Writing with girls to rewrite the world : approaching critical literacy through a generative dialogical practice
Keywords: Education.

What is writing for? When it comes to our students, we often answer this question with our present and past views of literacy and writing. In terms of critical literacy, and from a theoretical and pedagogical perspective, literacy and writing are part of a larger process of conscientização in which students are able to understand their lived experiences within the context of a power based historical construction (Anderson & Irvine, 1993). Taken further, Lankshear and McLaren (1993) draw a bridge between constructing meaning and civic engagement. Any believer in social justice -- or educator that cares for that matter -- would readily subscribe to these notions of the purpose of literacy and writing. Yet, these views of literacy do not get us any closer to the way in which our students are asking and answering this question. This project is first and foremost a co-constructed storytelling exercise. An endeavor to construct knowledge about writing and literacy together with a group of girls of color in San Jose, CA. But in this project, our focus is not on prompts, output, edits, or developing ways to get students [girls] to write more or understand the "importance" of writing. Instead, we're engaged in a dialogical quest to take a step back and understand how we can read and write the world before engaging in the process of learning to write. In rewriting the world, we seek to rewrite our approach to literacy through a reconstruction of narratives within the classroom. The relevant critical literature examines literacy, writing, student voice, hybrid spaces, emancipation, democracy, radical pedagogy, and dialogue in terms that often rely on binaries and linear or quasi-linear approaches. Through the implementation of a Generative Dialogical Practice, we first reconstruct the narrative of the Educator/Researcher into that of a learner. The project then moves to disaggregate and rearticulate the girls' narrative through their dialogic streams into one of transformation and generativity in order to construct a new process for the teaching of literacy within the classroom. I utilize critical design research and critical ethnography methods to examine our project through a combination of timelines, constructing "voices, " disaggregating and rearticulating dialogue and meaning in a non-linear fashion by reimagining the classroom as an evolving set of dialogical streams. Ultimately, this project aims to create a new critical sandbox for the teaching of literacy and writing based on a co-constructed authorship model whereby we reevaluate what constitutes intellectual production in the classroom, and the students become the primary subjects in the development of that space's narratives. From a research and pedagogical standpoint, I explore the use of a Generative Dialogical Practice that progresses through the Zone of Generativity (Ball, 2009, 2012). This qualitative study is ethnographic, phenomenological, and action-oriented using critical/generative/sociocultural narrative analysis. At its core, this work comes to life within the practice of critical participatory action research, and relies on student-engaged narrative mapping through their dialogic streams, interviews, field notes, and participant observations to investigate and redefine our notions of student voice, literacy, and dialogical practice as we explore generative ways to learn how to read and write the world. Ultimately, and in the words of Gloria Anzaldúa, "escribo para idear" -- this work is the reflection of an attempt to invent and develop an epistemology of the collective imagination between myself and a group of girls (Anzaldua, 2015)