Pedagogy of Multiliteracies
Pedagogy
of Multiliteracies
I will begin by viewing the pedagogy of multiliteries and how this can be used in the scenario.
In 1994 in
New London, New Hampshire, in the United States, ten authors met for a week to
discuss literacy pedagogy. They discussed the immersion versus the explicit
models of teaching, the issues of cultural and linguistic diversity and the
changing technologies available for teaching and learning in education ( Cazdon., et al, 1996). The authors came from
different English speaking countries, including Australia and could see that
the learning needs of students were changing due to the change in their working, public and private lives. They realised (Cazden, et. al, 1996), that as the world was changing due to the introduction of new technologies, a traditional monolingual and monocultural approach to teaching literacy, was
no longer sufficient. The authors stated that if education’s main purpose is “to
ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to
participate fully in public, community and economic life”, (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 60), then literacy pedagogy needs to ensure that “differences of
culture, language and gender are not barriers to educational success” (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 61), and instead a pedagogy of multiliteracies is implemented.
This term was created by the ten authors to describe “the multiplicity of
communications channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and
linguistic diversity” (Cazden et. al., 1996, p. 63). This pedagogy includes
different ways of presentation including visual
modes, audio and spatial modes.
As will be
discussed further, “the perennial struggle for access to wealth, power and
symbols of recognition is increasingly articulated through the discourse of
identity and recognition”, (Kalantzis, 1995, in Cazden et. al., 1996. p. 68). Due to the globalisation of English and the “global connectiveness” (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 69), created by new technologies, mass media and travel, there is the
need to include cultural and linguistic diversity in the classroom.
As Kalantzis (1995, in Cazden et al., 1996, p. 71) noted, people are
now members of different worlds and “their identities have multiple layers that
are in complex relation to each other”. The New London Group authors further argue that “just as there are multiple layers to
everyone’s identity, there are multiple discourses of identity and multiple
discourses of recognition to be negotiated (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 71).
For
learning to be relevant, student’s interests and knowledge need to be identified and utilised in a learning
environment which encourages collaboration and the use of mass media. The New London Group authors saw a teacher's role as designing the learning environment including the people, technology, beliefs and texts. They proposed that language should be used “to
produce or consume texts, as a matter of design involving three elements:
Available designs, Designing and The Redesigned”(Cazdenet al., 1996, p. 74).
Available designs included an “order of discourse” which is the conventions of a
particular place such as a society and also includes styles genres and dialects
(Cazden et al., 1996, p. 74-75). Designing involved shaping of meaning and included reading, seeing,
speaking and listening. Meaning making is created by using available designs by
the learner to make new meanings from texts. The redesigned becomes a new
Available Design and is “the unique product of human agency” (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 76).
Through the
processes of design it is proposed “meaning-makers remake themselves…they
reconstruct and renegotiate their identities” (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 76).
The New London Group authors in 1994 (Cazden et al., 1996) originally believed that pedagogy is the integration of four factors, Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing and Transformed Practice. Situated practice involved the immersion of learners in authentic learning practices. The problems with this method is that learners may not critique what they are learning and may not be able to put their knowledge into practice. Learners therefore need critical understanding.
Vygotsky (1978,
1987 in Cazden et al., 1996) argued that overt instruction was needed as well as
immersion, to help learners to gain conscious awareness of what they are
learning. For situated practice using immersion to be effective, the emotions
and sociocultural needs of learners needs to be considered. Learners need to
feel secure that they can take risks during their learning. Overt instruction involves
the teacher scaffolding learning activities to support the learner, a
collaboration between the student and teacher.
Critical framing helps “learners frame their growing mastery in practice (from Situated Practice) and conscious control and understand (from overt instruction)” (Cazden et al., 1996, p.86).
In transformed practice students transfer what they have learnt to other
contexts.
Since 1996, The New London Group have worked together online and have met annually at conferences in different locations from around the world. As noted by Cope and Kalantzis (2009, p.167) in 2009, new technologies and communication practices have emerged since 1996, a new way of working and “new forms of identity and personality”. Kalantzis and Cope (2005, in Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 184) reframed their ideas to include “knowledge processes of experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying”.
Experiencing means that meaning is dependent on real life experiences, experiencing the new and unknown. Conceptualising is where learners become active “conceptualisers” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 185), by recognising similarities and differences between concepts. Analysing involves analysing causes and effects and evaluating critically your own and other’s perspectives. Applying involves applying knowledge to real world situations.
A pedagogy of multiliteracies gives the learner choice for where
they start their leaning. They can apply their knowledge to different settings and use different modalities in
meaning-making.
Cope and Kalantzis (2009) also noted that
communication is more than the written form, but also includes multimodal forms
including gestures, spoken language and visual representation. Webpages also are multimodal and contain
written text, but the meaning of the text relies on the visual.
As Cope and
Kalantzis state (2009, p. 174), “one of the fundamental goals of a pedagogy of
multiliteracies is to create the conditions for learning” where a person can “articulate
and enact their own identities”.
“The logic
of multiliteracies is one that recognises that meaning making is an active,
transformative process, and a pedagogy based on that recognition is more likely
to open up viable life courses for a world of change and diversity” (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009, p. 175).
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