Bartolay, Jessica Mae

Ilano, Herminia
Tatad, Coleen
Victoriano, Ma. Andrea Y.
Manangkil, Jayson
Lopez, Jhon-mel B.

CRITICAL LITERACY

DEFINITION / ORIGIN

• Critical literacy is defined as the ability to take apart various texts in media or writing to find
any possible discrimination that the author might have embedded in his or her presentation of the
world since authors have social and political influence.

• Critical literacy is an instructional approach, stemming from Marxist critical pedagogy, that
advocates the adoption of "critical" perspectives toward text.

• Critical literacy has become a popular approach to teaching English to students in some English
speaking-countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Two major theoretical perspectives

• Neo-Marxist/Freirean
• the Australian

CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL LITERACY

* While critical literacy and critical thinking involve similar steps and may overlap, they are not
interchangeable. *

• Critical thinking is done when one troubleshoots problems and solves them through a process
involving logic and mental analysis.

• Critical thinking focuses on ensuring that one's arguments are sufficiently supported by
evidence and void of unclear or deceptive presentation.

• Critical literacy examines the language and wording of politics within these texts and how
politics uses certain aspects of grammar to convey its intended meaning.

• critical literacy also evaluates media and technology by looking at who owns these forms of
information as well as to whom they are writing and their goal in creating these various texts.

BASIC FACTORS in FREIRE'S FIRMATION OF CRITICAL LITERACY

• The first step of critical literacy involves bringing awareness, or “consciousness” as Freire
terms it, to those who are mistreated and to those who bring about this mistreatment through
promoting unfair ideologies via politics and other positions of power, such as schools and
government.

• Seeking to transform the way in which the school system transmits information since schools
are frequently the primary carriers of information in a society.

WAYS TO ENCOURAGE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL LITERACY

• Encouraging students to analytically read literature, movies, and magazines to challenge the
social norms found within these texts rather than simply accept the author's message without fair
questioning and testing of his or her ideas.

• Letting students conduct research on a topic relating to social justice that they are interested in.

Teaching critical literacy can also develop certain skills.

• Teaching critical literacy allows students to develop their ability to understand the messages
found in online articles and other sources of media

• Teaches them how to identify discrimination within institutions of power and then to question
these power dynamics when they appear in written and oral texts

• Critical literacy aids the growth of reading skills by allowing students to actively relate various
texts to other texts to determine if the overall messages promote or discourages the
marginalization of minority groups

• Critical literacy prepares students to recognize the importance of language in the formation of
politics, social hierarchy, race, and power.

IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL LITERACY

Critical literacy is a perspective and way of thinking about curriculum, literacies, and the lived
experiences of our students.

Critical literacy is the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better
understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships.
Critical literacy views readers as active participants in the reading process and invites them to
move beyond passively accepting the text’s message to question, examine, or dispute the power
relations that exist between readers and authors. It focuses on issues of power and promotes
reflection, transformation, and action.

REFERENCES

Lankshear, C. & McLaren, P. (Eds.) (1993). Critical literacy: Radical and postmodernist
perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Luke, C. (1995). Media and cultural studies. In P. Freebody, S. Muspratt, & A. Luke (Eds.).
Constructing critical literacies. Crosskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

https://literacyleader.weebly.com/critical-literacy.html