Week Twelve Readings

Week Twelve’s Theme

How can we encourage very young children's critical literacy and numeracy skills? By modelling or guiding their questioning? By reflecting on and challenging the texts or numerical issues (e.g. fairness) they encounter?

Key to this focus is the educator's role in supporting the child's development of theory-of-mind in order to understand that these texts or numerical issues are not neutral, as they represent certain points-of-view and silence others.

This week’s theme is about children being literacy and numeracy analyst, and analysing their literacy and numeracy experiences to search for issues of social justice or to use literacy and numeracy to expand on their understanding and show their ability to understand issues of social justice. These social justice issues should differ depending on the age and interests of the children. For example, children in the four and under age group could focus on relatively simple examples of fairness and equality and how this relates to them inside their classroom or family setting.  Teaching for social justice and educating open minded, inclusive, fair, and just citizens is something I will strive to do during my career, so this week’s theme is particularly interesting to me. Being able to read about how to teach for social justice in literacy and numeracy with young children was good for furthering my understanding about teaching things such as fairness, difference, equality, and racism.

Reading One

Murphy, Shaun. (2009). Mathematics and Social Justice in Grade 1: How Children Understand Inequality and Represent It. Young Children, May, pp. 1-6.

This reading was chosen due to its focus on teaching young children about social justice issues using mathematics, which turned out to be an incorrect assumption about the reading. This reading was actually about engaging children in discussion about issues such as equality and racism, and letting them express their ideas through basic numeracy activities. The article was eye opening and showed me how complex and insightful young children can be when faced with issues as complicated as the colonisation of Australia.

The article was based on researching a Canadian Grade 1 class that had been read The Rabbits written by John Marsden about the colonisation of Australia, with Kangaroos representing Indigenous Australians, and rabbits representing the colonisers. The book shows not only the colonisation but also the effects of destroyed culture as well as the Stolen Generation. After reading this book, and revisiting it a number of times throughout the year, Murphy prompted discussions about the issues of equality and fairness represented by the book.

During these discussions and activities the children in Murphy’s class expressed their ideas using Cuisenaire Rods. What was amazing about some of these expressions was the complexity of the ideas about power and how more number does not always represent more power.

Murphy emphasised the need for open-ended questions with multiple entry points for discussion and room for a variety of interpretations.  In this way children were able to think about, discuss, and express through the Cuisenaire Rods any particular aspect of the story that interested them the most, and take ownership of their own learning and development.

Murphy also focussed on teaching the students to identify as mathematicians, and to be aware that math is everywhere, which links with previous week’s discussions (week nine as well as a general theme). This, I thought, was an important point as he focussed on the students being aware that math is everywhere. Previously I have discussed the importance of educators being aware of this fact, and using it to their advantage when planning numeracy rich experiences and activities. But children should be aware of this too, and should be able to see numeracy or maths as not just equations and numbers, but also in everyday activities and a way of expression. This point was reinforced when Murphy discussed the need for children to be aware that there are many different forms of math, just like there is many different forms of literacy and that these forms and skills should be taught simultaneously and used to expand on each other.

Reading Two

Wood, Jeffrey. (2005). Moses’s Story: Critical Literacy and Social Justice in an Urban Kindergarten. Voyager: National Association for the Education of Young Children, pp. 1-12.

This article focusses on another class again (and coincidentally) in Canada, where the teacher, Wood, decided to focus on critical literacy and social justice in a kindergarten setting. Wood argued that critical literacy is not just about reading and writing, but is also about perspectives and ways of thinking, the lived experiences of students, and is a cultural and functional practice. Wood aimed to create critical conversations crossing gender, race, culture, and class, and to help his students think critically about books and the world around them.

Interestingly, Wood’s desire to create these sorts of conversations almost hindered his teaching, as he did not initially see the children’s efforts to keep the playground as a work of social justice because he believed it to be too small. This, of course, was action towards social justice for the children and was especially relevant to them as it affected their everyday lives, a factor I like to emphasise when teaching children.

This article was particularly helpful in showing how books can be used to create discussion about social justice issues, and how writing and drama can be used by children to engage and take part in actions for these issues. The emphasis on social justice within the students’ lives (after the playground incident Wood focused on social justice inside the classroom) was interesting and shows how complex ideas like these can be simplified by making them relevant to children’s everyday experiences.

This all ties in with my original ideas about education and making learning relevant to children’s lives, to educate critical thinkers, and lifelong learners, and to help children see and strive for social justice throughout their lives.