Notes on Religious Literacies in a Secular Literacy Classroom: Historicity and Methodology (2014)

Skerrett, A. (2014). Religious literacies in a secular literacy classroom. Reading
Research Quarterly, 49, 233-250. doi:10.1002/rrq.65

“As with literacy scholarship and research, a just as troubling condition persists in public schoolstoday: anxiety, fear, and lack of professional knowledge and direction about engaging religious literacies in school (Bishop & Nash, 2007; Noddings, 2008). This silencing of religious discourses in school limits opportunities for the teaching and learning of literacy.” (p. 248) 

I. Historical Framing of Literacy, Religion and Technologies of Literacy

1. Protestant religion necessitated literacy education of the masses so people could read and interpret the Bible and other religious texts individually and in community and reframe their everyday practices and experiences around Protestant doctrine. (p. 234) 

Reframing made religious text central at parents’ and schools’ pedagogies and children’s literacy development. They are key curricular materials in public schools.

2. Literate practices in school had been reduced to noninterpretive mechanical process. (p. 235)

Rote learning, repetition, choral repetition, and alike. But the biblical interpretation is a communal discussion.

3. At present, integration of religious literacies is restricted along with power structures that govern particular systems of literacy practice. But she argued that there is failure on fostering pedagogical practice on critical and diverse ways of interacting with texts.

She heralds lost opportunities for building critical literacy without the consideration of religious literacies.

This can also be traced to the widespread mistaken view among educators that the US Constitution forbids teaching about religion and that it may ignite controversy. Possible reasons for this will be discussed later. In a nutshell, I would invite you back to the quote above.

So, religious literacies in school are stripped of its critical character and rendered subservient to fixed, universalistic ways of reading and understanding texts.

4. Approach of multiliteracies theory by the New London Group, invites students’ development of agency and critical literacy as they consider historical, cultural, social, and other influences on their designs of meaning and their literacy knowledge, practices, and identities. (p. 238)

II. Methodology

1. Students between 14 and 16 years of age; sociocultural backgrounds are also specified.
2. The teacher is white; sociocultural background is also specified.
3. There are identified Christian students in the classroom, assigned as focal students.
4. Study ran from mid-September 2009 to mid-August 2010.
5. Qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews, observations, and collection of documents and artifacts.