What is Multiliteracies?

Fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment

Multiliteracies pedagogy is most widely attributed to, and authored by the New London Group (1996) as an attempt to accomplish two deserving goals for enabling students in their literacy learning by:

These twin goals have lead to a pedagogy of teaching and learning that is inherently flexible and responsive. A multiliteracies approach not only takes into consideration the diversity of students and their life worlds, but further puts these unique student contributions at the forefront of teaching and learning.

Creating access to the evolving language of

work, power and community

Multiliteracies, as coined by the New London Group (1996), can be loosely defined as the composite of 2 parts:

The multicontextual, diverse perspectives that are brought to the classroom
The multimodal representations of expression

Kalantzis, Cope & Dalley-Trim, 2016, p. 2)

Why teach with a multiliteracies approach?

“Schools should be a place where children experience a world beyond that which they experience on a daily basis.

Through the wonder inspired by schools, children’s eyes should be opened to great literature and art, fascinating

histories and intriguing ideas in math and science”

(Gini-Newman, 2017)

There has been a plague in education where teachers, administrators and school boards are seeking to mandate not just the curriculum, and the skills required at a particular grade level, but rather the mode and methods by which teachers are required to teach. Packaged phonics and grammar programs, scripted inquiry approaches, planning protocols and prescribed reading texts have to potential to undermine and undervalue our students, albeit with good intentions. Allan Luke boldly states that “this pursuit of a single method as correct method is an absolute bane of classroom and literacy research, whether it is advocacy of phonics, whole language, critical pedagogy, constructivism or whatever.” (Garcia, Luke & Seglem, 2018, p. 76). The multiliteracies approach to teaching and learning shifts the emphasis from the teacher as the giver of information, to the active drawing of prior knowledge and experience from students as curricular informants, and provision of space and respectful outlets for expression that move beyond drill and skill fact recall.

Positioning learners as both curricular informants and catalysts for the direction of learning is essential for taking multiliteracies approach. Recognising the multilingual and multimodal opportunities in learning “...learners are fundamentally different, one from another, and that effective teaching and learning should acknowledge and work with these differences. Beginning from the position of learner difference means that teachers need to be skilled in using a variety of techniques, tools and modes of communication as well as the know-how to apply these tools and techniques using a range of pedagogies” (Burrows, 2010, p. 293).

MUlticontextual

“No one becomes literate without seeing themselves in literacy”

(Harste & Vasquez, 2014)

Considering the global movement towards a "deeply multilingual world, language differences also need to be understood in their complexity and their variation from one child to the next" (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012, p. 395).

Gestural, spatial, verbal, digital, dialects, languages, contexts, terminologies and the understanding the combination and fluidity in which people move between these modes to make meaning is the basis for the multicontextual applications of multiliteracies. The combination of these languages and literacies build learning from very early ages and throughout lifespans.

“When young children come first to school they bring with them a depth of being; that is, they bring with them a capacity, a potential not just to respond to experience but also to continue to expand and explore their range of responses.” (Witte-Townsend & Hill, 2006, p. 374). It is our job as educators to allow space and encouragement for these capacities to grow and develop in the safe space of the classroom.

MUltimodal

Communication has always been multimodal, yet the ease of use and the number of options have never been so readily available as today. Students can create and communicate in ways that they never have before. Communicating with ease is not only engaging, but also essential for our lives.

Supporting expression without constrictive boundaries as dictated by teachers values the diversity of students. Heydon, Zhang and Bocazar (2017) note that there is a “call for diversity education where curriculum and pedagogy plan from human and social diversity rather than react to it. Multimodal pedagogy operates from an ontological position that is supportive of the ethics of inclusion” (p. 193).

This is of course not to say that standards and skills to not need to be learned in school, but rather the flexibility of teaching and learning should be inherent in the classroom. “Children can only be heard if they have literacy options. Literacy that is defined as a singular skill and confined to print can be constraining and exclusionary” (p. 210). If our job as educators is not only to teach, but also to engage and inspire, knowing our students and offering opportunities to make choices and to love learning is essential.

When we begin from the position of learner difference, we move from seeking out the deficits in the student that need to be filled by the teacher, to a place where the whole understanding of education is broadened. Previously, the goals of education as skill-based 3Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic), are now insufficient for our changing world.

“The problem with the former orientation to knowledge: first, the assumption that this kind of knowledge was a sufficient foundation; second, that knowledge involved clearly right and wrong answers (and if you were in any doubt about this, the test results would set your straight); and third, that knowledge was about being told by authority and that is was better to accept the correctness of authority passively” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2008, p. 201).

Building understanding, critiquing and questioning are now widely understood as the cornerstones of literacy and education. The question then becomes: how can we honour the diversity of students, encourage their deep thinking and ethically promote the love of learning that creates the intrinsic drive to question, grow and contribute to a waiting world.