author's particular point (I've even found evidence of this with The U.S. Department of Education when giving their results for how successful the No Child Left Behind Act was. Whoops on them!) It's important to be able to use the information and to doubt a lot of it as well.
ReplyDeleteCritical thinking differs in that it is the process that occurs concurrently with critical literacy, but one does not have to read critically to think critically. Critical thinking can occur when listening critically or when self reflecting. It is just an aspect of critical literacy, to me.
Inquiry and research require both critical reading and thinking to produce useful pieces so other people, when they critically read, will be given the correct information. I'll go back to my U.S. Dept. Ed. example. I honestly only noticed it because I was sourcing the page for a brief I'm writing for work. Like any other research, it listed sources at the bottom of the page, and as a critical reader, I checked those sources. The page claimed that NCLB had reduced the achievement gap to the smallest it's ever been. As a critical reader, I knew that was true, but I also doubted that NCLB was the cause of this. So, I went through it's sources, and sure enough, found a trend of reduction for the past 40 years, ever since Civil Rights had been in full swing. So, yes, the gap is the smallest it's ever been, but there was no statistically significant difference proving that when NCLB was enacted this sped up or the gap decreased even more. In fact, I found evidence that it slowed in some situations. The U.S. Dept. Edu. wasn't wrong in it's claim of the smallest gap ever; it just wasn't right about the cause, from my research. I believe that is how critical reading helps people research. One person could have thought that this was a reputable source, trust it innately; but the critical reader checks the sources (inquiry) to ensure the information is as correct as possible before using it in his or her own research.
What does critical literacy mean to you? How is it different from critical thinking? How might it be important to inquiry and research?
ReplyDeleteI think critical literacy is reading with the lens of the sociocultural and historical context of the text and its author. Critical thinking is the ability to read closely and read with skepticism and an attention to detail, but it does not necessarily take into account context. I think critical literacy is probably important for research and inquiry because sociocultural context and bias needs to be considered when reading a text or investigating a learning situation so that we are able to determine the influence of that context.