Literacy disrupted: Re/scripting possibilities for critical curriculum change in Australian primary schools

Currere as a disruptive tool

In this paper, we aim to critique the ‘out of sight, out of body’ with an understanding that the lack of representation in the data is ‘not out of mind’ but a daily reminder of how some populations are made absent or represented as what they ‘should not be’ (Vicars, 2006). Using Pinar’s autobiographical concept of currere (Pinar, 1975, 2012, 2020) as an analytical tool, we re/question ‘how can educators disrupt education systems that help to perpetuate ideologies that are already well established, to de/assimilate ideological challenges, and produce new ideologies in line with changing economic and social conditions (Apple, 2019)?’ As emphasised and encouraged by Pinar (2012), the method of currere enables teachers to have a voice to influence the curriculum in such a manner that positively contributes to student learning and consciously seeks more equitable ways in which children learn. Teachers are empowered in the sense that they make better decisions, take initiative, and lead the curriculum that demonstrates their voices in the designing and delivery of teaching and learning in the classrooms that are attuned to issues of equity. Pinar (2012) advocates for a curriculum that represents a teacher’s true authentic self rather than following pre-planned activities planned by someone else outside of the teaching profession. Therefore, teachers should have the opportunity to take ownership of the curriculum. They should know what they are teaching and assessing to enhance learning for academic performance and behaviour to promote better student attributes for their current circumstances and for life after school. Implementing the method of currere (Pinar, 1994) as an autographical means to study the lived experience of individual participants in curricular conversation involves regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthesis to reveal an understanding of how the official curriculum struggles with representing diverse cultural and social positions. It could also be argued that as the official curriculum is constantly constructing pedagogies of inclusion and exclusion, the method of currere can scaffold children to ‘take the lead’ to be in essence liberated them from the ‘official’ adult sanctioned policies that had them assigned to stratified and standardised ability groups (Boomer and Cook, 1992).

Rethinking literacy for 21^st Century classrooms drawing on the practice of currere invariably involves getting caught up in debates about what is and is not appropriate literacy pedagogies and has to involve a consideration of why some teaching and learning practices are not included in, or recognized by the official literacy curriculum. An uncovering of the lack of acknowledgement of how students’ life world experiences inform their literacy practices often results in policy documents that overlook activities and texts that often mean the most to our students. The importance of reconsidering ways to re-textualise the spaces of the classroom with strategies for active and purposeful re-engagement of literacy is central to disrupting the limitations of the official curriculum. A capacity to rethink the salience of ideologies, identities, and values and how literacy is inseparable from students’ motivations, involvements, and interests has the potential to critically locate literacy, as a fluid social practice.

Before teaching from multiple perspectives, however, we must understand our own cultural locations and how those locations impact our perspectives and practices in the classroom. Pedagogy is situated, relational, and hermeneutic, and the frequency of these experiences often determines what constitutes ‘effective practice’. The challenge of making sense of what we do in the classroom can be a lengthy process that often involves spending thinking time away from those areas we naively came to designate and recognise as spaces where teaching and learning happens. Living with this understanding can mean struggling with all that which cannot be known. It involves grappling with shifting ideas, reflecting on the ways in which experience has shaped a sense of self, and making decisions as to how, in analysis what it means to teach when conceptualised as an act of disruption. Curriculum theory emphasises that curriculum is a conversation and the conversation itself is knowledge in action when the teachers and students interact through sharing of ideas that connect to a curriculum content (Pinar, 2012). From that perspective, how the student can use educational opportunities to expand and enhance that knowledge to make life meaningful is dependent on how the teachers scaffold and unpack the curriculum so that the student’s prior knowledge harnesses learning from known to unknown (Carr et al., 2005; Cashman, 2015). The context of the study is a year one classroom in an urban primary school setting. Participants were early years’ children from culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse communities. The vignettes were constructed using reflective journal entries that provided narratives on daily classroom literacy learning experiences.

Getting Stuck in…

Markides (2022) has noted the scope of possibilities and problems that accompany writing in different ways, and in our endeavour to untangle the complex meanings of the lived experience of the classroom, we have had to find a way to work through the webs of dominant institutional discourses that outline how our voices should be heard (Darder, 2020). It quickly became apparent that the views we had of ourselves as educators were shaped by being involved in critical communities of thought and reflecting on the dialogues that took place between our past and present selves. The storied vignettes in this paper reveal much about how we have rescripted our everyday pedagogical praxis and to ‘interrogate the power dynamics...the evolution of my practice, the evolution of my pedagogy and the evolution of my core beliefs…to draw out of some events, dialogues and interactions that have brought [us] to this moment’ (Markides, 2022: p.95). In our various attempts to situate biography to interrogate the links between the social and the individual, reflexivity has made known to us that:

the outer is what we do with our minds and is usually associated with intellectualism,

In the following storied vignettes, we share the emergent understandings that have been generated as a result of our thinking with theory (St Pierre, 2021) using the intimacies and transferences in the pedagogical exchanges of currere (Grumet, 2016). Our reflective dialogic engagements with curriculum and pedagogy are offered as simultaneous forms of disruption where we write–think–perform what can be described as a series of deeply personal, deeply pedagogical enactments of complicated conversations. The ultimate aim is to provoke and reimagine more inclusive literacy worlds for teachers and students that inspire a pedagogy of possibility and hope.

Vignette 1: Disrupting at-risk labels

As I reflect now, that school year began, much like the others. The excitement of new beginnings, new identities, and possibilities that one imagined. Then the inevitable heaviness of carrying the moral and ethical concerns that infuse a teacher’s life, leaving them both burdened by the expectations of the system yet also excited by the possibilities of enlivening children’s literacy learning worlds. Living in the middle. In between at times. Outside and inside. What I now have come to think of as a kind of critical curriculum shape shifting that I felt was required if I were to seek a sense of justice for children from culturally diverse and low socio-economic communities who always appeared to be regarded in deficit terms. The constant quest to disrupt all that appeared to limit, to reduce children’s literacy learning in order to satisfy the standardisation of pedagogic practices.

I felt a great sense of urgency that year. A longing for newness, imagining curriculum alternatives and conceptualising learning and the possibilities of empowering children in new ways. For ten (long) years of my teaching career working in a school that was situated in a low socio-economic and culturally diverse community, I had been immersed in the deficit discourses and practices of naming literacy learners in particular ways. Assigning labels and implementing practices that in hindsight were downright demeaning. Unjust. Enacting those categories and practices in ways that haunt me still, all in the guise of providing ‘additional assistance’. Children’s social, cultural, and literate identities constructed, erased, and (re) constructed throughout their schooling lives by others in a system that overtly and perpetually defined them as ‘not enough’.

Low.

Struggling.

‘At risk’

No hoper.

Poor kid.

Other?

That year compelled me to reimagine other ways that could disrupt the deficit labels and low expectations that were like an absent presence–so resolutely positioning children’s identities forever as ‘outsiders’. Many (literally) ran away each day. Many carried the heartbreak that life’s circumstances served up to them and their families. Many presented each day, the potential of another identity waiting to be uncovered, created. It was all about potential, but required new ways of (re) conceptualising literacy curriculum, thinking… imagining… when approaching the same challenges. Where was I in all these? Where were the children in my class?

Let’s meet one, my Grace.

Vignette 2: Disrupting the official curriculum: writing to relate

One year, in order to understand my children more deeply and to address the lack of intellectual engagement in so many of their literacy learning experiences, I set up what I termed, ‘Our Thinking and Reflecting Journals’ where I decided I would write to the children each week, and they had the opportunity to write or draw back to me. These were outwardly ordinary looking lined exercise books, but what was to reside within the pages was hardly ordinary. What became cultivated within the pages of the books were rich dialogic exchanges that sought to invite children’s intellectual, affective expressions, generate a deeper curiosity about issues in the world, and develop their imaginations.

At the heart of introducing this new literacy practice was also the importance of creating spaces for children to be positioned as capable communicators whose insights were valued. Over time, their ideas soared! Reading and writing their journals were all they wanted to do each day. And interestingly, the more conventional aspects of their literacy development (that are usually the only focus of early official literacy curriculum) also greatly improved. Ideas flowed, curiosity deepened, and greater approximations of more sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure were frequently employed. Their wonderings reflected a desire to inquire. Activating their imaginative capacities deeply engaged them, and (unsurprisingly) their actual reading levels and comprehension improved throughout this process. I came to understand from that year how important it is that we recognise the profound role teachers play in the development of children’s identity through the curriculum practices and choices that we implement. Seeking to know children differently, experience literacy as a social practice that opened up spaces where they could feel a strong personal and affective engagement in their learning. In effect, striving for an antidote to challenge ways of doing, being and becoming ‘school’ literate that were so narrowly defined.

What ensued throughout our dialogue recorded in the journals were ongoing opportunities for children to have an outlet to express their thoughts on their learning as well as their emotions. Not to mention an outlet for myself also! What freedom there was to be able to explore ideas, feelings, and importantly grow from these as writers, thinkers, and well ‘people’. Through our weekly sessions of recording our thoughts in the journals, I could attend more closely to her feelings and insights. I was effectively demonstrating that as her teacher, I valued children’s insights and also importantly that I was pedagogically and emotionally close. I guess some might describe that as being present.

This idea really became in essence, an ongoing ‘learning conversation’. Through our reciprocal writing we could inquire into our experiences as learners, co-construct meaning, and as their teacher I was able to inquire into ways that I could support their learning. Topics varied but usually composed of current events, learning experiences, or questions that arose during that week. Although this required much additional after work hours for me to respond to their entries, the fact that it became such a rich source of insights made it all worthwhile. It became this creative, ongoing pedagogical process of (re)imagining and (re)constructing literacy curriculum. An uncovering of rich possibilities in our daily learning according to where our reflections took us.

Their capacity to generate creative insights, questions, and wonderings fascinated me. My critical lessons were many, but what stood out was in reality the simple notion that all we needed was as it turned out was that all we needed was

a pencil

paper

a heartfelt desire to ‘go there’

the creation of space in the curriculum.

Some of the intellectual and affective places that emerged in their entries included:

… it was very interesting to find out what the word encounter means: to come across someone or something unexpectedly. I thought it meant something to do with shopping!

Always at play however is the constant negotiating of the documented curriculum with the lived experience of the everyday. The balancing of what was required to be taught and learned via the mandated policies and what I came to value as the ethical, moral imperatives of our work that were lived each day. The need to go beyond the constant quest to achieve predetermined standardised outcomes and instead embrace more complex perspectives. The ongoing inner conversations that are had never go away in these tensions; the push and pull of the mandated curriculum demanded equal attention be given to create more relational and liberatory ways of enacting curriculum.

Vignette 3: Disrupting the written word…dialogic explorations in reading the world

Curriculum as a means by which we create moments of affective engagement has the capacity to enact social justice principles. Let me explain. When all in the literacy curriculum become about skills in mastering the ‘written’ word so many children are identified and self-identify as not being capable. It limits the potential engagement of the heart…the feelings of learning. Learning to read the world as an antidote to just the word was a way in which I sought to address issues of inclusion. Engaging hearts and minds with equal emphasis and power.

Creating opportunities for children to engage in regular dialogue was for me was at the heart of not only activating their intellect and ideas but also elevated their status as capable and critical thinkers. Explicit moments to not only engage in sharing ideas but also to reinforce that your ideas are valued. A level of engagement that is rarely, if ever, realised in the regular literacy classroom of ‘doing school’. Never awakened in any real sense. Seeking to create spaces to embrace more openness, greater dialogue through the use of art works back then served to invite all to ‘read’ the images.

The use of artworks as a way of engaging all children to read images was intended to counter the endless diet of printed, levelled texts that were privileged. Artworks used as visual texts have a way of engaging all, inviting expression and response, inciting feelings. A way of making meaning that is not solely reliant on the cold hard reductive decoding skills that print demands. Bigger ideas that were more deeply ‘felt’.

An emphasis on affective engagements by reading images in artworks provided children with more embodied ways to express their ideas. Transgressing the usual (stratified) business of reading printed worlds that increase in complexity once a child has proven they are worthy of moving beyond the everyday high-frequency words so omnipotent in their daily worlds. Why do we deny young children the rich vocabulary and ideas that present them with possibilities, alternative ways to imagine and perceive the world? Why do we persist in reproducing practices that erase any possibilities of being immersed in the pure adventure that thinking and ideas may invite?

I discovered that when curriculum practices are founded on amplifying the creative and imaginative capacity of children, the potential is enormous. How is it that children diagnosed by a previous teacher as ‘at risk’ or as ‘struggling’ to read/write possess the capacity to generate such deep insights and express questions they have about the world through dialogic engagements with each other and their teacher? Throughout the year, we engaged in what became known as our ‘interesting discussions’. So simple. So deep. So liberating. Many of the children expressed a range of insights, feelings, and questions about the world. These included;

Annie: I believe that observing art is like learning history because I learn about the artist and their life. I also learn about why artists paint about events during their lifetime. The painting ‘Liberation’ by Ben Shan supports my ideas. I would like to learn and investigate other artists that are women.

Sian: I love the way Miro uses texture in his painting, and I can’t believe that I am getting more information about his painting. I know that he sometimes gets ideas from his dreams, and I know that he loves to use primary colours in his artwork and do abstract artworks too. I love the way he uses symbols in his artworks…

Aaron: I wish that you made me more work so I can think more, I like the way you make me think…I like the sculpture, it reminds me of a peace symbol.

Carlos: I never knew I knew so much about the elements of art, for example, I never knew what angular meant …

The desire to wrestle with ideas and to pedagogically follow my children’s lead became part of the internal reflective conversations I had in planning their literacy learning. Recognising and embracing the role of dialogue, the need to have affective engagements in their learning became central tenets in any conceptualisation of literacy curriculum. Creating an intentional space for children to learn in more embodied ways, invite their expressions and most significantly come to know children more deeply, their histories, and their experiences of being learners. I often wonder if all the discourse about effective teachers is purely and simply about all that is left inside our children? When all is said and done and they leave the teaching world of the classroom and us, what remains? What are the residues of their learning identities and lives with us?

Vignette 4: Disrupting the heart and mind divide: Assembling agency in literacy

Fast-forward 4 years. I am in a grade one-two classroom. There are even greater (is that possible?) pressures to increase the assessments of children’s literacy skills. This pushed teachers into narrow unimaginative pedagogical corners, to reduce literacy as being only about what was visible when knowing in my heart anything that mattered never made it onto any prescribed developmental checklists. Moreover, there are now such pervasive (uncontested) discourses of using evidence-related practices, of diagnosing and fixing that infuse everyday discussions of children and teaching. The use of ‘data’ is conceptualised as something that is factual, that can be observed, and that is constitutive of a child’s identity; external to it. Frightening. Increasing amounts of children being as in need of intervention. Categories narrowed. Curriculum further reduced and simplified to discrete chunks of disconnected information.

No mention of the complexity of learning that is recursive, dynamic, non-linear, and ever changing. The teacher’s role in all this is similar to industrial models of schooling. The conveyor belt of literacy learning that diagnoses you in need of intervention at the mere chance that you did not correctly identify some disconnected word in a disconnected text in a disconnected experience. Schools like ours had invested much time, energy, and money in setting up ‘intervention’ programs from the first year of school. Long before you have entered the building dear children, many of you will know the practice of being retrieved from your regular classroom, called perhaps across the room for all to hear, then taken into a room that is often silent and isolated where you will be required to read or write something that is determined by a particular scripted program…one that pretends all is happy like ‘Jolly Phonics’ (nothing jolly about the experience of being removed from your peers and re-assigned a separate space to be remediated). Publicly labelled as in need of fixing. Yes it is that visceral, felt. Perhaps your program will even offer you the opportunity to ‘recover’?

These are inherently designed to help you recover from what exactly?

Your cultural heritage?

Your socio-economic class?

Your postcode?

Your apparent shyness which is mistaken for being at risk?’

A critical capacity to question and imagine alternatives was needed now more than ever. I developed an approach with my children, which came to be known as C A T time, (Children As Teachers). This approach was underpinned by the explicit purpose of positioning children as experts of their own understandings, participate in literacy as a critical and social practice, and in essence afford them ongoing opportunities to be experts in their lives. In these sessions, children were taught how to participate in what was termed ‘an interesting discussion’, where they could make decisions about the texts they read how they would help each other read. Simple. Powerful. It was the children who were the experts on their literacy learning. My expertise lays in explicitly structuring these sessions as well as the need to constantly challenge their fixed beliefs that it was their teacher who was the only source of knowledge and as such, their role was to passively listen.

Disrupting traditional literacy pedagogy through complicated conversations

Central to the method of currere is the role of the complicated conversation, which can be conceptualised as the ongoing internal negotiation of the lived curriculum and the planned one. Pinar (2020) states that a complicated conversation occurs socially and subjectively through a shared and solitary academic study, sometimes spoken, sometimes silent. He points out that:

currere emphasizes the everyday experience of the individual and one’s capacity to learn from that experience (e.g., to reconstruct experience through thought and understanding and reflection in the service of understanding). Such understanding however partial and provisional can be achieved by working though one’s lived experiences, informed as that is by political, social and cultural legacies and events. Such understanding can, then help us reconstruct our own subjective and social lives. We are changed by what we study: such educational experiences encourage subjective and social reconstruction (2020, p.51)

Through ongoing internal complicated conversations, one can wrestle with the tensions that surround the everyday world of literacy teaching and learning. Issues that reside undercover yet operate so powerfully to create deficit constructions of children can be made public and critically examined. These include the rush to assign reading (and other) levels to children, which create harmful literacy categories, and practices that reproduce vulnerabilities in children from low socio-economic and culturally diverse communities. Mandated narrow assessment regimes pressure teachers to simplify literacy learning, especially with young children by reducing curriculum to a series of skills and sub-skills that rely on memory more than anything. Teachers and children are required to live within these curriculum constraints, that standardise and minimise ‘ways of being literate’ (Bernstein, 2000).

On so many occasions as a school leader, I would move throughout classrooms and observe children self-identify as a specific ‘reading level’ ‘I am a level 12…’ What often accompanied this was the fact that once reading levels were determined, they were then excluded from selecting texts from other boxes (that were not their levels and hence deemed to be inappropriate reading). What critical life long lessons do children learn about themselves and the world of schooling from these practices? Their identity (self-worth…learning potential, trajectory…) is so intrinsically bound up in an arbitrary number. Pretty much decided from such a young age. That number takes on an agency all of its own. Working against these practices requires a deep level of critical consciousness; a reconceptualization of literacy curriculum that can be enacted in more imaginative, socially just ways.

To counter the persistent privileging of the ‘cognitive’ realms of learning in the literacy curriculum that is concerned mostly with memorisation of facts, we wondered with currere what the possibilities were in seeking to integrate more imaginative ways for children to express their ideas whilst learning to read the visual world of artworks? To transcend the endless closed questions that demand little more than closed, minimised, correct responses. What was the potential of our imagination as a means to explore other worlds, other vocabulary stemming from the need to nurture and contest the conceptualisation of children only in terms of their reading level? To disrupt practices that in essence teach children that their value and self-worth are tied up in their reading level. In essence as we reflect now, we sought to transcend the constant quest for certainty, the ‘tick box’ conception of curriculum as linear and predictable.

Literacy when conceptualised as a critical, social, and ideological practice required that children learn to reading both the word and the world; as an act of resistance and empowerment. A constant seeking of children’s perspectives and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) reorganises ways to conceptualise the curriculum, the policies, and practices that reproduce inequalities. This capacity to analyse student agency is a form of critique to discover who is privileged in the curriculum choices we make? Who is excluded? Developing a sense of preparedness to counter deficit constructions of children from low-socio-economic and diverse cultural communities requires efforts to counter institutional practices that are in essence deficit narratives and constructions of children’s identities as literacy learners. The constant (re)negotiation of what curriculum could be occurs each moment throughout myriad interactions, encounters. What we now perceive as a kind of inner dialogue that in essence is a critical endeavour to seek alternative ways to learn literacy that transcend reductionist skill based views of learning. Curriculum as a form of speaking back to the injustices of institutionalised literacy teaching, learning and assessment are inherent in the method of currere.

How rare it is that we honour children’s expertise, demonstrate so visibly and viscerally a deep respect for their capacities, the potential they have to help each other navigate their ways through texts and understand them – make meaning – counter the competitive ways in which children are positioned consciously or unconsciously to achieve higher level. Creating the conditions for children to be viewed as capable – capable of understanding literacy through rich stories, histories, and knowledges that are part of their local place – and how their local place connects with the multiple stories of language worldwide (Iorio et al., 2020) emphasises literacy as a critical, social practice (Comber, 2020) that has implications for how curriculum is designed. Reinforcing a pedagogical orientation to inquire, to critique, demands a capacity for children to be able to feel their way around ideas and to respond to a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Villagas & Lucas, 2002; Bishop et al., 2007; Castago and Brayboy, 2008). Opportunities to record children’s thinking became routine. Listed ideas on charts (with their names in brackets) give them a sense of ownership and permission to change their thinking, challenge each other’s ideas, delight in them changing their mind, or having another child question them. To engage in robust discussion literacy learning becomes about having interesting discussions by creating spaces for children to demonstrate their learning, highlight their funds of knowledge, activate their capacity to support their peers, and position them as experts of their lives: central to the practice of viewing the child as capable (Iorio and Yelland, 2021). Also in the mix were opportunities to embrace a diversity of ideas, bring us together as a community, and enable all to fully participate. This transcended the practice of being grouped according to a specific literacy level or skill. All we required were interesting provocative sentence stems and questions as a means of inducting these (new) practices of learning and relating during literacy sessions. These enabled us to explore a topic of some personal or social significance. To being with these included, stems we could use after reading such as, is it fair to…? Do you think that..? Could you imagine…? What is another way to think about this? Time to engage in more substantive discussions with a partner, small group, or as a whole group were explicitly structured into literacy sessions.

As the children became more proficient as communicators and thinkers, we found ourselves going deeper into then developing ways in which we could characterise how we could have interesting discussions during our CAT time. These were kind of like ‘ground rules’. Drawing on children’s expertise, they suggested the following to guide their discussions.

• Everyone needs to talk equally.

‘CAT’ time took on a life of its own. Children learned how to communicate effectively with all of their peers, how to question, clarify, inquire, and to use each other as resources. They then were able to use this time to focus on assisting each other with their writing and reading goals. Using these sessions, children learned more deeply how to relate to each other, suggest learning strategies, try out ideas, and most importantly feel a sense of self-direction in their learning lives that are constantly negotiated in the adult privileged world of school. Creating curriculum that (re) positions children as the experts of all in their literacy learning lives, that reinforces their opinions are valued came to be critical considerations. How could it be otherwise? How can we continue to ‘deliver’ curriculum as a pre-packaged set of facts void of any personal connection? The persistent metaphors and practices that reside so unquestioningly in the everyday literacy worlds need constant interrogation.

Seeking to be critically aware of how literacy practices impact so powerfully on the learning lives of children is central to pursuing more socially just orientations. Being critical through the ongoing interrogation of literacy practices, questioning how we can be more inclusive with the language we use, the knowledge we present, and the importance of having theories to frame our approaches are vital.

Challenging ‘official’ or sanctioned literacy approaches became the norm for me when making curriculum decisions. It can be considered analogous to changing trajectories for young children whose deficit status and potential to learn literacy are often decided soon after school entry, or more worryingly, prior to if they have attended the school to be assessed. Sanctioned literacies, especially in the early years’ literacy curriculum, usually focus on the individual privileging of learning as the memorising of facts. The narrow socially invented dimension of teaching and learning and the institutional ways in which curriculum is constructed require teachers to pay close attention to issues of equity.

Questions around issues that surround ‘normativity’ what the curriculum effectively sanctions as standards to be achieved calls for critical imaginings for children who do not so easily fit into the linear trajectories mapped out for them and who consequently endure life in the low ‘at -risk’ groups, who are assigned a lesser peripheral status. Never consulted with, materials surround them that are designed to remediate, fix, and remind them that they are in deficit. Living in what I now understand to be a resistance to the simplification of literacy learning but rather embracing the complexities and relational potential of curriculum as lived everyday in literacy learning. The myriad daily moments in which teachers are challenged to both deeply understand the systemic inequities of children’s lives that are enacted in an uncritical approach to curriculum and design more critical and emancipatory.