![](bg3.png)
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.
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - 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
124