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

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

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

Towards a Theory of Practice: Critical Transdisciplinary Multiliteracies

About the book: Education institutions and organizations throughout the world are currently being held accountable for achieving and maintaining historically unmatched standards of academic quality and performance. Accreditation bodies; policy makers; boards of trustees; and teacher, parent, and student groups all place educational institutions and organizations under unprecedented accountability pressures. The aim of this volume is to explore and better understand how these pressures are impacting a broad range of social and cultural issues and, subsequently, how these issues impact student motivation and learnin

Pedagogies of Design and Multiliterate Learner Identities

In an era of multiliteracies, teaching and learning have become knowledge performances at multiple levels. Instead of a singular, linear focus upon print technologies, the techno-oriented philosophy of teaching aims at providing a rhizomatic network of texts where there is a close link between, and often an overlap of, different designs—linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural—to construct the multiliterate learner. In this paper, I discuss the role of multimodal literacies in a primary classroom, affirming the role of multiliteracies and decentring the pre-dominance of linguistic at the cost of other designs. While the print media are acknowledged as significant to literacy, the multimodality of print is enhanced through visual and spatial design (Kenner, 2004). Through graphic examples of ICT applications of designs in a primary classroom, I demonstrate that students are operating through multitextual and digitextual (Everett, 2003) practices. What follows is the complex positioning and re-situating of teacher and learner identities engaged in learning through the knowledge processes of experiencing, identifying, applying and critiquing concepts (Kalantzis & Cope, 2004). In particular, I argue that within the diversity of present day classrooms, the digital oriented, multiliterate learner is implicated in constant identity construction by drawing upon macro and micro social practices. I conclude by reiterating the significance of new technologies and new literacy practices as essential to the construction of new learner identities

Applying Theories in Language Programs

Selected Topics in Applied Linguistics: How to Choose a Theory. I offer a critical exploration of some of the conditions involved in Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA), as well as of the paradoxical approaches in the theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives of ISLA. The discussion proceeds with a very short overview of prevalent theories of ISLA generally. Then I add a contrastive look in more depth at only two “theories” and their possible applications in language programs. I emphasize some of the discussions in our profession concerning processing instruction, e.g. (VanPatten "Processing Instruction") or VanPatten ("Why Explicit Knowledge Cannot Become Implicit Knowledge" ), and the multiliteracies framework, e.g. (Paesani, Allen and Dupuy). I conclude with an invitation to a set of questions we might pose to any theory, framework, or approach as we consider its efficacy and applications for our own specific contexts

Developing Tutors' Meta-Multiliteracies through Poetry

University Writing Cente

When Memories Make a Difference: Multimodal Literacy Narratives for Preservice ELA Methods Students

This article examines multimodal literacy narrative projects designed by students in a methods of teaching course for secondary preservice English Language Arts teachers. For the multimodal project, preservice teachers infused written, audio, and visual text using a variety of creative mediums. Through combined theoretical frames, the researcher explores semiotics and preservice teachers’ use of multiliteracies as they shift their conceptions of what it means to compose. Finally, this article explores how the act of reflection through the literacy narrative influences preservice teachers’ notions of teaching composition through a variety of mediums