Notes on Religious Literacies in a Secular Literacy Classroom: Research Questions pt2 (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)

2. How did students, in response to the teacher’s invitations and through their own agency, engage their religious literacies in the classroom?

1. Students, with their teacher’ s support, recruited their religious literacies (2) for analyzing and understanding secular literature and (3) for producing academic writing.

(3)

Mrs. Campbell assigned a six-week writing of a memoir. Vanesa, one of the focus student is highlighted to draw conclusion on how religious literacies inform and not obstruct academic literacy performance.

Her memoir is about her grandmother who died on a salon still doing what Vanesa understood to be her mission. Her grandma’s mission is not dying in the salon, thankfully, but giving ribbons that are thought to have healing powers to those who believe in them.

Her title “The Last tear!:)”. Evidently enough, her religious literacy showed up in the mention of her grandma being a woman of “faith”, living with a reason and mission in the world, being touched by God, having a vision and setting out on a pilgrimage.

Remarkable amount of religious knowledge can be sifted in her presentation but it is equally evident that her religious literacy serves her literary and academic goals. She doesn’t only parrot socio-culturally informed religious beliefs but creatively envisioned them, for instance life after death. She described eternally beautiful body, leisurely walks with God who is now visibly present, fragrant maple trees and tall grasses wrapped in soft, cold comforting breezes.

Thus, students draw, as in the example of Vanessa on her multiliteracy practices for meaning-making and designing meaning for her written composition. Furthermore, she employed different semiotic systems.

But one can ask, is it just because they are children that they are not apprehended on these literacy expressions? I believe here is a literacy framework will come in. Mrs. Campbell employs the theoretical framework provided by NLG that acknowledges that interconnections and interstices among literacies, as focused in this study is student’s religious literacy, language and culture are helpful to literacy development and practice.

3. What were the outcomes of the teacher and students’ transactions with religious literacies in school?

1. (4) Religious literacies in the classroom produced tensions that the students and teacher navigated by emphasizing a shared value of human empathy and their shared commitment to classroom community, pursuing understanding of one another’s perspectives and seeking underlying commonalities of different, or differently articulated, religious beliefs.

(4)

At this point of the research, the class is moving from symbolism to foreshadowing. Mrs. Campbell shared how she found dead birds in her garden while she was pregnant with her first son and shortly after birth her son died. After Mrs. Campbell told that the dead bird story is an instance of foreshadowing. See p. 245 for transcript.

Nina reflects her religious lifeworld in asking this, that is, making meaning in life’s tragedies. Even when Mrs. Campbell cringed to the depth of conversation she feels they are heading, Nina is not offended or silenced by their difference. Here we see that regardless of differences tensions in the classroom with the inclusion of religious literacies boils down to shared values and commitment, in this instance to human empathy.

On another tension in the classroom, Nina saw Darius laughing on the way Carlo has interpreted the Monkeyman story through the picture Carlo’s presented in the class, like Jesus on the cross. Darius affirmed that the picture Carlos had is funny, because nothing could compare to what Jesus did.

The researcher viewed that Nina’s argument is whether or not the depiction of the character tries to surpass what Jesus did but whether Darius are really engaging to understand the interpretation of Carlos.

On another transcript, Nina expanded the conversation pointing out 3 boys in class that laugh every time other students talk about God. After Mrs. Campbell asked if the boys and Nina go to church, Nina without missing a beat added that they don’t act like it. So Mrs. Campbell tries to relieve the tension in the grounds of making judgements and asking if they can work it out.

Mrs. Campbell employed a strategy that reminds the student to prioritize their commitment to healthy classroom community and refrain from discursive patterns that threatened. Thus, even the precepts of preserving good relations are related to the identified Christians in the classroom.

Tensions also rise when there is confusion of identities. One moment, Nina is flirty and on another wants to write about God.

But tensions encourage students and teachers to generate and articulate understandings about how students might engage their religious literacies to their academic learning. Here is where the teacher’s professional responsibility comes in when she strategizes stressing out healthy classroom community as to defuse rising hostility and damage.

Additional knowledge of students’ religions of the teacher is also considered, which help clear articulation and critical exploration of religious differences, which Mrs. Campbell is limited of such additional knowledge. Positively enough, the stance of multiliteracies yoked students own religious knowledge have still addressed rising conflicts on religious literacies in school.

In this section, it is important to note that members of the classroom are invited and inquired to pursue understanding of one another’s perspectives and sough underlying common ground across different, or differently expressed, religious beliefs.