multiliteracies pedagogy
Literacy teaching and learning across classrooms is changing. As technology allows for the exponential accessibility and production of multimodal texts, literacy curriculum and pedagogy must be implemented to allow the successful growth and development of students’ multiliteracies skills. The term ‘multiliteracies’, coined by the New London Group (Mills, 2006; Kalantzis & Cope, 2008), encompasses both the meaning making from texts and the multimodal nature of texts to explicitly define how “meaning making in different cultural, social or domain-specific contexts” is made through the different textual modes, including “written-linguistic modes… oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial” (New Learning Online, n.da). Therefore, multiliteracies describe the skills and capabilities of those who interact with and make meaning from multimodal texts within and across contexts.
It is no surprise, then, that the ways in which information can be accessed, consumed and disseminated is also changing significantly. Students’ interaction and use of texts, either in the classroom or their own homes, has shifted significantly from the traditional to the multimodal. As such, teachers must shift pedagogical practice to ensure students’ multimodal multiliteracies are augmented across a variety of platforms and contexts (New Learning Online, n.da; Iyer & Luke, 2010).
To achieve this, curriculum across classrooms must aim to support teachers in this endeavour to embed a multiliteracies pedagogy that can become “all the more engaging for its manifest connections with today’s communications milieu” (New Learning Onlinea, n.d). Such pedagogy can be supported through the implementation of frameworks supportive of a multiliteracies pedagogy; Luke and Freebody’s (1999) Four Resources Model, and Cope and Kalantzis’ (2000) critical Multiliteracies Model, which was later revised and reconceptualised as Learning By Design (New Learning, n.db).
FOUR RESOURCES MODEL
MULTILITERACIES MODEL
These frameworks have been used to reconceptualise a working Unit Plan to more effectively meet the needs of the modern learner and augment multiliteracies skills within the classroom. The transformation of a current Unit Plan can be seen here.
It is no surprise, then, that the ways in which information can be accessed, consumed and disseminated is also changing significantly. Students’ interaction and use of texts, either in the classroom or their own homes, has shifted significantly from the traditional to the multimodal. As such, teachers must shift pedagogical practice to ensure students’ multimodal multiliteracies are augmented across a variety of platforms and contexts (New Learning Online, n.da; Iyer & Luke, 2010).
To achieve this, curriculum across classrooms must aim to support teachers in this endeavour to embed a multiliteracies pedagogy that can become “all the more engaging for its manifest connections with today’s communications milieu” (New Learning Onlinea, n.d). Such pedagogy can be supported through the implementation of frameworks supportive of a multiliteracies pedagogy; Luke and Freebody’s (1999) Four Resources Model, and Cope and Kalantzis’ (2000) critical Multiliteracies Model, which was later revised and reconceptualised as Learning By Design (New Learning, n.db).
FOUR RESOURCES MODEL
MULTILITERACIES MODEL
These frameworks have been used to reconceptualise a working Unit Plan to more effectively meet the needs of the modern learner and augment multiliteracies skills within the classroom. The transformation of a current Unit Plan can be seen here.