Definitions of literacy vary across curriculums, ideologies, and pedagogies. By broadening the definition of literacy, Indigenous ways of knowing are celebrated and valued. "While Canadian teachers are encouraged to include Indigenous content in the curriculum, they are still informed by and engaged in the dominant discourse, that of Western hegemony or Euro-centrism" (Chambers, 2015, p. 6). Combining both Indigenous modalities and Indigenous content in critical, place-based learning, connects students with Indigenous forms of knowledge, culture, and traditions. To redefine literacy, Balanoff and Chambers suggest that educators must first recognize that "by attributing literacy to individuals, the
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model ignores the role of literacy as a community resource realized in social relationships" (Balanoff & Chambers, 2005, p. 18). The dominant models suggest that literacy is "reading and writing, typically in English and typically by an individual" as an "autonomous, neutral and universal set of skills or a set of cognitive skills possessed (or lacked by individuals" (Balanoff & Chambers, 2005, p. 18). Instead of a cognitive set of skills, literacy as a social practice allows for "young children to actively engage with language and literacy in authentic and meaningful ways" (Schmidt, 2017, p. 165). Through "various literacy activities to bring children's own powerful knowledge about place into the classroom" the teacher enables the social practice of literacy (Schmidt, 2017, p. 165). Therefore, by recognizing children as already having place-based resources, as Mendoza suggests, children are engaged with literacy as a social practice, making connections and demonstrating "the crucial need to involve children to actively use language in authentic, meaningful, and critical ways" (Schmidt, 2017, p. 179).
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When teachers treat children as knowers (place-based resource holders) and doers (able to effect change in their worlds) they "were not conscious that they were learning about literacy and cared about the things for which they used their literacy"
(Hall, 1998, p. 17).
In addition to literacy as a social practice holding significance of its own in critical, place-based learning, this pedagogy also strengthens traditional modes of literacy. Critical, place-based pedagogy "allows for and encourages multiple perspectives or views… beyond the dominant, Western scientific view" (Chambers, 2015, p. 3). Furthermore, by making literacy a meaningful and authentic social practice through this pedagogy, children can use their environment to make deeper connections, improve oral literacy, as well as visualizing,
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summarizing, comprehending, and writing skills (Chambers, 2015, p. 12-14). "Literacy development has been broadened to incorporate the cultural and social aspects of language and learning, and students' experiences with and understandings about language- including oral language, reading and writing- are included as part of emergent literacy" (Tompkins & Rodgers, 2020, p. 37). Recent expansions in defining literacies, rather than as literacy, aligns with sociolinguistic theorists that recognize reading and writing as "social activities that reflect the culture and community students live in," their place in the world (Tompkins & Rodgers, 2020, p. 8). Nigel Hall argues that children's' learning by doing and interacting with their place and environment critically embeds literacy into doing rather than analyzing, improving engagement, involves the community and place, and relates literacies to everyday experiences (1998, p. 11).
Critical, place-based literacy recognizes children's use of literacy as children rather than merely viewing them as not yet fully literate. Hall argues that "literacy education, in particular, is directed toward some future state of competence or literateness; as a consequence, what does not get recognized (and not just by schools) is children's use of literacy within their lives as children" (1998, p. 10). When children can connect with real-world, or place-based, purposes for literacy and when "literacy experiences were derived from a complex social situation rather than from the ritualistic performance demands of school literacy tasks" children can genuinely
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invest and can act toward their environment in literate ways (1998, p. 11). Literacy development, especially in early elementary, revolves around promoting student's oral language, developing an interest in written language, and using this to support the three stages of literacy (Tompkins & Rodgers, 2020, p. 33). Critical, place-based literacy validates and recognizes oral literacy, and develops interest by valuing students as already holding knowledge and making connections to their place and community.