“Social Justice is Like a Hero that Saves People’s Lives”: Towards Developing Critical Literacy Practices for Students with Learning Differences (LD) (Poster 8)

• In Event: Critical Special Education: Reexamination, Reimagination, and Rethinking of Research, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

The time is ripe to look beyond the deficit thinking framework when designing literacy instruction in special education. The deficit model precludes many teachers from being ambitious when designing literacy instructions and interventions for students with learning differences (ld). We recognize that teaching reading and writing to students with ld can be challenging, but we cannot be ambitious in our teaching and holistically address their literacy needs if we continue to center - explicitly or implicitly - the medical model in our instruction. Educators and literacy scholars need to look beyond disability to engage these students in the meaning-making process. Critical engagement with the text is essential to the development of a critically informed and empowered citizen (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Lee, 2007; Mirra, 2018).

This presentation explores how middle school students with ld understand social justice issues through the lens of Langston Hughes' poetry; thereby allowing them to grapple productively with the complexity of the texts and foster critical thinking skills. In the Fall of 2019 and early winter of 2020, the first author co-taught five-unit lessons, one unit lesson a week each month, on Langston Hughes' poetry with the classroom teacher. We collected qualitative data that included transcripts of audio-recorded lessons, students' artifacts (i.e., writings and graphic organizers), field notes, and our audio-recorded reflections during our five debriefs. We used qualitative data software to enact the two processes of inductive analysis.

Through inductive analysis, four themes emerged – diversity in text, identity formation, justice-focused, and compassionate action. Diversity in text is an artifact of multiple representations; the artifacts of the social world that push students to examine the diversity of human experience. Explicit teaching is imperative for students to develop tools to deconstruct the author's subtext (i.e., implicit message) and pretext (i.e., intentionality). Identity formation situates literacy, as a task, which can then be a worthwhile experience for students, an outcome that reinforces learning engagement as they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces. Justice-focused provides opportunities for students to construct their understanding of social justice through the lens of Langston Hughes' poetry. Compassionate action embodies social justice and the transformation of critical consciousness into a concerted effort to dismantle oppression. Students organized slam poetry at school to voice out their opinions about what BLM or racism means to them.

What we discovered in this pilot study is that students who were considered failing in school due to their challenges in reading and writing could participate in an intellectual community of learners. It may take more months for them to fully acclimate to this kind of intellectual discussion in the classroom. But what we found here holds a promise of an alternative norm of literacy practices. What is essential, and we think it is the first hurdle, is cultivating a culture of critically sustained high expectations among practitioners. Critical literacy demands, not only knowledge and skills, but a disposition that students with LD can participate in an apprenticeship that values sophisticated thinking

Author

• Eric Claravall, California State University - Sacramento