Switching to Postmodern Teaching
Turning to Critical Literacy
Endang Setyaningsih, Nenden Sri Lengkanawati, and Bachrudin Musthafa
School of Postgraduate Studies, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Postmodernism, Critical Literacy. EFL.
Abstract: This paper presents a partial finding of an ongoing study. The purpose is to bring forward reasons for changing
education paradigm into postmodernism and to encourage embracement of CL into EFL classroom. It
pinpoints three foci. It begins by putting forward the reasons for switching to different (if not new) paradigm
of education: the postmodern education. Then, it discusses reasons for implementing critical literacy (CL)
that is based on postmodernism, and finally, it showcases possible infusion of CL into conventional EFL
classrooms. In this particular study, infusion of CL into conventional Reading class is viewed as a
‘compromise’ in the effort to minimize resistance to CL as a full course or as part of mainstream curriculum.
As observed, the teaching of EFL particularly in Indonesia, still largely sits on conventional literacy, adopts
blanket curriculum, and is still relatively immune to CL. However, considering its importance, the least that
be done is to incorporate CL into existing program. The incorporation involves the use of Luke and Freebody’s
(1990, 1999) four resources framework (FRF), SQ3R reading strategy and its modification, cooperative
learning, and mindful material and questions selection.
1 INTRODUCTION
Education has been attached to positivism view for
decades. As observed, our education system
including the curriculum still largely inherits and
maintains the hegemony of positivistic paradigm.
Education is analogous to a big factory processing
materials (students) per batch in a standardized way
and at the end of the production line, the product
(students) undergo a quality control (high stake
testing). Product (students) who do not meet the
standard will be discarded and have no market, thus
marginalized. On the other hand, product (students)
who meet the standards will be packed in a uniform
box of labelled competence. This kind of systems has
produced not only marginalized but also socially,
culturally, politically numb students. In reality, the
industry-like education cannot meet the growing
demand for literacy. As the world border is
diminishing, students of the twenty first century have
to deal with pluralism, not mono-ism, of ideas,
ideologies, cultures, languages, etc. This requires
students who are equipped with the ability to embrace
differences, who have and can provide alternatives
instead of single solution, who are able to questions
and participate in preserving democracy, who are able
to work collaboratively with other citizen of the
world. Against this reasoning, education needs to
attend to its paradigm once again
2 WHY SWITCHING TO
POSTMODERNISM AND
TURNING TO CL
Postmodern advocates who spotted gap in current
education paradigm with the real world demand urge
that it is time to turn to postmodernism at least for
four reasons: (a) the emerging concern over students
literacy, (b) observation on the lifeless democracy, (c)
awakening that concepts normally taken for granted
by teachers and implicit in their practices (including
curriculum) are in fact cultural and ‘man’-made, (d)
new generations of learners can no longer inherit
socio-political preconceptions from the past (Cahoon,
1996, Giroux, 1991, Usher and Edward, 2003, Finch,
2008, Hargreaves, 2005; Weil and Anderson, 2000).
Postmodernists concern on the need to provide
education which equips, empowers, and enables
students with criticality to resist social unjust, to
participate and preserve democracy, to question, to
122
Setyaningsih, E., Lengkanawati, N. and Musthafa, B.
Switching to Postmodern Teaching - Turning to Critical Literacy.
DOI: 10.5220/0007163101220126
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 122-126
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

become a fully functioning human being; not a
programmed being.
To move education toward the pole of
postmodernism, Giroux (1991) and Edward and
Usher (2003) suggested nine and five points of
change respectively, which mainly centered on
embracing and promoting differences and divergent
thinking, reducing borders, and increasing students
participation. Likewise, students and teacher should
uncover new perspectives, new angles on the world,
everyday life and self which is a central feature of
post-formal critical thinking.
It is exactly at this point that CL works. CL
“transcends conventional notions of reading and
writing to incorporate critical thinking, questioning,
and transformation of self or one’s world.”
(McDaniel, 2004). Shor (1999) noted that “When we
are critically literate, we examine our ongoing
development, to reveal the subjective positions from
which we make sense of the world and act in it”. CL
teaching is thus the key for responding to issues such
as of marginalization and pluralism.
In the context of Indonesia, bringing CL under
spotlight is driven over a concern on decaying
democracy. In this twenty first century, ease of spread
of information via internet carries load of
consequences. Some loud individuals who fail to
embrace diversity can easily pull others texts into
their circle of side-blinded-ness by means of texts. On
the other hand, unquestioning submission to value-
loaded texts including hoax results in tension among
people holding different perspectives, both in virtual
and real world. Meanwhile, there are also some
individuals who prefer to stay in safe zone and avoid
tension by not voicing their thoughts. This state
would maintain status quo and create an illusion of
peace. But, as this happens, democracy is decaying.
In addition, unquestioning submission to texts
bring about economic consequences i.e.
consumerism. Texts can be created to address
stereotypes, build public opinion which may
influence decision making. In brief, texts are crafted
(Luke and Freebody, 1990, 1999) in ways that move
or stop people into the direction pointed by the writer.
Against the aforementioned background, it is vital to
nurture the ability to read and question texts from
diverse angles and to build the habit of well-founded
reasoning. It is to preserve democracy, to voice
thoughts, to recognize and end oppression that critical
literacy is required. Thus, bringing CL into EFL
classroom is obviously not driven by trend but by
need instead.
3 PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION
ON INFUSION OF CL
The CL in this study is conducted in a regular Reading
class and the course is labelled Intensive Reading 1.
Forty students of first year English Education
Department in Central Java were involved. They did
not have CL class prior to the study.
Before discussing the infusion of CL, a brief
overview of the original syllabi is presented. The
syllabi consists of three competencies: general
competencies, specific competencies, and attitude.
General competencies and attitude cover items such
as being responsible, becoming an active citizen,
being able to cooperate, having social sensitivity,
applying critical, logical, systematic, and innovative
thinking. Meanwhile, the specific competence
includes the following five: finding meaning from
context, identifying main idea, identifying detailed
information, recognizing reference, and text
structure. This specific competence turns out to be the
sole attention as reflected in the lesson plan and in
particular in the activity and the targeted learning
experience. The teaching method suggested for the
class is cooperative learning in addition to lecturing.
The texts and reading strategy is not specified.
While syllabus in different institutions/ levels/
areas may not look like one in the context of this
study, there are three points of considerations that
apply to many attempts in embracing CL.(1) material
selection, (2) use of questions, (3) teaching method,
and reading strategy.
Material plays important part in CL teaching.
Luke and Freebody (1990) mentioned that texts are
crafted and it takes a careful selection of texts to
introduce this idea to the students. There are several
criteria and consideration for selecting material in this
study: (1) complexity of texts (including length), (2)
variation of genre, (3) stimulating/ provoking topics.
In this particular study, the complexity of texts
were set to the minimum to allow students at low
proficiency level got the sense of success and invited
larger number of students to get in touch to critical
questions immediately. The complexity was adjusted
after the grand picture of students’ proficiency is
observed. The texts used in this study covers:
advertisements on air pollution (by Coca Cola
company and Greenpeace), a video on gender
stereotyping (Do It Together), a satire (Fresh Air will
Kill You by Art Buchwald), News article from Huff
Post (Time Magazine is in Hot Water over a Tweet
on Amal Clooney’s Baby Bump), a poem (I too by
Langston Hughes), and other short texts available
online: A Feminist Double Standard; Students
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Bullying Teacher and Momentous Arrest. The list of
material are selected to stimulate students’
recognition on issues of racism, stereotypes,
oppression, and sexism. There were topics that were
addressed by several kinds of texts to help students
recognize the effect/ impact of idea wrapping (text as
crafted object)
The importance of material selection echoes
previous study by Kuo (2014) who achieve positive
results and study by Park (2011) that faced challenge
due to the selection of material which is ‘unreachable’
by the less able students. Providing differentiated
materials needs extra effort to prepare and to
implement. Nearly all studies on CL implementation,
questions were always involved and whether or not
they were explicitly highlighted, questions are indeed
at the heart of CL.
Another important point to consider is the
questions used to evoke students’ critical thinking.
While questions and prompts such as on what certain
word means/ refers to, as prescribed by the syllabi is
prepared, there are larger portion of questions that
aim at stimulating students recognition on the
structure, function and effect of certain form/ lay out/
word, what is being problematized, who is not
addressed, who is benefitted, and the like. A rich lists
of questions can be obtained from Rice (1998),
Wallace (2003, p. 115), Tindale (2003), Tomasek
(2009), and Kucer (2009, p.257), and by no means is
exhaustive.
A twist on the use of the prompts/ questions is the
use of ‘switching technique’ as also used in Kuo’s
study (2014) in which he asked his students to switch
their identity. The questions or prompt may cover
switching gender, switching time, switching place,
switching point of view, etc. The point of this switch
is to train students get different and diverse
perspectives in comprehending text. Sample
questions include: (1) Do you think the writer will tell
you the same thing if he/she is male/ female?
(switching gender); (2) Is the idea still relevant here
and now? (switching time and place); (3) What
happened if the lesson/ the situation are reversed?
(switching point of view).
The questions used in the context of critical
literacy teaching mainly aim to train students to think
critically. One problem that may stumble teacher in
the process is the issue of power relation between
teacher-students and among students. In this study,
there were moments when teacher imposes the critical
thought to the students.
While teacher questions in the classroom are
means for critical exercise, an important indicator of
students developing criticality is the ability and
willingness to ask their own critical question. Based
on Bowker’s (2010) question approach, the ability to
raise questions requires time and training. Time in
this case includes wait time. In this study, the teacher
occasionally fail to give proper wait time and ended
up by giving too many or repeated clues that lead
students to certain answer. Meanwhile, training
means that when implicit modelling of questioning
does not work well, explicit training should be
considered. Several technique that can be used
include, among others: TeachThought Taxonomy,
Question Formulation Technique (QFT) from Right
Questions Institute, using Bloom Taxonomy, and
Socratic Seminar (Heick, 2015, 2017).
The third aspect that can be worked on in the
effort to address CL within constraint of conventional
literacy class is immersion of CL framework into
existing or already used teaching method/ reading
strategy. The original syllabi of this study does not
specify the reading strategy to be applied in the class
but SQ3R is chosen for its clear step and ease of
independent use by students. The use of SQ3R in this
study is incorporated in the four resources
framework. Expecting benefit of the neat steps of the
method, the study maintains the order of the steps
while approaching each of them critically. The SQ3R
in this study is slightly modified by adding more
moments for students to raise questions i.e. during
reading.
Cooperative learning as a teaching method is
largely applied in classes and suggested by the many
existing syllabus including the original syllabi of this
study. This method fits perfectly to the CL teaching
as both are based on the same philosophical
foundation i.e. postmodernism. To foster the infusion
of CL the five pillars of cooperative learning were
emphasized explicitly via Learning Together model
(Johnson and Johnson, 2009, Johnson, Johnson and
Stane, 2000)
Focusing on individual accountability, each
member were assigned a certain role (e.g. reader, note
taker, spoke person, encourager, and resource
person). Each of the role is clarified to ensure that
everyone understands the responsibility. Social skill
training was conducted explicitly. The students were
invited to mention the indicators of ‘respect’ and
‘disrespect’. The words/ traits can be substituted with
other words/ traits to cover an issue that the instructor
wish to address, e.g. ‘being polite’ and ‘rude’. By
inviting students’ responses, everyone in class can
express what they expect to get from others in terms
of behaviour, gesture, attention, etc. The group
processing was also promoted to facilitate the groups
evaluated their work and contribution as a group.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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Upon the infusion, the students generally
responded well. The journey of students’ engagement
in the four resources framework is indicated as the
following. (1) Code breaker. During the study,
students shows that they are able to ‘break the code’
of the materials presented. However, guiding
questions were still needed to gauge students’
comprehension on certain loaded word and the non-
verbal aspect of text such as colour, and pictures.
Several unfamiliar words and phrases were discussed
with the class by inviting students’ responses and
eliciting the metacognition, on how they come to the
answer/ definition/ meaning. Instructor also showed
how to use online resources to solve their problem.
Gadget in the class is allowed and viewed as a tool.
The use is optimized not only as a communication
tool but also learning tool e.g. to research the
background of writer or to dig for certain slang
meaning. In addition, certain materials, links and
notes were sent via app on weekly basis. (2) Text
participant. The students responded well to questions
addressing this role. They indicated interest in the
materials presented. They were able to comprehend
the text relatively fast. Several students seemed to get
problem comprehending the news article, the satire,
and the feminist double standard poster. However, the
problems were mostly solved within the group
without instructor’s interference. They were able to
link the text to their experience and self as indicated
by their ability to provide another example/ case. For
example they were able to use their background
knowledge on the reputation and what issues that
Time magazine usually focused on to comprehend
why Time is in trouble because of its tweet.
The two roles: code breaker and participants were
covered quite fast, most likely because the simplicity
of the texts selected for the students. However,
discussion on these two were relatively lively due to
the topic of texts which potentially carries slang,
metaphor, analogy, etc. (3) Text user. Students’
responses to questions on this role were rather slow.
In contrast to their answer when being asked e.g.
“What is the generic structure of advertisement?”
which they answered quite spontaneously they found
it hard to answer questions such as “How does the
writer put his/her ideas and intentions?” or “What is
the function of examples given in the text?” The
students thought that it was hard to deconstruct the
text and was quite different from their high school
experience when being asked to identify the structure
of texts. While responses were slow, this signalled
positive engagement as they begin to think about how
certain ways of text presentation gives certain impact
and covers the writer’s agenda. Positive response on
this role was reflected by their writing on stereotype
after reading several texts on the issue. They were
able to address the issue in short writing quite
wonderfully by giving examples and well-based
reasoning. (4) Text analyst. Similar to that in the
previous role, the students also responded well to the
predetermined questions but the pace of the
discussion was slow. Yet, the students’ engagement
in this particular role was observably progressing. In
the initial meeting they were unaware of the
difference between questions such as “what is the
topic” and “what problem is problematized?” They
were also unable to get what the question “what’s the
writer attitude toward the topic?” means. For example
the students thought that ‘Momentous Arrest’ aimed
at telling audience about an incident. They did not
know who Martin Luther Jr. was and that complicated
the problem. But as they learnt that text is crafted and
is written with motives, they begin to questions
hidden agenda and recognize writers’ point of view
toward the topic that he/ she puts forward. When
working with the news article, the students posited
questions such as “Why is Amal’s view on the news
not addressed?”, “Why would Time tweet that?” “Is
it a pure blunder?”
4 CONCLUSIONS
This article concludes the discussions by re-
highlighting the need for changing educational
paradigm and to foster the implementation of CL,
particularly in EFL classroom. This study showcases
that incorporating CL into conventional class is not
only possible but also doable without causing too
much ‘noise’ or ‘chaos’ due to resistance.
In the context of CL as an add-on or infused
concern instead of a stand-alone course, the three
aspects: material, questions, and teaching technique
and reading strategy are areas in which teachers likely
to have room for modification. For example, while
genre or text types may be prescribed, teachers can
select certain topic to incorporate CL. Even when the
topic is predetermined, teachers still could provide
‘additional’ questions to nurtures students criticality.
Materials selection is very important particularly
to get students’ immediate hook to the CL. Choice of
topics that stimulate students thinking into issue that
were taken for granted help them to begin questioning
their surroundings. As Bowker (2010) would point
out that expecting students to instantly produce
thoughtful answer is naïve and it is even more naïve
to expect them produce powerful questions. It takes
time for the students to take part in critical literacy.
Switching to Postmodern Teaching - Turning to Critical Literacy
125

On-going observation also indicate that students
responded well to the infusion of CL into
conventional literacy class. Viewed from the
framework of the FRF, responses on the text user and
text analyst roles were rather slow but not absent. The
wait time to students responses were relatively longer
but it was observable that some thinking was taking
place.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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