Skolans uppdrag är att främja identitetsutveckling, som syftar till att eleverna ska bli ansvarstagande, initiativtagande, självständiga och aktiva samhällsmedborgare.  Genom critical literacyundervisning kan lärare ge elever möjlighet att utveckla sin förmåga att arbeta kritiskt med genus, etnicitet, maktrelationer, klass och identitet. Elever möter många olika litterära och multimodala texter både i och utanför skolan. Studien syftar därmed till att öka kunskapen om elevers uppfattningar av critical literacy. Syftet ämnas uppnås genom två olika frågeställningar:  ·       Hur uppfattar elever texter utifrån de olika aspekterna som ingår i critical literacy, till exempel genus, makt och etnicitet?  ·       Hur upplever elever critical literacyundervisningen?  Studien är en kvalitativ studie, vars datainsamling är gjord genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med sju elever i årskurs 2 – 3. En fenomenografisk ansats användes för att undersöka elevernas uppfattningar. Materialet analyserades genom en tematisk analys, men den sociokulturella teorin genomsyrar arbetet. Studiens slutsatser är att eleverna hade skilda uppfattningar av critical literacy och de olika aspekterna. Många av de elever som deltog i studien diskuterade inte böcker och filmer med andra, om det inte var så att de uppmanades till det. I mötet med olika texter använde eleverna strategier som att läsa mellan raderna för att skapa mening, men de är inte medvetna om att de gör det. Eleverna gör intratextuella och intertextuella kopplingar, men anser själva att de inte tar erfarenheterna med sig. Elevernas uppfattningar av undervisningen skilde sig också åt, slutsatsen som kan dras av det är att de elever som läste mycket och som diskuterade de olika aspekterna under intervjuerna uppfattade critical literacymoment i undervisningen mer än de andra eleverna. Eleverna exemplifierade olika metoder som de använder i undervisningen för att bearbeta texter. / The schools’ mission is to promote identity development, which aims for the students to take the initiative and to be responsible, independent and active members of the society. Though critical literacy practices, the teachers can give their students the opportunity to develop the ability to stand critical to gender, ethnicity, power relations, class and identity. The students encounter many different literary and multimodal texts, both within and outside of school. Hence, the study aims to increase the knowledge about students perceptions of critical literacy. The aim will be accomplished by answering the following questions:  ·       How do the students perceive texts on the basis of the different aspects of critical literacy, for example gender, power and ethnicity?  ·       How do the students perceive the critical literacy practices within their education?    The study is a qualitative study, and the data collection is done through semi-structured interviews with seven elementary students in year 2 – 3. Phenomenography was used to investigate the participants perceptions. The data was analyzed through a thematic analysis, but the sociocultural theory was used throughout the study. The conclusions are that the students had different perceptions of critical literacy and the different aspects of it. Many of the participating students did not discuss books and movies with others, if they were not instructed to do so. The students use strategies, like reading between the lines, to make meaning of different texts, but they are unaware of their ways to comprehend the content. They make intratexual and intertextual connections, but when asked, they do not bring the experience into their everyday life. The student perceptions of the education did also vary a lot, the conclusion that could be drawn from that is that the students which read more and who discussed the different aspects during the interviews did have a bigger perception of the critical literacy practices than the other students. During the interviews, the student gave different examples of methods which were used in the classroom when they processed texts.

In teachers’ duty it is significant to create good conditions for student to become included. The schools value work is therefore not only important but shall permeate the whole education. This study, focus on value work during reading aloud, from books in grade three, primary school, with a norm-critical perspective.  To enable this, I have done a survey to map which books the teachers used for reading aloud in connection to value work. Then a norm-critical discourse analysis of the main character in the most popular books where done. The survey indicates that teachers work with value questions during aloud reading of books.  The discourse analysis show that norms and values were similar. The study implicates, the significant of wise and well-founded choices of books for value work, that enable all student to identify themselves with the main characters in the books. The result shows that the most popular books are not that multifaceted. The characters in these books do not represent the diversity in classroom.   The discourse analyse clarifies the implicit and explicit norms and values the books supports. A teacher can work with figure of thought, literal norm-critique, in book talks with the students. / En viktig del av lärares uppdrag är att skapa goda förutsättningar, för att eleverna ska känna sig inkluderade. Skolans värdegrundsarbete är därför avgörande och något som ska genomsyra all undervisning. Studien fokuserar på högläsning i årskurs 3, där arbetet fokuserar på värdegrundsfrågor ur ett normkritiskt perspektiv. Jag har använt en survey för att kartlägga vilka böcker som lärare använder för högläsning i samband med värdegrundsarbetet. En norm-kritisk diskursanalys, av huvudkaraktärerna, i de två populäraste böckerna, genomfördes. Surveystudien indikerade att nästan alla lärare i studien arbetade med värdegrundsfrågor i samband med högläsningen. Studien resulterade i två böcker inom fantasygenren, där liknande normer och värderingar synliggörs genom diskursanalysen. Slutsatsen visar hur väsentligt det är att lärare gör kloka och välgrundade urval av högläsningsböcker, för att alla elever ska kunna identifiera sig med huvudkaraktärerna i böckerna. De populäraste böckerna, är inte tillräckligt mångfacetterade, för att motsvara den mångfald som finns i klassrummen idag. Skolans värdegrundsarbete kan, om lärare metodiskt väljer ut böcker, utvecklas så att eleverna kan reflektera över karaktärernas handlande och de normer som återfinns i böckerna. Diskursanalysen synliggör implicita och explicita värderingar som böckerna förmedlar. Tillsammans med eleverna, kan lärare, arbeta med tankefiguren litterär normkritik, i boksamtalen.

I denna studie genomförs en normkritisk textanalys av ett urval av Joakim Bergs texter i syfte att beskriva hur normer om etnicitet och trostillhörighet uttrycks. Vidare har studien en didaktisk funktion och syftar till att belysa hur musiklyrik kan fungera i svenskämnets critical literacy-utvecklande undervisning. Delvis för att undersöka hur texterna kan utveckla elevernas ämneskunskaper i svenska, delvis för att studera hur texterna kan utveckla förmågor relaterade till läroplanens demokratiuppdrag. Materialet för studien består av låttexterna ”Sverige” (Berg 2002), ”Våga vara rädd” (Berg 2007) och”Tennsoldater” (Berg 2016) vilka normkritiskt analyserats med fokus på bildspråks och symbolers relation till normer knutna till etnicitet och trostillhörighet. Resultatet visar att samtliga texter belyser de studerade normerna, bland annat genom bildspråk och symboler som beskriver invandring, invandringspolitik, orättvisor samt bemötande av personer utanför normen. Textanalysens resultat, i relation till gymnasieskolans styrdokument, visar att det finns stor potential för att Bergs musiklyrik kan utveckla gymnasieelevers critical literacy.

Incredibly harmful hegemonic norms are being disseminated through postfeminist media and female adolescents are being targeted and shaped by them in alarming ways. Given this current cultural climate, it is timely and critical to identify how new literacies, popular media, and institutional sexism are impacting young women’s lives, their understanding of the world, and of themselves. In this arts-based study the author investigated teen girls’ photographs and accompanying stories to determine which nexuses exist between the participants, their photographs, and their life experiences in order to discover in what ways their photography revealed elements of their identities. Critical feminist theory and visual narrative inquiry informed this SSHRC funded research in which photo elicitation was conducted with 8 teen girls over a period of 6 months. Findings revealed that within the main nexuses of appearance, media, and identity the themes of fetishization, post-feminism influences, and control were complexly interwoven. By exploring the girls’ photographs and investigating the stories and interpretations associated with them, it was possible to develop insight into how youth were using visual media to document and understand their life experiences and create their identities. Ongoing conversation with the participants about their images provided an opportunity for them to consider how their photographic images represented (or misrepresented) their identities. This feminist research allowed for experimentation, reflection, and generative knowledge to occur for the participants. It invites the reader into the blurred boundary between public space, cultural norms and societal expectations, and the private worlds, personal ideas and identities in which adolescent girls live as they mature into young adults. / Graduate / 0727 / 0273

This study examines the representation of Japanese American experiences in internment camps during World War II in children's and adolescent literature. This study focuses on a specific set of children's and adolescent books about one time period in the history of Japanese Americans. I have formulated two major research questions for this study. The first question: What are the characteristics of the selected children's and adolescent books about Japanese American experiences during World War II? The second question: How do the selected children's and adolescent books portray the experiences and responses of Japanese Americans during World War II?I selected fourteen books for inclusion in this study and analyzed the books related to my research questions. These books are organized into three genres: picture books, historical fiction, and nonfiction. The research methodology for this study is qualitative content analysis that includes methods for data collection and analysis and descriptions of the books and illustrations. I used the research questions to first examine books in each of the three genres and then make comparisons across the three genres.The findings based on the first research question include that the books are based on the research and experiences of both authors and illustrators and have a range of time periods from before the war to after the war. The findings also show that in the books, the authors and Japanese Americans express their criticism of Japanese Americans' experiences in the difficult situations related to the internment camps. They criticize the treatment of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government and discrimination against Japanese Americans.The analysis of the books based on the second research question provides insights into the experiences of Japanese Americans and how they felt, thought, and acted. The books portray the prejudice and discrimination faced by Japanese Americans from the point of immigrating to the United States and even after the war. The most important finding is that the books portray Japanese American children as creating lives of significance in the difficult conditions of assembly centers and internment camps.

This study, conducted in a third-grade classroom in Puerto Rico, analyzed the development of literature discussions, in which through dialogues with the teacher and each other, students learn how to discuss, analyze, and reflect upon what they are reading in class, and relate what they learn to their own circumstances. A combination of three theoretical perspectives served as guide: Reader Response Theory (RRT), which addresses how the dialogue featured in literature discussions helped develop understandings about how power, ideology and identity are interwoven in society; Postcolonial Theory (PT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), which addresses the dynamics and relations of power in neo-colonial contexts, such as Puerto Rico. The research questions were as follows:1. How do literature discussion and critical literacy practices influence students' understandings of social issues? a) How do these discussions about social issues influence students' understandings of Puerto Rican society and identity? b) How do these discussions influence students' understandings of how political relations constitute Puerto Rican reality? c) How do students take action based on their developing understandings of society? I relied on ethnographic methods, such as participant-observation, interviews, and videotapes of literature discussions, to document how the students, with the help of their teacher, develop discourse practices that allow them to reflect, analyze and discuss their readings, and then plan and take social action on the issues they have studied. I used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a central strategy of analysis, identifying three major categories that formed part of a broader Identity Theme: Personal, Gender, and Social. A significant aspect of the study is that literature discussions of books based on social issues provide multiple opportunities to reflect, create dialogue, and build understanding about who we are in our current society, who the others are, and provide spaces to develop as social agents. This production of spaces for reflecting on reality, central to this study, fosters in the students a deep process of constructing meaning, elaborates their skills and strategies in reading for a critical understanding of texts and related social issues, and enhances their taking of action for social change.

The purpose of this action research study was to improve the education of Indigenous students enrolled at an inner-city urban alternative high school for adolescent mothers and/or mothers-to-be. Seven adult students agreed to participate in this study, as did the English Language Arts teacher who facilitated the critical literacy classroom activities. The study investigated the impact that critical mathematics and critical literacy activities had on developing students’ critical consciousness (Freire, 2000), which is a key component of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1997). The findings indicate that the cumulative effect of the critical curricular activities enacted during this study led to critical consciousness development in students, and thereby contributed to a more transformative learning experience for them. The findings also indicate that action research was integral to changing the mathematics and English Language Arts classroom practices in this study. / February 2017

The inclusion of critical literacy is becoming more prevalent in our curricula, however, while the value of using trauma literature in the English Language Arts classroom has been established, the explicit use of sexual assault narratives sometimes seems too risky or intimidating for educators. This case study research utilizes social constructivism, feminist, gender studies, and queer studies, trauma theory, and reader response theory as lenses for analysis. Further, a narrative methodological framework was employed to explore how reading trauma literature can influence the writing practices, specifically the digitally written responses, of grade ten adolescents. As well, the study examined the usefulness of digital writing platforms and social media as vehicles to use while incorporating such critical literacies into the classroom. The research was carried out in one western Canadian high school and across two grade ten academic English Language Arts classes. Data was collected from 25 student participants for the primary portion of the classroom study and four of those participants also participated in the focus group discussion. The findings suggest that engaging with trauma literature is certainly a valuable form of critical literacy, particularly sexual assault narratives. Students’ responses indicated that they responded angrily and aggressively to the texts presented, they voiced a need to be heard through the use of repetition, they identified the significance of mental health issues, they made personal connections with the literature as well as intertextual connections between other stories, and created significant and telling silences. Perhaps most importantly, this study found that we must continue to work towards finding best practices for teaching these texts because doing so may lead to challenging rape culture and fostering a sense of empowerment, agency, and resiliency in our learners. These qualities were particularly demonstrated through the students’ personal, critical, and creative written responses using digital literacy practices. / Graduate / 0727 Curriculum and Instruction, 0279 Language and Literature, and 0533 Secondary / amberjanellemoore@gmail.com

The aim of this thesis was to study how five students linguistically express textual power in conversation and writing about reading, as well as to investigate their possibilities to linguistically express textual power. The study was performed within some of the literacy practices in the subjects of Swedish and Social Studies at the social sciences programme in upper secondary school. “Textual power” is here defined as both ability and possibility: to position oneself in relation to the text, to read/interpret critically and to show mobility in the actual literacy sphere. Two analytical tools were used: Langer’s theories about envisionment building and Martin & White’s appraisal framework for attitude and engagement. The linguistic expressions are contextualised in a model inspired by Linell. I base my discussion of the students’ mobility in the actual literacy sphere on the New Literacy theories of Barton and Street, while Anward gives the means to understand text-reproducing practices. The results indicate that the students used a limited range of positions in relation to texts, rarely expressed critical literacy and showed limited mobility in the actual literacy spheres. The students’ possibilities to linguistically express textual power were determined by the design of the teaching contexts. The students were given few possibilities to develop their ability to linguistically express textual power. To compensate for this, the students used a strategy of task solving. This caused a gap between ideally desired and actually produced text. The acceptance of the gap can be explained if the practice is considered text-reproducing. The literacy sphere where the students found themselves seems to consist of an ecological system based on a consensus-driven text-reproducing practice where critical and comparative reading and writing do not take root and thrive.

Literature’s role in the foreign language classroom has been extensively researched, and the benefits of enjoyable reading firmly established. But could teachers benefit from a new perspective in the form of Critical Literacy Pedagogy when choosing and teaching literary works? Critical Literacy Pedagogy, CLP, is a method of critically examining literature to detect possible power structures e.g. concerning ethnicity and gender. This study examines how teachers and students value a number of criteria and aspects in connection to what literature is used in the class. Two empirical web-based questionnaire surveys were conducted on a total of 23 teachers and 42 students in upper secondary school in Sweden. The results are primarily presented quantitatively with the complement of excerpts from the written answers to the open-ended questions, and has then analyzed with the help of CLP, to see if the method has a possible role in EFL-teaching in upper secondary school in Sweden.   In the present study, the participating teachers valued practical characteristics, such as level of difficulty, higher than conceptual characteristics, such as the sexual orientation of an author or character, when choosing what literary works to teach. These ratings were seen as problematic when compared to the teachers’ concrete exemplifications of taught works. Moreover, both teachers and students rated the possibility of critical and ethical discussion very highly in regard to the chosen works. A comparison between the ratings and the exemplified works indicate that CLP could be a valuable method when choosing what literature to teach.