Arguments Against Critical Literacies

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Controversy and debate about the inclusion of popular culture and critical literacies in early childhood has continued for decades, which had centred on the relative efficacy of inclusion of critical literacy and concerns around consumerism in approaches to literacy instruction. First, the essay will discuss the theoretical perspectives of the inclusion of critical literacies in early childhood. It will then focus on the arguments for and against the inclusion of critical literacies. At last, the essay will explain how critical literacies integrate to facilitate optimal language learning.

The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF) (DEEWR, 2009, p.38) defines literacy as the capacity, confidence and disposition to use language …show more content…

There are six main perspectives of critical literacies. The perspectives are behaviourist, nativist, maturational, cognitive development, interactionist and neurobiological. According to the behaviourist perspective, language learning requires a rich and healthy environment in experience where children imitate what they see. Behaviourists claim that operant conditioning (Skinner, 1957) and classical conditioning contribute to expressive and receptive languages. The criticism of this behaviourist perspective is that the children do not learn language at a rapid rate and the opportunities for imitation and reinforcement are limited. According to the nativist perspective, language leaning is a biological fact. Chomsky (1975) declared that the human brain designs to learn and understand the use of language and grammatical rules. Chomsky named this as a language acquisition device. Chomsky proposed that children are born with the ability to generate grammar, thanks to a universal grammar (Chomsky, 1982), which is a set of principles that underlies all languages. The criticism of this perspective is that it does not take account the social influences and environment in children’s language development. According to the maturational perspective, language develops or unfolds in a pre-determined fashion, according to the child’s inner clock (Jalongo, 2007, p.66). The criticism of this perspective is that it tends to fail to give enough emphasis to social input to language development. Another perspective is cognitive developmental perspective, which presumes that language develops alongside cognitive development through different activities. The children build and extend their knowledge and understanding whist engaging in experiences in the environment. The next perspective is the interactionist perspective, which emphasises on social interactions between children and

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