Collective Literacy Autobiographies: Exploring issues of authority, positioning and discourse

While a great deal of recent research and pedagogical interventions have focused on the development of critical reading practices of students, less attention has been given to developing critical writing practices. A move from a critical reading to a critical writing pedagogy would involve the application of the same general critical literacy principles, such as (1) repositioning students as researchers of language and (2) problematizing classroom texts [Comber (1994) Critical literacy: An introduction to Australian debates and perspectives, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 26, 655-668]. But while in critical reading classes these principles are applied to the language and texts of others, in a critical writing class they would have to be extended to the students' own language and texts. This paper describes the effects of interventions with students training to be teachers, which asked them to record their past literacy experiences in collective autobiographies, and to disrupt, i.e., critically analyse, them in order to instigate change in consciousness and in their future practice as literacy teachers. The author's focus is on a group around a particular student, Radha, and how the course helped them make sense of, and overcome their hesitancy to write from positions of authority. The author also describes how Radha learned to understand the difficulties she faced in her assignments when straddling conflicting subject positions.