Re-examining “Redesign” in Critical Literacy Lessons with Grade 6 Students

Abstract

In children’s literary texts, ideologies aligning readers with discourses of certain communities often remain uncontested, potentially privileging those views and values over others.  Critical literacy, therefore, is important so children can contest positions taken in literary texts and consider how their own texts in turn position others. This inquiry examined redesign as a pedagogical approach for developing critical literacy with 12 year old students as they deconstructed messages they identified in a short film and then reconstructed alternative viewpoints with new digital literary texts (redesigns). Findings revealed that the redesign cycle supported learners as they moved through a process of interpreting the text, critiquing ideologies they perceived and then working to imagine new perspectives and alternate viewpoints in their own literary text creations. This paper explores the implications for supporting learners with different critical literacy skills to develop those skills and express their understandings through the creation of digital literary texts.