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

Discovering Design Possibilities through a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies

Research and educational policies have alerted teachers to the importance of multiliteracies. Communication in society today is characterised by rapidly changing and emergent forms of meaning-making in a context of increased cultural and linguistic diversity. This paper responds to these imperatives, releasing key findings of a critical ethnography concerning interactions between pedagogy and access to multiliteracies among culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Data collection involved 18 days of lesson observations over 10 weeks using field and journal notes, continuous audiovisual and audio recording, and the collection of cultural artefacts. Semi-structured interviewing was also conducted with the teacher, principal, and four students. Data analytic tools included low and high inference coding and pragmatic horizon analysis. Findings concerned the use of overt instruction and situated practice in the teacher’s enactment of the multiliteracies pedagogy. This had a significant influence on the learners’ability to access claymation movie designing. Comparisons are made between the learning that occurred for students of the dominant, Anglo-Australian, middle-class culture, and for those who were not. The conclusion addresses relevant literature concerning how to apply the multiliteracies pedagogy to enable meaningful designing

Just Writing Center Work in the Digital Age: De Facto Multiliteracy Centers in Dialogue with Questions of Social Justice

Multiliteracy, new media writing, and multimodality: in some form or another, the kind of sleek, technological world these terms conjure emerges as a subject of conversation in current writing center work. When I began teaching a writing center theory course at the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing, I scheduled about three-days worth of formal space for the stuff of multiliteracy. Among other essays, students read David Sheridan’s “Words, Images, Sounds: Writing Centers as Multiliteracy Centers,” a piece about how Sheridan helped start a “technology-rich” multiliteracy center staffed by tech- and multimodal-rhetoric-savvy consultants at the University of Michigan (“Words, Images, Sounds” 341). I was met with what I soon learned was a typical response to the essay: “So, where is it? Where’s the multiliteracy center?” “Gone,” was my answer, and in an official sense, it was: it dissipated after only a few years,1 and, what remains, among other Sweetland services, is the Peer Tutoring Center, an apparently far cry from the futuristic spaces that visions like Sheridan’s evoke. With computers too old and too few in number, our windowless, underground tutoring space looks like days of writing center past, not writing center future. And despite an understanding of our own institutional privilege, our collective affect resembles that of colleagues at less privileged institutions: many of us still feel like we are a long way off from the kind of cutting-edge multiliteracy center that Sheridan describes.University Writing Cente

Multiliteracies, Pedagogy and Identities:Teacher and Student Voices from a Toronto Elementary School

In this article, I draw on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary school, as part of a Canada‐wide action research project: Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). I have explored how Perminder, a grade‐4 teacher, devel‐ oped a multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on her own and her students’ identities and linguistic and cultural forms of capital to create learning opportunities for all students to access the English mainstream curriculum. Alternative pedagogical choices in‐ cluded students’ creation of multimodal dual language “identity texts” (Cummins, Bismilla, Cohen, Giampapa, & Leoni, 2005a), and identity work, expanding literacy practices valued within Canadian classrooms. Key words: critical pedagogies, critical literacies, ESL/EAL, identities, Multilit‐ eracy Project, urban schools Dans cet article, l’auteure part d’une étude de cas ethnographique portant sur une école primaire de Toronto, étude réalisée dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche‐ action pancanadien, The Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). Elle analyse comment Perminder, une enseignante de 4e année, a mis au point une pédagogie en matière de multilitératies. Puisant dans sa propre identité et dans celles de ses élèves ainsi que dans diverses formes de capital linguistiques et culturelles, elle offre à tous ses élèves la possibilité d’apprendre et ainsi d’avoir accès au curriculum standard en anglais. Parmi les choix pédagogiques novateurs figuraient la création par les élèves de « textes identitaires » (Cummins et coll. 2005a) multimodaux en deux langues et des travaux portant sur l’identité, élargissant ainsi les pratiques en matière de littéra‐ tie jugées utiles dans les classes canadiennes. Mots clés : pédagogies critiques, littératies critiques, ESL/EAL, identités, The Multiliteracy Project, écoles urbaines.

A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies

Digital communication has transformed literacy practices and assumed great importance in the functioning of workplace, recreational, and community contexts. This article reviews a decade of empirical work of the New Literacy Studies, identifying the shift toward research of digital literacy applications. The article engages with the central theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic challenges in the tradition of New Literacy Studies, while highlighting the distinctive trends in the digital strand. It identifies common patterns across new literacy practices through cross-comparisons of ethnographic research in digital media environments. It examines ways in which this research is taking into account power and pedagogy in normative contexts of literacy learning using the new media. Recommendations are given to strengthen the links between New Literacy Studies research and literacy curriculum, assessment, and accountability in the 21st century

The impact of diversity in Queensland classrooms on literacy teaching in changing times

The intent of the paper is to identify possible inhibitors to best practice for literacy teaching and learning and to identify key considerations for a responsive, relevant and constructive curriculum and pedagogy for the teaching of literacy in diverse classrooms. A review of relevant research and pedagogical frameworks such as sociocultural constructivism, productive pedagogies and multiliteracies pedagogy, will provide the basis on which to argue some possible classroom practices for teachers to consider for the as ways forward in diverse classrooms. This paper will be contextualized within the current political agenda in regard to literacy education and recent research into literacy teaching and learning in Australia, reported in 'The National Inquiry into Literacy' and consider the issues together with the assessment demands placed on teachers in classrooms

Using Visual Journals as a Reflective Worldview Window into Educator Identity

This ethnographic case study research and content analysis presents the conclusion of a three-year study involving 37 teacher candidate participants across a three-year study within a two year (2 semester program) Bachelor of Education program at a university in Ontario, Canada. Each academic year participants were intentionally given time over two semesters of literacy courses to engage in literacy practices and knowledge of self through the use of multimodal visual journals. Candidates reflect on their conceptions of literacy, teaching, identity and worldview within an institution grounded in the Christian faith. Findings, philosophical ponderings and content analysis suggest that the identity of the teacher candidate filters learning through visual and multimodal ways. The findings raise questions about the place of multimodal learning, self-reflection, faith and worldview in the learning process, and in identity formation of educators. We suggest that this study may inform current multimodal and visual literacy research while generating enriching discussions on how multimodal forms of literacy instruction may assist in acknowledgement of worldview recognition and self-identity awareness. Keywords: Multiliteracies, visual journals, self-knowledge, worldview, identity, visual literacy, multimodal literacy, teacher educatio