Fragoso Literacy Position Statement

Sociocultural Perspectives on Literacy

It is crucial that teachers make connections to students’ cultural and linguistic

backgrounds because that is how we keep the classroom relevant, engaging, and supportive. In

making these connections we can in turn support our students' literacy development even further

than the classroom, helping students to understand themselves first and then their role in the

world, teaching them the necessary tools along the way. As teachers we hold such a unique role,

we are preparing students to go out into the world and be full-fledged adults. That means that a

successful teacher is one who teaches more than just content; rather they build on their student’s

experiences and lack thereof to create content and experiences that will prepare students for their

adult life. How might we do this, you ask? Nieto (2013) explains that,

teachers who are successful with students inevitably become socio cultural mediators,

that is, they learn about their students, help them to negotiate academic spaces, and they

affirm students’ identities while helping them to explore the world beyond their limited

realities. Sociocultural mediation is important because literacy is not just about learning

to decode; rather, it is a social practice that cannot be separated from the sociocultural

and sociopolitical contexts in which it takes place.(pp.15-16)

Students must make connections between the classroom and the outside world and the best way

to do that is to pull on their current lives to help propel them for the future. How might we do

that you ask? The only way to ensure students make these connections is if they know how to.

As teachers we can model how to make these connections and cultural understandings as well as

provide students with tools and a lens to view things critically and creatively.
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One thing that might happen if we do not make these connections to students

backgrounds is we can become stagnant teachers which may lead to unsuccessful students or

even a hostile classroom environment. As teachers we have a responsibility, we are responsible

for helping students navigate contexts both inside and outside of school. In order to do this well

there is some information that teachers need. As Moje (2015) points out,

Teachers need opportunities to learn about particular students’ experiences, backgrounds,

and uses of texts, and they need practice in how to scaffold students’ navigation across

every day and content-area discourse and learning communities without appearing to

suggest that the goal is to move from one discourse community to another- implicitly

better- community. (p. 271)

As a teacher our job is to help our students, in whatever ways we can, to succeed both inside and

outside of the classroom. This can’t be done if every year instruction is the same. Each new year

is a new class of students who have different backgrounds, needs, etc. When teachers specialize

their teaching to a model that pulls on what students already know, pushes them to new yet

manageable levels and helps them navigate the world around them, literacy development and

confidence building is sure to occur.

Additionally, it is important to have these connections for the teachers and other students

to learn from. As people we are all made up of our beliefs and our experiences so what better

way to learn about the world around us than from the people closest to us. “NCTE’s (2013)

definition of 21st-century literacies recognizes that “as society and technology change, so does

literacy” and as such, youth must develop proficiency and competency in their use of digital

tools… While schools are challenged to keep up with the ongoing list of new technologies, youth

are often the first to know of new developments in digital technologies because of their out-of-
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school literacy practices and engagements” (Haddix et al., 2017, p. 26). As teachers we can’t be

ignorant about the world around us the same way that we can’t be ignorant about our students

and their literacies. In a digital age more than ever our students are our biggest resource. By

building on our student’s backgrounds, passions, and abilities we are advancing our classroom

and presenting and promoting literacy in all new ways. Along with this by keeping the

information relevant to students and what they engage in outside of school the chances of

students making connections between school and their other discourses will improve greatly. If

we as teachers don’t build upon our students’ realities and backgrounds we have the chance of

failing students, maybe not with a grade but in the long run we are taking away experiences and

opportunities for growth in the classroom by not opening our eyes to the possibilities and things

we can all learn from students.

The Importance of Being Literate in English

Being literate in English is of extreme importance as the skills, knowledge and

dispositions required for literacy in this content area foster critical thinking that is essential to the

real life literacy practices of communication and questioning and engaging in the world around

you. In order to be literate in English you must be able to consider and critically engage with

multiple perspectives, question and confirm validity, and make clear and supported claims,

communicating your thoughts in writing and speaking effectively and efficiently. In our world

there is never only one side to a story therefore, there are multiple perspectives that exist

requiring us to become informed before we make a claim. This is crucial both inside and outside

of the classroom because we never want to make a false or misinformed claim because we didn’t

do our research. Inside the classroom it can reflect poorly in our grades and in our self

representation. Outside the classroom it can diminish our credibility and our reputation among
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peers if we do not make sure we have the facts to back us up. When teachers create an

environment where all perspectives are taken into account we are fostering students who want to

educate themselves and understand where their peers and other members of society are coming

from. This begins individuals on the path of metacognition, being aware of one's thinking or

reading, and “That spirit of inquiry, the ability to question and probe texts and with it the

thinking of others is where we are setting the bar for ourselves as a profession”(Fisher & Frey,

2018, p. 169). Along with this, in order to be literate in English one must be able to make clear

and supported claims, effectively and efficiently communicating one's thoughts in writing and

speaking. This is essential to real life literacy, on a daily basis we communicate with those

around us and thanks to technology even those not physically close to us. To be a productive

member of society requires us to make our own decisions about things and be able to express

ourselves and our beliefs or assertions with clear support as to how we came to them or why we

feel a certain way about something. By becoming literate in English those communication skills

and the skills necessary to make informed claims are fostered. As Sharon Kane (2010) puts it,

“We all have the capacity to learn how to distinguish good arguments from bad ones and to work

out for ourselves what we ought and ought not to believe, and it diminishes us as a person if we

let others do our thinking for us”(pp. 132-33).

One final skill that is necessary to be literate in English is to be able to question and

confirm validity. Especially in the age of social media, it is crucial for individuals to consider

whether a source is reliable or not, we cannot simply take all statements or articles as truth. In

order to develop critically literate citizens who can engage with and make decisions about

information found in popular social texts such as news articles and reports, community

proposals, and social media we must give individuals the tools to practice interrogation(Moje,
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2015). All of these skills and dispositions necessary to be literate in the content area of English

also foster well informed, critically thinking individuals who will question the world around

them, be able to see the world through others' point of view, and communicate their thoughts in

eloquent ways to achieve their goals.

Literacy and English

Literacy and English go hand in hand. The fundamentals of the English content area are

reading and writing, while specialized according to content these processes are also at the core of

every other content area as well. Due to its importance in all contents the pressure and

importance for students to master English and the processes of reading and writing are increased.

One challenge with becoming literate in English involves technology and the ability to post and

view information at your fingertips. “Historical analyses demonstrate that both the forms and

functions of literacy have been largely determined by the continuously changing social forces at

work within any society and technologies these forces often produce”(Lev et al., 2013, p.1). As

times change the content being produced and the points of view are also changing and growing

so it is our job as teachers of English to give students the tools to be able to critically engage with

texts even in an ever changing society. Students may struggle with applying concepts learned in

the classroom to their everyday lives, like critically evaluating the validity of a twitter post they

come across, which is the embodiment of being literate.

Another way in which students might struggle with becoming literate in English is due to

a difference in backgrounds. In order to be literate in English you must be able to identify and

engage with different/multiple perspectives however, that requires students to understand their

own positionality which can be hard for some students to grasp. As Haddix et al. (2017) puts it,

“Every two Black young persons are not the same and what it means to be queer for one person
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might mean something completely different for another”(p.29). In order to engage with texts

students must be able to acknowledge differing viewpoints or even similar viewpoints that hold

different meanings. Not only this but students have to be respectful of their peers' differing

viewpoints which extends much farther than the classroom to foster respectful members of

society.

Additionally, different backgrounds can play a part in struggling with becoming literate

in English in regards to personal experiences. For some students their parents may not have read

to them when they were younger, they may be from a foreign country where English isn’t their

first language, they may have lower comprehension levels than their peers, the list goes on and

on. Every student has a unique background that fosters the kind of learner they will become but

sometimes those backgrounds can lead to difficulties in mastering English. For those that are

English language learners, “It takes five to seven years to acquire language proficiency in a

second language, and even longer if one has limited formal schooling opportunities”(Flint et al.,

2018, p.509). This adds extra pressure for these students to become masters of English as their

peers are years ahead of them, causing extra strain on the content of English as it is there that

they will learn how to communicate their thoughts and be successful in other content areas. No

matter what the background teachers should be able to scaffold the content so that every student

is able to become literate in the content area of English.

References
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Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). Chapter 7: Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction. In L.M.

Morrow & L.B. Gambrell (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction, (6). (pp. 150-172).

Guilford Publications.

Fint, P., Dollar, T., & Stewart, M.A. (2018). Hurdling over language barriers: Building

relationships with adolescent newcomers through literacy advancement. Journal of

Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(5), 509-519.

Haddix, M., Garcia, A., & Price-Dennis, D. (2017). Chapter 2: Youth, popular culture, and the

media: Examining race, class, gender, sexuality, and social histories. Adolescent

Literacies: A Handbook of Practice-Based Research (pp. 21-34). EBSCO Publishing.

Kane, S. (2010). Chapter 5: Metacognition and critical thinking. Literacy and Learning in the

Content Areas (pp. 125-150). Routledge.

Lev, D.J., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Henry, L. A. (2013). New literacies: A dual-

Level theory of the changing nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment. International

Reading Association.

Moje, E.B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A Social

and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254-278.

Nieto, S. (2013). Language, literacy, and culture: Aha! moments in personal and sociopolitical

understanding. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 9(1), 8-20.