On Critically Conscious Research (Ch. 4-6)

We must “interrogate relationships between literacy performances and power dynamics in which we engage—not with the belief that we will ever achieve a perfectly just community or society, but with the understanding that the justice lies in perpetual interrogation” (Blackburn).

The three chapters that we read for this week in “On Critically Conscious Research” focus on critical methodology or the philosophies that underlie research and the methods or processes and techniques of research.  Critical methods do address and challenge “taken for granted assumptions about objectivity, validity, reliability, and who should be involved in the research process” (51).  The chapters focused on defining terms such as dialectics, critical literacy, critical ethnography, and how critically conscious language and literacy researchers aim to do.  These researchers “aim to deconstruct, demystify, and articulate the relationship among the disparate beliefs, thoughts, and actions, as well as to illustrate how these ideas influence equity and social justice” (55). 

\

It discusses Structural, Disciplinary, and Hegemonic domains of power and how many of these domains operate invisibly to people who are privileged under the system—primarily White, middle class, men.  The chapters use research examples that have tried to go against the status quo, and how they may or may not have accomplished that.

The section on ELL students really caught my attention in particular.  I met a lot of students who were dealing with trying to learn at the high school level or college level in an American University and their primary language was not English.  Many of the students struggled with the ways they were taught, specifically that there was little to no place for their native language within American culture.  Many of the students that I met when I worked as a long term substitute teacher did not openly talk Somali, although they were fluent, except when they were alone, or within the ESL classroom where Mr. Sommers let them talk in Somali.  Over his time as a teacher, he’d had the students teach him Somali as well as share their culture with him.  They were comfortable with him—but it was clear that comfort didn’t extend to a lot of other members of the faculty.  It makes me wonder now, what kinds of curriculum were reinforced that tried to squash these students’ culture and language, and whether the teachers even realized they were doing it or not.

 I also remember being taken aback when a faculty member asked me why I’d chosen one of the Somali students for one of the English award, since her “native language isn’t English.  Why would you choose her?”  I was really confused by this question.  “Because she was one of the top students in the class,” was my reply.  I felt angry that he’d questioned it, but I didn’t really spend a lot of time asking myself WHY he’d questioned it.  How did his attitude about this matter play a role in his job as a teacher, teaching these students?  I guess I don’t really know.  But it gave me a lot to think about.