Saturday, 22 December 2012

The Rise of Enquiry-Based Approaches to Literacy Embedding




To elicit “What kinds of  skills and functions occur within a literacy environment?” Requires that dialogue is encountered as a series of enquiries. For example, Read with Understanding can be broken down into vocabulary, language and text features, comprehension, amongst others.  This does not mean that to evidence the presence of vocabulary requres it be taught as the sole purpose of the session.

As far as literacy embedding is concerned, it may be suprising to know that every eductor is actually doing this, everyday. However, the challenge is to encouraging shared acknowledgment of this between educator and student, and provide evidence of this.

“What do you want us to say?”

This Enquiry-Based Approach to Literacy Embedding, began as an Action Research Project to evaluate learners’ relationships with text, and formulate some resources and stragegies to encourage a series of epiphanies for my students.  I thought I could unlock critical thinking for them, and all could need do would be to stand back, and marvel as students, previously trapped in their own narrow parameters would suddenly ‘see’ things in texts that had been previously denied them, courtesy of the gift of ‘Reading Critically’.

The only one who expereinced anything like an epiphany was me, the educator, when one student asked: “What do you want us to say?”.  Upon reflection, I considered how presumptious I has been; not only had I assumed I could promote my values into my students, but I had falsely assumed that ‘Reading Critically’ could  liberate, cogniscentize and empower them in one fell swoop. All I succeeded in doing was exemplifying the worst consequences of deficit-based education, and expose not only my andragogical shortcomings, but also my students’ literacy boundaries in a public forum. 

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