Exploring Identity Construction in a Critical Literacy Class

The role of student identity is important, and yet has been overlooked in literacy education because English reading education in Korea focused heavily on surface comprehension. The study aims to explore how the critical literacy approach influences student identity construction. Raising the research question of how students’ identities are represented in the critical literacy approach, this study investigated students’ responses to open-ended questions and their log entries. Students from two classes responding to different teaching methods displayed different attitudes and perceptions of their identity. The findings of this study indicate that reading from the critical approach helps students understand texts from different perspectives by questioning and critically analyzing texts, through which they come to regard themselves as readers rather than learners and identify possible selves. Hence, from an identity construction and critical literacy standpoint, reading classroom should practice finding deeper meanings that are specific to the text as well as meanings that students uncover in texts. Finally, this study claims that critical literacy helps students to read texts in deeper and meaningful ways.