Critical Literacy in the English/Dutch Caribbean

• In Event: Global Critical Literacies as the Key to Equitable Education: A Transnational Analysis

Abstract

Objectives & Perspectives
Since the last two decades, scholars in the English-speaking Caribbean have been advocating for the usage of native languages/vernaculars, in classroom instruction, in a region that has English as its official language (Devonish & Carpenter, 2007). With the majority vernacular speakers, Devonish and Carpenter argue that success in school is dependent on utilizing the mother tongue for students to develop biliteracy. Using a Freirean model, scholars deconstruct the Eurocentric model of education that further marginalizes the poor (Mayne, 2012) resulting in high levels of illiteracy. According to Pryce (1997), in reference to the struggle many in the region experience, “the language [they] speak, they cannot write, and the language they write, they cannot speak…” (p. 239-240). Aligned with the tenets of critical literacy, scholars within the Anglophone Caribbean Academy, (for example Devonish, Craig, and others) implicitly subscribe to Freire as they deconstruct the legacies of colonialism and slavery and seek to improve literacy levels.

Modes of Inquiry & Data
There is not much literature on critical literacy in the English-speaking Caribbean, although scholarship on effective teaching methods subscribe to its ideology. CL has also surfaced in educational policies that support an additive approach to bilingual instruction. In a review of literature, the tenets of CL were noticeable in the Caribbean Academy although not explicitly named.

Insights & Scholarly Significance
Critical literacy provides a lens through which educators, researchers, and other stakeholders can strategize on how to increase literacy levels of students for whom English is not their native language in the region. As elucidated by Pryce (1997), students who struggle to speak and write a formal language they encounter in school, but not in their communities, experience gaps in learning and lost opportunities to build a solid home-school connection.

Author

• Lavern Byfield, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale