Exploring practices of multiliteracies pedagogy through digital technologies: a narrative inquiry

Digital technologies have fast become integral within literacy learning and teaching across contexts as students engage with a variety of digital and multimodal texts. While teachers in New Zealand schools have a high degree of autonomy in the design and planning of literacy programs, little is currently known about how they understand and enact multiliteracies pedagogy (MLP). Using data gathered via interviews and classroom observations in an intermediate school in New Zealand, this article adopts a narrative inquiry approach to explore one teacher's approaches to using digital technologies and texts within literacy instruction. We explore in particular the ways in which MLP may be enacted implicitly rather than explicitly, within the complex matrix of teachers' personal beliefs and learning experiences, the perceived learning needs of students, and the school curriculum. We conclude with a call for the conscious and purposeful teaching of MLP, focusing on synaesthesia and the semiotic functions of texts.     

Scientific strengths and reported effectiveness: a systematic review of multiliteracies studies

This systematic review is built on the seminal work by the New London Group in 1996. Few endeavours have synthesized findings of empirical studies pertaining to the effects and challenges of multiliteracies practices in various schooling and geographical contexts. Through a five-point Likert scale and a deductive and inductive thematic analysis, we conducted a systematic review of 66 multiliteracies articles from the ProQuest® database. These studies were empirical, qualitative/mixed-method, and ranged from 2006 to 2015. Findings show a burgeoning number of multiliteracies studies occurring in 15 countries, with Canada being the most prominently involved. Our evaluation of the reviewed studies was generally favourable with strengths identified in researchers’ articulation of pertinent theoretical frameworks and connections to existent literature. Our findings refer to insufficient information of data collection and data analysis in a certain number of papers. We also elaborate on major affordances, challenges, and oversights of the multiliteracies practices as reported by the reviewed studies and discuss implications for future multiliteracies research, policies on literacy education, and teacher education in diverse contexts.     

PRESERVICE TEACHERS' KNOWLEDGE,ATTITUDES, AND PERCEPTION OF THEIR PREPARATION TO TEACH MULTILITERACIES/MULTIMODALITY

The need to prepare literacy teachers to integrate new literacies into their teaching practices is becoming increasingly urgent. This is because the advent of the computer is fundamentally changing the notion of literacy and also profoundly shifting literacy instruction and the way students learn. The research objective of this study was, therefore, to examine preservice teachers' (N = 48) knowledge of and perceptions of their teacher education preparation to teach multimodality/multiliteracies. Data were collected through qualitative and quantitative responses from the participants. Results of the data analysis suggested that the participants were aware of the impact of the new communication technologies on literacy forms, practices, knowledge, and literacy learning and instruction. However, the participants did not only express concerns regarding the adequacy of their preparation to teach new literacies, they also noted the constraints coming from schools and school districts. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

The multi‐modal redesign of school texts

Multiliteracies‐related research is just emerging from the formal discourse of pedagogical theorising and how it may look in practice needs further exploration. This research, initiated under that warrant, presents practitioner research and the enactment of a multiliteracies curriculum with Year 8 students in New York City's Chinatown. The study describes a collaborative digital literacies project with a local contemporary arts museum where students engaged in the multi‐modal redesign of school texts. First, the article outlines a move of multiliteracies theory into curriculum practice where students explored questions of Chinese‐American and immigrant identities through a discourse analysis of history texts. Then, drawing on a digital gothic and hip‐hop cartoon Web project, it outlines how students challenged ways their ethnic identities were positioned by drawing political satire cartoons about immigration to the United States. The project concluded with a virtual exhibition of students' artwork where they inserted their cartoons within existing educational websites using HTML and Flash. It argues that the redesigned websites are a new set of multi‐modal literacy practices that allow youth to disrupt racist and exclusionary discourses they encounter in school texts and their lived experiences.     

超越解构主义:新媒体时代之媒介素养教育

脱胎于文学批评-文化研究-符号学的媒介素养教育一旦运用到中小学课堂,势必流于解构技巧训练。任何一种解构的效果都颇为可疑,媒介素养教育不会使世界更好,只会使一个贫乏的大脑更加贫乏。新媒体带来知情权和参与权,受众消失,制作人诞生,人们解读媒介文本内容能力大大提高,解码媒介文本制作技巧无师自通。在此背景下,媒介素养教育迅速过时。知道不等于接受,解构无助于建构,技巧带不来素养,独立建制的媒介素养教育是富裕国家的教育富裕病,可取之途是将之融入素质教育和通识教育,将重心从解构技巧转向文化素养。     

Changing Literacies and Civic Pathways: Multiliteracies in Inquiry-Driven Classrooms

Reflecting on how “the very nature of language learning has changed”(New London Group [NLG], 1996, p. 64), this article describes an inquiry-driven teaching approach to middle school English. Looking at student outcomes utilizing Google’s 20% approach, this study explored how mentorship, digital tools, and student interests provide “opportunities [for students] to find their own voices” (NLG, 1996, p. 71). In particular, this article analyzes student inquiry based on the 4 pedagogical foundations of multiliteracies: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. By focusing on the voices and experiences of students, this framework highlights what multiliteracies can look like within classrooms. Ultimately, this study of literacies within inquiry-driven classrooms responds to the call of multiliteracies research from 20 years ago that, “Students need to develop the capacity to speak up, to negotiate, and to be able to engage critically with the conditions of their working lives” (New London Group, 1996, p. 67).     

Pedagogies and Literacies,Disentangling the Historical Threads: An Interview with Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis

ABSTRACT

In this discussion with educational researchers and New London Group conveners, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, we discuss the origins, life, and future of the New London Group‘s multiliteracies framework. We reflect on the initial goals the group had over 20 years ago for more equitable schooling opportunities, and what is yet to be done to reach these ideals. We consider how Cope and Kalantzis‘ work in schools since that time, and in the literacy field more generally, has been informed by multiliteracies, specifically how issues of equity, consequences of traditional views of language and literacy, and advancing technologies continue to necessitate shifts in educational policy and practice that will allow for teachers to engage in flexible, responsive, and transformative teaching.     

The palimpsest layers of pre-service teachers’ literacy autobiographies

In this article, we examine three literacy autobiographies written by pre-service teachers. Narratives are seen as not just stories relating a set of facts, but rather a means by which individuals interpret their experience. Literacy autobiographies are a reflective and interpretive account of one’s development as a literate being. Using the tools of narrative analysis, we (a) examine these stories to understand the processes of literacy development through the experiences of learners’ storied lives; (b) seek to understand the impact that teachers’ literacy journeys have on their view of literacy and literacy education; and (c) explore what these literacy autobiographies reveal about the contributions of teacher reflection to pre-service teacher education. Our analysis points to the importance of personal relationships in the development of literacy, providing the context within which literacy practices give meaning to the literacy events active in the narrators’ lives. We also note a persistent view of traditional forms of literacy in contrast to pre-service teachers’ involvement in multiliteracies, and argue that this gap needs to be addressed in order to prepare teachers for the twenty-first century classroom. We also consider how reflection can be a more intentional aspect of pre-service teacher education to enhance pedagogy and learning.     

“DARING TO SAY”: STANLEY CAVELL AND DESIGNS ON LITERACY

In this essay Amanda Fulford examines the subject of inter‐cultural understanding from two perspectives: first, through considering Naoko Saito's exploration of translation and inter‐/intra‐cultural understanding, and second, through a discussion of work from the field of literacy studies, in particular the New London Group's “pedagogy of multiliteracies.” In her consideration of the different approaches taken to the challenge of multicultural and globalized societies, and the experiences of encounters with language, Fulford pursues four principal themes: learning from difference, active design of meaning, a relation with language, and transformation of the individual. She shows how Saito's use of American philosophy, in particular Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Stanley Cavell's readings of Thoreau, can play a crucial role in any reconsideration of teaching and learning in adult literacy education. Fulford further demonstrates how Thoreau's notion of the “father tongue” is central to the idea of learning from difference and to our use of language. She concludes by proposing that literacy education and research within the field of literacy studies could benefit from the kind of philosophical conversation, across the borders of subject and epistemology, that an exposure to, and consideration of, the ideas of Thoreau and Cavell on what it means to read and write can offer.     

National Education as a ‘Civics’ Literacy in a Globalized World: The challenges facing education in Singapore

In this paper we discuss the idea of national education in Singapore. National education, broadly speaking, is a civics programme which seeks to instil a sense of place, identity and history in young Singaporeans with a view to developing national pride and commitment. We set this discussion against the backdrop of globalization and the idea of wired communities and argue that any civics programme needs to be more than simply a nationalistic agenda. To do this we have framed national education in Singapore as a civics literacy informed by the idea of multiliteracies. In doing so, we suggest that the pedagogical work of such an approach can help to sustain the nation state of Singapore yet place the civics agenda on a global stage where national education might be seen more appropriately as global education.     

Access to multiliteracies: a critical ethnography

This paper reports the key findings of a critical ethnography, which documented the enactment of the multiliteracies pedagogy in an Australian elementary school classroom. The multiliteracies pedagogy of the New London Group is a response to the emergence of multimodal literacies in contemporary contexts of increased cultural and linguistic diversity. Giddens’ structuration theory was applied to the analysis of systems relations. The key finding was that students, who were culturally and linguistically diverse, had differential access to multiliteracies. Existing degrees of access were reproduced among the student cohort, based on the learners’ relation to the dominant culture. Specifically, students from Anglo-Australian, middle-class backgrounds had greater access to transformed designing than those who were culturally or socio-economically marginalized. These experiences were influenced by the agency of individuals who were both enabled and constrained by structures of power within the school and the wider educational and social systems.     

Education,Dialogue and Intervention: revisiting the Freirean project

In the past two decades Paulo Freire's philosophy of education has been the subject of much discussion by academics, school teachers and adult educators in a variety of formal and informal settings. While Freire initially gained recognition for his work with adult illiterates in Brazil and Chile, since the early 1970s his ideas have found increasing application in Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This article reconsiders the literacy methods through which Freire initially attracted international attention. Freire's approach to literacy education in Brazil is outlined and brief reference is made to the other major adult education programmes with which Freire has been involved since 1964. A number of serious criticisms of Freirean pedagogy are identified, all of which deal in some way with what might be termed the problem of ‘imposition’ in Freire's work. Critiques from Berger, Bowers and Walker suggest that the Freirean project entails the imposition of a particular world‐view and mode of social practice on adult illiterates. According to these critics, Freire assumes that he knows better than the oppressed the nature of, and the best solution to, their oppression. The author argues that the Freirean system is indeed non‐dialogical and impositional in certain respects, but concludes that Freire's literacy efforts were ultimately worthwhile.     

试论生本理念下初中语文高效课堂的构建

生本理念作为新课标改革的核心理念之一,初中语文教师要将其真正落实到位。在当今素质教育时代背景下,初中语文学习占据着非常重要的地位,因为其能有效培养学生良好的文学素养和文字感知能力。基于此,本文首先简要分析了生本理念的内涵,然后重点探究了生本理念下初中语文高效课堂的构建策略,以期为初中语文教育工作者提供参考。     

‘GetReel’: engaging Year 6 students in planning,scripting, actualising and evaluating media text

The notion of ‘multiliteracies’ and the development and creation of multimodal texts within classrooms is of pedagogic interest in this age of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The case study reported herein provides an analysis of how one teacher engaged her class of primary school students as they responded to the challenge of creating and filming a 30‐second television commercial on a social justice issue. The media texts were constructed in a 10‐week period. The paper describes the process as the teacher and these students planned, wrote, filmed and edited their commercials. It offers an example of how the changing nature of literacy and, specifically, text, is enacted in the classroom.     

Looking at the Next 20 Years of Multiliteracies: A Discussion with Allan Luke

In this discussion with literacies researcher Allan Luke, the New London Group Member reflects on the role of multiliteracies in shaping literacies research and the continuing changes to technology, capitalism, and learning. Focused on looking toward future advances in literacies research, Luke reflects on the role of multiliteracies in contemporary educational policy and how this work is shaping literacy scholarship and practice today. Luke looks pragmatically at the current political landscape and emphasizes how colonial practices of technology over the past twenty years bend literacies research away from the initial optimism expressed by the New London Group. At the same time, Luke grounds contemporary literacies interpretations of technology and learning in foundational critical theorist like Freire, Illich, and Dewey. By focusing on how technology has changed schooling, power, and literacies, Luke considers what challenges loom for the theory and practice of powerful, equitable literacies in the next two decades.     

The Literacy Early Action Project (LEAP): exploring factors underpinning progress with literacy for a child in his first year of school

In this article, Anthony Feiler, senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol, and Elaine Logan, lecturer in early years education at the City of Bristol College, present a case study of a child who made strong progress with literacy during his first year at school. The child and his family participated in the Literacy Early Action Project (LEAP), a home-visiting scheme for children judged by school staff to be at risk of struggling with literacy. A teaching assistant made weekly home visits during the year and developed literacy support activities with the child's mother and grandparents. Five key factors underpinning the child's progress are identified here: the flexibility in the teaching assistant's approach that enabled extended family members to become engaged in literacy support; the teaching assistant's sensitivity to family culture; the playful approach to learning adopted by the teaching assistant; putting the child at the centre of the intervention; and the existence of a school culture that strongly promoted involvement for parents. Anthony Feiler and Elaine Logan conclude that teaching assistants in the UK might be given more scope to develop support strategies for early childhood education that involve collaborative work with parents.     

Orality and Literacy,Intimacy and Alienation: The eternal,internal, contradictions of teaching composition

This is a personal account of a college English teacher's continual examination of the sacrifices demanded of his students when they enter writing classes. It is an attempt to encourage students to maintain a critical awareness of the loss of their oral culture and see the limitations of the gain from the literary culture that they immersed themselves in when they began their school career. Literary resources are examined, specifically the writings of Franz Kafka, to illustrate the nature of oral and literate cultures and the demands of each. There is an account of the author's first day at public school as an illustration that helps him to devise teaching methods that acknowledge the validity of students' rebellion against school (literacy) while at the same time developing ways for students to be more accomplished writers.     

Slash Writers and Guinea Pigs as Models for a Scientific Multiliteracy

This paper explores alternative approaches to the conception of scientific literacy, drawing on cultural studies and emerging practices in language arts as its framework. The paper reviews historic tensions in the understanding of scientific literacy and then draws on the multiliteracies movement in language arts to suggest a scientific multiliteracy. This is explored through analyzing the writing practices of groups other than scientists who for a variety of reasons must engage science. Specifically the paper examines zine writers who are ‘professional’ human research subjects, i.e. derive a part of their annual income by signing up for psychological and medical experiments, and science fiction fans, who produce their own texts in response to the narratives they love. The paper argues that these literacy practices add to traditional notions of scientific literacy possibilities of history, fiction, critique, as well as more traditional empiricism embraced by national standards. The paper concludes by considering the ambivalence towards science in both of these popular scientific literacy communities’ writings, arguing that what multiliteracies offers is a possibility of a more nuanced, more appropriately ambivalent, and more politically and ethically engaged subject of science than offered by the current version of literacy dominating science educational discourse.