Critical literacy in South Africa : possibilities and constraints in 2002

This article examines the Curriculum documents produced in South Africa since the election of a democratic government in 1994 in order to consider the possibilities they create for the inclusion of critical literacy in the teaching of home languages. This discussion is set against an analysis of the apartheid curriculum documents prior to 1994 and a consideration of the ongoing inequalities in the provision of human and material resources across the system. Despite real constraints with regard to implementation, it is argued that the new Curriculum effects a significant break with the past and makes a positive contribution to transforming language education

Flu viruses a lucky community and cosine graphs: the possibilities opened up by the use of a socio-political perspective to study learning in an undergraduate access course in mathematics

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education on 20 August 2013 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10288457.2009.10740656.In this paper I present a perspective of mathematics education and learning, termed a 'sociopolitical perspective'. Classroom mathematical activity, in which certain ways of acting, behaving and knowing are given value, is located in a wider network of socio-political practices. Learning in mathematics is regarded as coming to participate in the discourse of the community that practises the mathematics. I argue that the use of a socio-political perspective allows the researcher and teacher to view classroom mathematical activity as a product of the network of socio-political practices in which it is located, rather than as a product of individual cognitive ability. I illustrate the use of this perspective by drawing on a study of learning in a first-year university access course in Mathematics at a South African university. Fairclough's method for critical discourse analysis, supplemented with work by Sfard and Morgan in mathematics education, was used to analyse both the text of a 'real world' problem in mathematics and a transcript representing the activity as a group of five students solved the problem. This analysis suggests that, despite containing traces of discourses from outside of mathematics, the problem text constructs the activity as solving a mathematical problem with features of a school mathematical word problem. When solving the problem the students draw on practices associated with school mathematics and their university mathematics course, some of which enable and others constrain their participation. For example, they refer to named functions learned at school, they have difficulty making productive links between the mathematical functions and the 'real world' context, and they have varied opportunities for mathematical talk in the group. The study identifies as key to the students' progress the presence of an authority (in this case a tutor) who can make explicit the ways of thinking, acting, and talking that are valued in the discourse of undergraduate mathematics, and who provides opportunities for mathematical talk

Making it your own by adapting it to what’s important to you”: Plurilingual Critical Literacies to promote L2 Japanese users’ sense of ownership of Japanese

The dichotomy between native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) remains ubiquitous across different language-learning contexts despite increasing mobility and multilingualism of society. L2 Japanese learners in particular may find themselves positioned as subordinate to NSs because of the myth of Japan being a homogeneous nation of one race and one language. To help L2 Japanese students counter such positioning and gain a sense of ownership, we implemented “plurilingual critical literacies” in a Japanese language course in the U.S. Critical literacy aims to cultivate students’ awareness that power relationships are at play in language use, and plurilingual pedagogy valorizes students’ multilingual resources. Eleven high-intermediate-level Japanese students mobilized their linguistic and cultural resources to read and discuss authentic texts by transcultural or “culturally mobile” writers (Dagnino 2015). These writers expressed resistance to the status quo and made meaning creatively, as mediators between two languages and cultures. Reading, analyzing, and discussing texts by transcultural writers motivated students to counter ideologies of NS superiority, and to own Japanese in the ways that best suited their transcultural identities

Inclusive education in the academy: pedagogical and political imperatives in a master’s course

Many universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in inclusive education. There has been much research into the impact of these courses, but little is written about their design. This article focuses on a master’s course in inclusive education in a South African university. The course positions inclusive education as a critical education project and is designed around the four propositions presented by Slee in The Irregular School (2011. Milton Park: Routledge). Using Bernsteinian ideas about pedagogising knowledge, this article accounts for the pedagogical choices made in content selection and course design. The focal questions in the course are described, together with an indication of the range of additional texts that students read. Given that Slee asserts that inclusive education is a political project, and that Allan (2010. “The Inclusive Teacher Educator: Spaces for Civic Engagement.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31 (4): 411–422) urges inclusive teacher educators to reorientate themselves towards civic duty, I argue that producing a pedagogic discourse of inclusive education is a political task that should result in both the teacher educator and the students being oriented towards a critique of existing exclusionary arrangements and an activism that leads to change

Unseen roots and unfolding flowers? Prison learning, equality and the education of socially excluded groups

The objective of this theoretical article is to critique the notion that adult education, in its current marketised formations, might serve the purpose of rehabilitating learners. To date there has been no detailed interrogation by educationalists of the desirability of rehabilitation as an overarching aim for prison education, or to consider the existing educational philosophies that notions of rehabilitation might cohere with. This article begins to address this gap by engaging with the idea of rehabilitation from a critical adult education perspective. The conceptual framework informing the analysis is critical adult education theory, drawing tangentially on the work of Raymond Williams. The overarching assumption is that education might be understood as the practice of equality, which I employ alongside conceptualisations of empowering adult literacies learning as drawn from writings in the field of New Literacies Studies (NLS). These approaches enable the critique of criminological theory associated with prison learning, alongside the critique of assumptions traceable to NLS. The analysis focuses more specifically on Scotland’s prison system, where the criminological theory of ‘desistance’ currently holds some sway. I observe that whilst perspectives of criminologists and educationists draw upon similar sociological assumptions and underpinnings, different conclusions are inferred about the purpose and practice of adult learning. Here criminologists' conceptualisations tend to neglect power contexts, instead inferring educational practices associated typically with early years education. I also demonstrate the importance of equality in the context of adult education, if educators are to take responsibility for the judgements they make in relation to the education of socially excluded groups

1996: Why we still need critical language awareness in South Africa

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The research and development of Critical Language Awareness materials for use in South African secondary schools

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN004431 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Spatial literacies, design texts, and emergent pedagogies in purposeful literacy curriculum

There has recently been an emphasis within literacy studies on both the spatial dimensions of social practices (Leander & Sheehy, 2004) and the importance of incorporating design and multiple modes of meaning-making into contemporary understandings of literacy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; New London Group, 1996). Kress (2003) in particular has outlined the potential implications of the cultural shift from the dominance of writing, based on a logic of time and sequence in time, to the dominance of the mode of the image, based on a logic of space. However, the widespread re-design of curriculum and pedagogy by classroom teachers to allow students to capitalise on the various affordances of different modes of meaning-making – including the spatial – remains in an emergent stage. We report on a project in which university researchers’ expertise in architecture, literacy and communications enabled two teachers in one school to expand the forms of literacy that primary school children engaged in. Starting from the school community’s concerns about an urban renewal project in their neighbourhood, we worked together to develop a curriculum of spatial literacies with real-world goals and outcomes