Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space

Not too long ago I came across Kris Gutiérrez's (2008) article Developing a Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space. This text resonated with me for a number of reasons.

Gutierrez's theoretical framework is both:

• ecological, intentionally drawing on learners' knowledge and practices that develop in a range of spaces inside and outside of formal schooling, and

• political, engaging with institutional structures, social histories, and dynamic power relations.

Gutierrez came to speak at Boston College last fall, and at the time I'm not sure I fully understood the significance of the Third Space. This article brought into light some of my uneasiness with the focus on Academic Language.

First let me simplify the concept of Third Space:

• First space - learning and knowledge within home and community contexts.

• Second space - learning and knowledge from an institution, like school.

• Third space - learning and knowledge that merges the first two spaces, connecting the home, community and school. Third Space is the intersection of students everyday experiences and identities within a learning environment that values what the students bring from home. Institutional learning is shaped by the First Space and learners are shaped by the Second Space.

For example, Gutierrez describes how the curriculum at the UCLA Migrant Institute represents a junction between students' lived histories and genres of school. Students at the institute develop syncretic testimonios, or autobiographical accounts, both written and oral that situate their own lived experiences within new understandings of history that they are studying. At the same time, students are exposed to "a range of genres that are typical of academic writing: extended definition, persuasion, compare and contrast, personal narratives, and so on. However, each form is used in new ways oriented toward the development of a sociocritical literacy." (p.154).

This approach privileges who students are and what knowledges they bring and imagines new possibilities for growth. It explicitly contrasts deficit-orientations to pedagogy that seek to mold students in a normalized image of "smart," one that uncritically props up the dominant culture. What this reminds me is that Academic Language should not get reduced to teaching students how to speak and write like a educated, white person. Although it is essential that all students become literate in dominant Discourses, pedagogy that expects students to give up their home culture and identities to succeed serves to dehumanize those students--even if done with the best of intentions.

How easy it is to fall into patterns in which we look to somehow "fix" broken students. So how do we resist this tendency?