Literacy-based practices that promote critical literacy among high school students

Abstract

This study examines the importance of critical literacy as a cornerstone of civic education in the Ecuadorian educational context. A qualitative approach with a descriptive ethnographic design was adopted, and methods such as participant observation—documented in field journals—and a structured written interview were employed. The objective was to characterize teacher mediation in promoting critical literacy practices and the emerging tensions among high school students at an educational institution in the Chordeleg canton. To this end, a non-probabilistic, purposive sample was used, consisting of students from classes D and E of the third year of the unified general high school program at this institution. The results revealed a significant gap between pedagogical discourse oriented toward emancipation and actual classroom practice. Furthermore, teacher mediation was found to be limited by technical and curricular demands. In conclusion, literacy emerged more as an administrative formality than as a tool for social empowerment. This highlights the urgent need to explore new pedagogical models that foster adequate intellectual engagement among young people and promote a critical understanding of the social reality in which they live.