New digital media have created new possibilities for communication and information. The contemporary global and digital textual world demands critical awareness of texts – selective sources, alternative angles and blurry boundaries between commercial and noncommercial texts.
A new position for critical litarcy in Norwegian Schools
The current need for increased attention to critical literacy is evident in the new national curriculum in Norway, where ”critical approaches to texts” has been introduced as one of the core elements in the subject of Norwegian.
The project (CritLit) therefore aims at developing new pedagogical practices and learning tools for lower secondary school students and to strengthen the work with critical literacy in teacher education.
Collaboration and capacity building
Teacher education in Norway became a 5-year MA degree in 2017. The transition to MA level creates new possibilities for collaboration and capacity building between practice schools and reserachers. In this project researchers, practice teachers and teacher education students at MA level will work together to strengthen critical literacy pedagogies.
The research design involves several stages:
- stage one involves a mapping of current critical literacy practices in schools.
- stage two involves development and testing of new pedagogical models and learning tools.
- stage three involves evaluation of the learning outcomes of participating pupils
The result of the project will provide a stronger research-based foundation for critical literacy work in lower secondary school and teacher education. By strengthening and expanding collaborations amongst core partners in teacher education, CritLit will bring forward increased knowledge and critical literacy competence in schools and in teacher education programmes.
International
The project involves collaboration between several institutions. University of South-Eastern Norway (USN) is project owner, and University of Agder (UiA) and Australian Catholic University (ACU) are partners.
One research team will be located at USN, and collaborate with practice teachers and education students at USN. The other will be situated at UiA, and work together with practice teachers and teacher students in Agder.
The Norwegian research teams will also collaborate with the Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education, ACU.
Publications
- Veum, A., Burgess, M.Ø. og Mills, K. (2023): Adolescents’ Critical, Multimodal Analysis of Social Media Self-Representation. Language & Education. Tylor & Frances Online. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2023.2287508
- Burgess, Marthe Ø. (2023): Redesign as method in critical literacy education, Chapter 16. P. 242-254 in Alvestad, K.C., Nordberg, K.H. & Roll-Hansen, H.: New Perspectives on Educational Resources: Learning Materials Beyond the Traditional Classroom (1st ed.) Routledge. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374683783_Redesign_as_method_in_critical_literacy_education
- Kvåle, Gunhild (2023): Critical literacy and digital stock images: The interests of the uninteresting images. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy 18(3):173-185. https://doi.org/10.18261/njdl.18.3.4
- Veum, A. og Kvåle, G. (2023): Kritisk tekstarbeid på ungdomstrinnet CritLit-prosjektets utvikling av arbeidsmåter og verktøy for lærere i morsmålsfaget. Viden om literacy, 34, 80-89. https://videnomlaesning.dk/media/5642/aslaug-veum_gunhild-kvaale.pdf
- Veum, A., Kvåle, G., Løvland, A. og Skovholt, K. (2022): Kritisk tekstkompetanse i norskfaget: Korleis elevar på 8. trinn les og vurderer multimodale kommersielle tekstar. Acta Didactica Norden 16(2) https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.8992
