Browsing by Subject "Critical Literacy"
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Item Composition's Terms of Use: The Pedagogical Implications of Learning Management Systems(2023-05) Brenden, MarkThis dissertation is a critical study of the contemporary relationship between education and technology. It develops a philosophy on technology that both tries to make sense of the specific technologies our universities have chosen to embrace and imagines ways of making critical use of them. The intersection of this treatment of technology and education is Composition and Rhetoric, a pedagogical field. The application of this intersection, then, is a study of a particular, prominent technology of composition pedagogy, which is the Learning Management System. This pedagogical technology is explored in three main ways: narrative-based analysis of three case studies of student writing on the platform, rhetorical analysis of one LMS company’s public discourse, and content analysis of one LMS’s internal architecture. The dissertation finds that LMS companies rely on neoliberal rhetorical syllogisms which bypass public deliberation over enthymemes concerning the purposes of higher education, and thus join an assemblage of rhetorical projects that unite higher education with neoliberal interests. These enthymemes are the “terms of use” teachers and students accept. Finally, new terms of use are forwarded based on an updated method of critical literacy.Item Student response to critical literacy within the dominant discourse.(2009-07) Knutson, Margaret MacCarthyCritical literacy is one application of critical pedagogy that focuses on the cultural and ideological assumptions that underwrite texts and discourses. While there is no simple, unified definition of critical literacy, instruction that aligns with this framework involves investigating the politics of representation and interrogating the inequitable, cultural positioning of speakers and readers within discourses. Critical pedagogy and critical literacy are often framed pedagogies of the oppressed with little attention to their relevance within the dominant Discourse. However, many theorists believe that such teaching within predominantly white and affluent populations is not only relevant, but necessary (Howard, 2003; Thandeka, 2002). Drawing on teacher-as-researcher design, this study examines how the students in her all white class within an affluent suburb made sense the ideas of power and privilege and how they responded to critical literacy pedagogy. This action research utilizes grounded theory and critical discourse analysis to illuminate the complex and nuanced responses of students. Data includes video recorded class discussions, student work samples, fieldwork observation notes, interviews and surveys. Findings from this study reveal the complex and sometimes thorny ways that critical literacy manifested itself in the classroom and in students' lived lives. The implications for teaching are presented in two themes 1) The need for teachers to build trust with communities outside of the classroom, namely, parents and administrators through strong communication, academic rigor, understanding, and 2) The need for teachers to increase awareness of the potential negative effects of critical literacy on students and minimize them. The intent of this study is to address the need for greater understanding of how students engage in critical literacy to better support teachers, students and to strengthen it as a pedagogy.Item Teach the kids to code switch... which is a very easy thing to say: Heterosystemic pedagogies for racial justice within a field of (im)possibilities(2018-12) Puechner, ShannonThis study employs ethnographic field methods to investigate the ways Eric, a ninth-grade English language arts teacher committed to racial justice, enacted literacy education in his classroom. With a background in critical literacy, I entered the field with preconceived notions of what a justice-oriented classroom would look like. So, I was surprised to observe a teacher-centric, basic-skills-focused classroom that offered few opportunities for student voice. By observing staff development and committee meetings, learning that Eric’s school, Wayside Junior High, also expressed commitments to racial justice, but engaged in behavior management practices (PBIS) that are generally understood be in tension with racial justice. The purpose of this study is to better understand how Eric and the Staff at Wayside came to take up these apparently contradictory practices. To achieve this purpose, I developed a Foucauldian interpretation of Activity Systems Analysis (FASA), which combines elements of Engestrom’s Activity Systems Analysis (objects, rules, tools, subjectivities, and contradictions/tensions), with several Foucauldian concepts (problematization, freedom, and the field of possibilities). The resulting analytical framework can be expressed in the question: How do subjects construct and enact agency within the field of possibilities produced by the problems, rules, tools, and subjectivities in their environment? An analysis of the data had several implications. Justice-oriented teacher educators 1) must engage with the real and practical problem of organizing a group of individuals for a collective learning activity, what many call “behavior management” and 2) must avoid conveying an ethic of moral purity, and instead encourage teachers to cultivate practices of hybridity—to inventory the multiplicity of problems, objects, rules, and tools in their environment and creatively assemble new justice-oriented learning activities that we, as researchers and teacher educators, could not have imagined. Furthermore, justice-oriented teacher educators in the field of literacy and English language arts 1) must devote more resources and more credit hours to preparing educators to teach the craft of writing, and 2) must identify, teach, and conduct research on strategies for teaching so called “basic skills” through a critical and justice-oriented lens in order to provide minoritized students with codes of power (Delpit, 1988).