Today's classroom topic and discussion was interesting, and whilst I think it is important to explicity teach critical literacy, a part of me feels that the topic is so broad, that to do it justice as means that it has to be taught in an on-going fashion. Teachers also need to be intuitive as to where are the gaps with how children approach their IT research etc.
From the curriculum framework (1998)
"Students recognise when and what information is needed, locate and obtain it from a range of sources and evaluate, use and share it with others".
In respect to the concept that a person needs a baseline of information in order to evaluate the authenticity or accuracy of material, I do not think it is that simple. Instead, in many instances it would be better to teach students which sites can be trusted. A great activity would be to get students to find examples of good 'accurate' information and information that is dubious, then get the children to work out for themselves how to make sound judgements and develop a "ready reckoner". I suggest a sample topic could be "which manufacturer of cars is better, Holden or Ford?". Of course, the students will go to all sorts of sites bagging each...but then they will also discover sites that give accurate objective information and statistics.
In Uni we learn about cochrane reviews, peer reviewed journal articles, and the tier system for ranking research, statistical significance co-efficients etc ( I am rusty....can't quite recall the terminology). What is the benchmark for "how accurate is accurate" for primary school children? Provided that it is not an outright lie or miss truth, is the information ok?
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Agreed - we need to teach critical literacy in an ongoing (or cyclical) fashion. Matt has also made some comments about this on his blog.
ReplyDeleteRegarding a baseline of knowledge - the reason for suggesting the importance of a basic knowledge of history, geography, etc, is that without such a baseline, it can be difficult to assess what's likely to be false or questionable. There's a view you hear quite often nowadays that says students don't need to learn facts because they'll just Google them anyway ... and of course, they can Google them, but the problem is not so much in the search itself as in the need to evaluate the search results. What's your take on this debate?