Journal Article

Religious Literacies in a Secular Literacy Classroom

Skerrett, Allison

2014

Overview

This article examines how a literacy teacher and her students engaged students' Christian religious literacies in a secular classroom and the outcomes of those transactions. Case study methods; scholarship offering historical, cultural, and social perspectives on Christian religious literacies; and the New London Group's theory of a pedagogy of multiliteracies assisted this investigation. Three findings are discussed: First, the teacher's pedagogy of multiliteracies, in recruiting students' entire cultural, linguistic, and multiliterate repertoires for academic learning, also drew on students' religious literacies for teaching and learning in school. Second, students, with their teacher's support, recruited their religious literacies for analyzing and understanding secular literature and for producing academic writing. Third, religious literacies in the classroom produced tensions, which 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. This research contributes more robust understandings of the role of religious literacies in the lives of an increasing demographic of culturally and linguistically diverse youths.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Wiley Subscription Services, Inc,Wiley-Blackwell
• Subject: Academic Discourse / Academic Language / Academic learning / Academic writing / Adolescence / Beliefs / Case Studies / Case study / Christianity / Christians / Classrooms / Cultural diversity / Cultural Factors / Cultural literacy / Depth of (higher level / Depth of (higher level, literal level, etc.) / Discussion / Domain knowledge / Empathy / etc. / Instructional models / Language diversity / Learning / Literacy / literal level / Literary elements / Literature-based instruction / Multiple Literacies / Pedagogy / Prior knowledge / Reading Instruction / Reading Teachers / Recruitment / Religion / Religions / Religious beliefs / Religious Education / Religious Factors / Schools / Secularism / Sociocultural / Student teacher relationship / Students / Teacher Student Relationship / Teachers / Teaching / Transactions / Writing