CLAp to Lesson Planning A Critical Literacy Framework for Pre-Service Teachers

The development of critical literacy skill among pre-service teachers is a concern of Teacher Education Institutions (TEI). The extent of development of this skill can be determined from the quality of the lesson plans and teaching demonstrations that the pre-service teachers prepare and conduct. The purpose of this study is to create a framework that would develop critical literacy skill during the process of lesson plan writing. This is a descriptive quasi-experimental study which was conducted for one semester to two classes of 68 pre-service teachers enrolled in The Teaching of Literature course. Both classes were taught the same lessons but with different methods. One class, the control group, used the expositive method; and the other, the experimental group, used the Critical Literacy Approach (CLAp) framework. The outputs of this course are lesson plans and teaching demonstrations. The level of the pre-service teachers’ critical literacy was determined based on the evaluation of their lesson plans where the types of objectives and the approach/method/strategies used were analyzed. It was found out that the constant use of the CLAp framework which is composed of three phases – Independent Planning, Collaborative Lesson Planning, and Assessment – was found to have contributed to the improvement of the pre-service teachers’ critical literacy skill especially in concept development. Its constant use enhanced their confidence lesson planning and in actual teaching demonstration.

Keywords – Collaborative learning, concept development, objective formulation, strategies, teaching demonstration