Critical Literacy and Postcolonial Praxis: A Freirian Perspective

This essay examines the relationship among language, experience, and historical agency. It does so in the context of recent work in critical literacy and critical pedagogy. My discussion takes its bearings from the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, described in a recent interview with Carlos Alberto Torres as the prime \u27animateur\u27 for pedagogical innovation and change in the second half of this century (12). In part this essay stands as a poststructuralist and postcolonialist rereading of Freire that, while to a certain extent reinventing his work in light of perspectives selectively culled from contemporary social theory, attempts to remain faithful to the main contours of the Freirian problematic. More specifically, I will draw upon recent feminist and poststructuralist discussions of the relationship between language and experience to highlight some new respects in which the Freirian perspective on literacy may be approached. Doing so may further situate Freire\u27s work as a general theoretical resource enabling educators to locate their own pedagogies between critical thought and emancipatory practice

Assessing the use of critical literacies in mis/disinformation literacy instruction

In keeping with Freire\u27s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the theoretical perspicacity of Critical Race Theory, Lenoir and Anderson (2023) posit “technical solutions to political problems are bound to fail. Historical, structural, and political inequality—and especially race, ethnicity, and social difference—needs to be at the forefront of our understanding of politics and, indeed, disinformation”. The approaches to mis/disinformation in libraries and information studies have largely been grounded in two forms of literacy education; media literacy and digital literacy. Both media literacy and digital literacy offer a limited generic framing for engaging with digital information and myriad technology and fall short of providing the acute awareness of the systemic relationship that media and digital information platforms have with interlocking systems of oppression. This paper intends to identify the current application of critical approaches to disinformation literacy instruction to promote its adoption as a pedagogical practice in libraries and information studies

Culture or Canon? Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Literacy

A review of Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo

Alternative Education and Social Change in Brazil: A History and Case Study.

In contrast to the elitism of the Brazilian formal education system are the efforts of educators at federal universities in promoting educational alternatives for the socioeconomically underprivileged population. Having reached its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s and culminating with Paulo Freire\u27s successful conscientization experiment in Angicos, educational alternatives were revitalized in the 1980s upon the nation\u27s return to democracy. Since then, Brazilian universities have committed themselves to contribute to the struggle for social transformation. Mission and objective statements of individual universities express their attitude towards active involvement in the process of alleviating educational and socioeconomic inequities which affect the Brazilian society. Alternatives examined include: Distance Learning--Open University and Educational Television, Adult Literacy programs, developed under Paulo Freire\u27s perspective of education for liberation, and Community Development Programs. Open university programs function as a powerful resource to provide educational opportunities to hard-to-reach populations. Training a small number of individuals, the programs reach a large number of individuals through successive transfer of knowledge and technology. Research involving educational television indicate that programs are more likely to be effective in educating low-income populations when they are directly related to issues and problems concerning the community, not when they attempt to simply reproduce the formal education curriculum. After approximately two decades, Paulo Freire\u27s literacy method is overtly implemented not only on university campuses, to meet the educational needs of illiterate employees, but also as a fundamental component of community development programs. Promoting conscientization, adult literacy programs enable individuals to reflect and act upon the transformation of their reality. Community development programs resort to interdisciplinary work in order to provide communities with development in several areas concurrently. Due to the volunteer nature of this research, results are limited in scope to participating universities

“Cosecha Voices”: Toward A Transcultural Pedagogy

In the fall of 2007, I began filming a course called Cosecha Voices, which centered on the migratory, farmworking experiences of South Texas students attending the University of Texas—Pan American. This thesis therefore, stems from my two-year collaborative experience with the Cosecha Voices project. I propose Cosecha Voices opened up an academic space for critical pedagogy and transculturation to intersect, creating a transcultural pedagogy. Transcultural pedagogy as praxis, centers on students\u27 lived experiences, engaging educators and students in a transculturation of intersecting theories intertwined in oral performances, film ethnography, and testimonios as pedagogical practices and epistemologies. This process allows for personal and social change by empowering the students to document their own migratory, farmworking histories as testimonios. As part of this framework, I transform the testimonio to an empowering/creative/research tool to interpret the research findings and analysis to illustrate the transculturation in the development of this research

Reverting Hegemonic Ideology: Research Librarians and Information Professionals as "Critical Editors" of Wikipedia

While many LIS publications have focused on Wikipedia, no LIS study has yet to use intersectional class analysis to consider the site as a transmitter and reproducer of hegemonic ideology. Using both Antonio Gramsci and LIS theorist Michael Harris as starting points, this paper argues that Wikipedia is predicated on a philosophy of pluralism that serves as a transmitter of hegemonic ideology, thereby upholding the oppressive status quo. To counter this issue, the paper encourages librarians to embrace "critical editing"—an approach to Wikipedia editing built around an awareness of power, a penchant for critical literacy, a focus on desocialization, and an emphasis on self-education. The paper concludes with an example of critical editing praxis (dubbed the "Library Repository-to-Wikipedia" method) that research librarians and information professionals can replicate to counteract aspects of Wikipedia that inherently support the status quo and thus, hegemonic ideology

Revolutionary Peacemaking: Using a Critical Pedagogy Approach for Peacemaking with Terrorists

The current global political atmosphere is steeped in fear of, and intense rhetoric about, political violence and terrorism. Amidst this turbulent environment, it is clear that scholars and practitioners need to get beyond the manufactured fear and the hysterical rhetoric, peddled by what we call the corporate-state-military-media complex (or simply, the power complex ), and instead seek a deeper understanding of political groups that defend or deploy the tactics of economic sabotage (property destruction) or armed struggle in order to change repressive and violent social structures (Best and Nocella 2004; Best and Nocella 2006). Such understanding is important to slow down and reverse the current trend among legislative and policy-making bodies and political leaders who increasingly marginalize, demonize, and exclude radical opposition groups from arenas of debate

Let's Talk About Stereochemistry for a Moment: a Home Experiment Conducted with College Students in Social Isolation

Due to COVID-19, we are adjusting to a new educational environment while also being socially isolated. By combining previously established ways of remote education with video conferences, the world is creating a new sector termed techno-pedagogy. The concept of stereochemistry in Organic Chemistry is frequently difficult to understand even in classroom teaching. Plane-polarized light rotation is difficult to describe because it needs a high level of abstraction in the mental exercise. As a result, we propose in this work that technology be developed to teach stereochemistry remotely. As a result, we prepared a training video that shows college students how to execute a hand-made stereochemistry experiment. Lecturers, undergraduates, and graduate students all gave the video great scores

The role of Knowledge Media in Network Education

An efficient model of education is always closely related to a vision of society. The conception of network society places as a priority a network education model. The general objective of this article is to establish the foundations of network education and its relationship with the knowledge media. The methodology used in this research will be qualitative, descriptive with theoretical approach. The first section will establish the foundations of network education, based on the vision of network society, and its difference from distance education models based on the use of information and communication technologies. In the second section the concepts of “knowledge media” will be analysed and discussed. The third section will address the relationship between network education and the knowledge media. The fourth section will establish the possibilities and limits of network education within the scope of knowledge communication. The result of the theoretical reflection points to a network education model in the digital age based on the network society, within the scope of knowledge communication, aiming to establish the knowledge dialogue through knowledge media