Does Critical Literacy Developed by a Creative Persian Writing Curriculum Empower Self Perception of Women of Color Immigrated to Iran?

 Modernization of a society depends on the greater demands for accountability which caused a movement based on the idea that schools should not merely impart information and ask for data memorization. In fact, education should equip the students with critical thinking. This qualitative study investigates practices of critical literacy in a Persian writing curriculum promoting development of literacy and voice and raising critical consciousness and social agency of the participants, by making use of a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy. The present study employs a critical narrative research method. By making use of a semi-structured narrative interview, it explores the experiences and insights of four former students of color from a women’s Persian writing curriculum and its impact on their literacy, voice, and confidence development. Participants were women of color who used to study in high-density schools of low-income neighborhoods in the US before their emigration. The writing curriculum is for foreign women who learned Persian in Bent Al-Hoda School located in Qom, Iran. The curriculum’s critical literacy elements include reading relevant passages, studying from critical point of view, preparing their own narratives, and reading them for live listeners. A thematic analysis is used to find the repetitive patterns of their perceptions and experiences with the curriculum and whether the critical literacy empowered them. The findings from the curriculum and the perceptions of the participants indicate that critical literacy is an effective approach to literacy instruction as well as voice and agency development.
Extended Abstract
Modernization of a society depends on the greater demands for accountability which caused a movement based on the idea that schools should not merely impart information and ask for data memorization. Education should equip the students with critical thinking which places marginalized voices in the center. It has addressed the underrepresentation and silence of people of color in curricular inequalities. Critical literacy serves disenfranchised students in their academic and everyday lives to confront capitalism which has benefitted from the majority of the population remaining silent and not fully literate. Thus, to make room for voice expression and self-perception empowerment for women of color who live or used to live in such a system, it is important to carry out further educational research on the ways in which women of color from working-class communities have received literacy education. Hence, an innovative instructional approach such as critical literacy requires serious consideration and further investigation. The current study is designed to provide valuable information for literacy teachers to employ as they design curriculum, and select and prioritize instructional materials and practices in the classroom. More specifically, this information is designed to inform educators on the differences between using critical approaches to mentoring student writers and readers and initiating them into the writing process, and simply instructing in the traditional or instrumental ways that often have been used in large public schools. Furthermore, this study intends to fill a gap in the current educational research on literacy instruction in curriculums of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL), particularly for working-class women of color immigrated to Iran. That is, this qualitative study investigates practices of critical literacy in a Persian writing curriculum promoting development of literacy and voice and raising critical consciousness and social agency of the participants, by making use of a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy which was developed out of Freire’s (1972) work and used to apply critical theory to the classroom. This critical education theory is associated with democratic principles and social action, and serves the empowerment of socially and economically oppressed populations. For emancipatory purposes, teachers and students have been co-investigators in dialogues working mutually; that is why dialogue has played a pivotal role in critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy seeks to provide all students with counter-hegemonic environments – “intellectual and social spaces where power relationships are reconstructed to make central the voices and experiences of those who have historically existed at the margins of public institutions” (Darder et al., 2009, p. 12). Critical pedagogy leads students and teachers to question traditional passages and internalized beliefs, and to take social action against social injustices. Therefore, critical educators come up with a humanizing education starting with the experiences and personal lives of students, which helps students and teachers to further develop a voice affirming their cultural, class, racial, and gender identities. The present study employs a critical narrative research method. By making use of a semi-structured narrative interview, it explores the experiences and insights of four former students of color from a women’s Persian writing curriculum and its impact on their literacy, voice, and confidence development. Participants involved foreign Persian-learners who were all native-like speakers of English emigrated from the US to Iran. Under purposive sampling four participants were selected; they were women of color from the working-class who finished both their Persian learning classes and Persian creative writing curriculum at Bent Al-Hoda School in Qom, and used to study in the US public schools. At the time of this study they were from 18 to 20 years old. Former students were selected intentionally instead of the current members of the curriculum. In fact, former students have completed their experiences with the curriculum and have had some time to reflect on those experiences. The setting of the study was a private language center in which women’s Persian writing curriculum of 24 sessions were held in six months. The women voluntarily attended weekly literacy sessions of getting to know writing genres, of reading texts from marginalized perspectives written in or translated into Persian, and discussing the texts and writings. In addition
 
n, 6 monthly public reading sessions were held to which the students could take their parents and friends. The curriculum was for foreign women living in Qom who learned Persian in Bent Al-Hoda School. After the narrative sessions, data were transcribed and stored on a secure computer. The transcripts from the narrative sessions were analyzed by looking for repetitive themes and patterns from the participants’ responses on their perceptions and experiences with the curriculum and the critical literacy approach. Also, themes and patterns were found regarding how the participants believed the curriculum and the critical literacy elements were helpful in changing them. Themes were recognized in their responses and the method of coding was employed. Since raw field notes were “the undigested complexity of reality” (Patton, 2002, p. 463), patterns and identified themes expressed by participants in their narratives were established. Next, specific responses under those themes were coded, particularly as they related to issues connected directly to the experience of critical literacy and its impact as empowering and changing. The findings from the curriculum and the perceptions of the participants indicate that critical literacy is an effective approach to literacy instruction as well as voice and agency development.