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last.updated 9.30.09

The Politics of Literacy Education

Purpose

As it has become clear in our discussions, literacy is not simply a monolithic entity that all should strive to achieve in order to achieve a promised success. Literacy, instead, is much more complex and contextualized. And, consequently, it is also quite political. In today's class we will discuss how literacy education responds to the "non-dominant" populations and think about what we would do in the classroom to address the literacy development of these populations.

Review Presentations

Carmen and Beth will present on their pedagogical tools.

Class Activity – Praxis, Redux

We will return to the activity of articulating the process that practitioners can follow to get from reading the field's scholarship and turning it into pedagogical practice. The instructor will depict this process with the students' guidance.

Discussion – Getting Political

The readings for this week address issues of literacy education for students who do not come from socially dominant US populations. We will discuss the following:

• What questions do you have about these articles?
• What are their respective arguments?
• What assumptions does Gee make about literacy and social practices to support his definition?
• Does Gee make a strong argument as Delpit suggests? Do her pedagogical recommendations address the critiques she has made of Gee?
• How can we bridge the literacy practices that Heath describes from her Trackton ethnography with the literacy expectations of the academy. In other words, how can we use the former as a foundation for the latter?
• What does Gutiérrez mean by "sameness as fairness"? And what are her objections? How does LoBianco's observations about language policies and language education speak to this principle? In what ways is English Studies founded on the principle of 'sameness as fairness'? Likewise, how has it resisted this rhetoric? Is this rhetoric appropriate for English Studies? If you were to resist it, how would you?
• If we were the English Department at Pedagogy U. and we were charged with the task of re-examining the traditional skills and drill-based curriculum of the developmental writing course, how would we respond? How have the readings thus far support our appraoch?