The Goal of Literacy Teaching - to Complete School or Make a Change? A Critical Analysis of Literacy Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms in South Africa

Sammanfattning: This qualitative minor field study is conducted in a multilingual public secondary school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The aim is to analyse the literacy teaching from a critical literacy point of view and to gain new perspectives on how to work with literacy in multilingual classrooms in Sweden. The material was collected over approximately three weeks and consists of participant observations and two semi-structured group interviews with nine learners in total. The theoretical approach derives from a socio-cultural orientation and focuses on how unequal power relations are represented in language. Our results indicate a focus on individual learning of cognitive skills, for example, answering pre-written questions to a text in the work with reading comprehension. Furthermore, reading is considered important to be able to influence one’s own life and to connect with the surrounding society, as is good knowledge of English, which in turn is developed by reading. English is the language the learners are most used to use in school related activities and the language they feel confident to read in. In addition, the results show social, critical and transformative aspects of literacy. The teachers want to make use of the learners’ experiences in the teaching. Moreover, this goal is occasionally connected to a desire to empower the learners with agency to act for change. However, this desire is limited by the curriculum since it is forcing the teachers to teach at a certain pace. These results are then analysed by the use of Hilary Janks’ interdependent model for critical literacy by considering the consequences of focusing on any of its four parts – power, access, diversity and design – without any one of the others. We conclude that it is a challenge to design teaching that does not separate, but include cognitive, social, critical and transforming aspects of literacy in Sweden as well. Janks’ model can be used to design a teaching that includes these aspects to a greater extent and thereby create a more inclusive multilingual learning environment. Finally, we suggest that theories about critical literacy should be added to both teacher education and to the steering documents.