In Australia, critical literacy enjoys a new prominence in most state curriculum frameworks. Internationally it is being explored by a joint Critical Literacy Task Force (an International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English working group). Many teachers are now familiar with the Chalkface Press materials (Mellor et al. 1987), the Critical Language Awareness materials produced in South Africa (Janks 1993), and the recent book published by the Primary English Teachers' Association (Knobel & Healy 1998). State education departments have produced broadsheets (e.g. Comber & Simpson 1995, Department of Education and Children's Services, South Australia 1995, Kimber et al. 2000) and guides for teachers on critical literacy in the classroom (Education Queensland 2000), especially emphasising the text analysis role of the reader as devised by Peter Freebody and Allan Luke (1990, 1999). Teacher researchers such as Jennifer O'Brien (1994, 1998, 2001) and Vivian Vasquez (1994, 2001) have documented their practices in early childhood classrooms, illustrating what this teaching might sound like and what different children make of it. The New London Group (1996), including international literacy educators and researchers, expanded the concept of critical literacy to `multiliteracies', emphasising the plurality of literacies and the need for curriculum design to respond to changing socio-economic conditions, populations and communication practices associated with globalisation.
After a decade of intense activity, publication and authorisation about critical literacy, what is there left to say? Despite this attention, in early childhood classrooms critical literacy may still be somewhat unfamiliar. Why this is so relates to the fundamental assumptions that critical literacy calls into question. How does critical literacy fit with, contradict or alter other key practices and beliefs about early childhood pedagogy and early literacy? How does it fit with, contradict or alter what we think we know about young children? Is it compatible with these ways of thinking about early childhood literacy development or does it require a major shift? In this paper I explore some of these questions.
One reason why `critical literacy' may still seem strange is that it does require a shift in thinking about literacy. In the past, educators have believed that teaching literacy could be improved if we studied it `scientifically' (Luke & Freebody 1997), but as Luke and Freebody (1999) point out literacy teaching involves `moral, political and cultural decisions', not simply the selection and application of best methods and techniques (see also Powell 1999). Children learn to become expert in particular literate practices (McNaughton 1995) and become particular kinds of literate citizens. Recognising that literacy teaching and learning is political may be troubling to teachers, especially so perhaps for early childhood teachers, who are typically given the lion's share of responsibility in helping children acquire literacy. Whereas literacy had been understood as an unquestioned good--a skill to be accomplished--now it sounds almost dangerous. On what criteria do literacy teachers now base their practices? How do we decide where we stand? What kinds of practices should children have access to? The non-neutrality of literate practices represents a considerable challenge to early childhood teachers--perhaps even a shift in professional identity. It changes the way we think about the job.
Yet critical literacy is congruous with a great deal of what we know about young children's language development. For decades, linguists and developmental psychologists have been fascinated and delighted by the incredible achievement of young children in acquiring language and in some cases, languages. That young children should also be able to acquire critical language practices should therefore be no surprise to early childhood educators. It is not cognitively, nor linguistically `beyond them'; text analysis is a dimension of the practice, not an added layer. Just as we have held high expectations for all children to learn language, in the same way we need to credit them with the competence for understanding the specific effects of language use in specific sites.
However, early childhood education has also been inflected with other discourses which work to preserve the view of the young child as innocent, naive and in need of protection, which Pat Shannon (2001) describes as the `politics of niceness'. We like to think of young children as purely motivated and as unaware of the power relations at work in the world that produce injustice. This is despite the fact that most young children world-wide are only too aware of what's fair, what's different, who gets the best deal, long before they start school. They learn these lessons about power from everyday life. They acquire language(s) in the contexts of power relations within families, peer groups, communities and wider cultural formations. So what can early childhood teachers do to build on this knowledge? In what follows, I offer a way of thinking about critical literacy where early childhood teachers draw on three complementary resources to construct `critical literacies' in classrooms.
Children come to school with rich resources for critical analysis. The trick for teachers is to mobilise those resources in school tasks, whilst at the same time making available new `ways with words' (Heath 1983) or new discourses (Gee 1990) that the children have not yet learned. Developing a critical approach to literacy learning in classrooms doesn't signify one set of practices. Teachers who take a critical standpoint will always be concerned with issues of power and justice, but how they pursue that in their curriculum and teaching may vary greatly. My collaborative inquiries with teacher researchers and my observations in the longitudinal studies with which I have been involved suggests that there are at least three …
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