Reading the Designed World: Critical Literacy in Engineering

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and Literacies SIG Roundtable 1. Critical Media Literacy and Democracy: Toward a Renewed Education System

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the ways in which high school students engaged and resisted critical literacy in their engineering class. Although Freebody and Frieberg (2011) have asserted that critical literacy should be taught “across curriculum domains and through the school years” (p. 433), little is known about how disciplinary literacy complements (or clashes with) critical literacy, especially in the domain of engineering. In this paper, we highlight a possible approach to teaching critical literacy in the context of disciplinary literacy, and we describe how students took up and rejected critical literacies in their reading, writing, and engineering work.

Authors

• Amy Alexandra Wilson, Utah State University

• Christina Marie Sias, Utah State University