Multiliteracy
Multiliteracy is an approach to literacy theory and pedagogy coined in the mid-1990s by the New London Group. The approach is characterized by two key aspects of literacy – linguistic diversity and multimodal forms of linguistic expressions and representation. It was coined in response to two major changes in the globalized environment. One such change was the growing linguistic and cultural diversity due to increased transnational migration. The second major change was the proliferation of new mediums of communication due to advancement in communication technologies e.g. the internet, multimedia, and digital media. As a scholarly approach, multiliteracy focuses on the new "literacy" that is developing in response to the changes in the way people communicate globally due to technological shifts and the interplay between different cultures and languages.
Multiliteracy refers to the ability to understand and effectively use multiple forms of literacy and communication in a variety of contexts. This includes traditional literacy, digital literacy, visual literacy, and other forms of communication. It is essential in today's world where various modes of communication are prevalent. It goes beyond traditional notions of literacy, which typically focus on reading and writing skills, to encompass a broader range of literacies that have become increasingly relevant in the digital age.
Overview
As a pedagogical approach, multiliteracy is based on the New London Group's proposition consisting of a balanced classroom design containing four key aspects – situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. Situated practice focuses on the connection between classroom topics and real world experiences, building upon students' personal experiences. Overt instruction focuses on student conceptualization and scaffolding of new concepts to provide focus for new concepts. Critical framing focuses on analyzing the sociocultural contexts in which a concept, literature, or text was developed within. Transformed practice uses the previous three aspects to encourage reflection and apply these teachings in a new context, achieving a personal goal.Key aspects of multiliteracy include:
- Multimodal literacy: In the digital age, communication often involves multiple modes, including text, images, videos, and interactive elements.
- Digital literacy: This is a core component of multiliteracy.
- Media literacy: Multiliteracy involves being able to critically analyze and interpret media messages, whether they come from traditional sources like newspapers and television or from new media such as social networks and online news sites.
- Information literacy: In an era of information overload, being information literate is essential. It means knowing how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively and ethically.
- Cultural literacy: Understanding and appreciating cultural differences and diverse perspectives is a vital aspect of multiliteracy.
- Critical literacy: Critical literacy skills enable individuals to analyze and question information, sources, and underlying assumptions.
- Visual literacy: In an age of visual communication, being visually literate involves interpreting and creating visual elements, such as images, infographics, and data visualizations.
- Intertextuality: Multiliteracy recognizes the interconnected nature of texts, media, and communication.
- Rhetorical awareness: Being aware of how communication is constructed and tailored for specific audiences and purposes is important in multiliteracy.
Applications
The second way to incorporate the term multiliteracies is the way technology and multimedia is changing how we communicate. These days, text and speech are not the only and main ways to communicate. The definition of media is being extended to include text combined with sounds, and images which are being incorporated into movies, billboards, almost any site on the internet, and television. All these ways of communication require the ability to understand a multimedia world.
The formulation of "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies" by the New London Group expanded the focus of literacy from reading and writing to an understanding of multiple discourses and forms of representation in public and professional domains. The new literacy pedagogy was developed to meet the learning needs of students to allow them to navigate within these altered technological, cultural, and linguistically diverse communities. The concept of multiliteracies has been applied within various contexts and includes oral vernacular genres, visual literacies, information literacy, emotional literacy, and scientific multiliteracies and numeracy.
To real-world contexts
Due to changes in the world, especially globalization and an increase in immigration, a debate has arisen about the way students are instructed and learning in school. English, and all subjects, should evolve to incorporate multimodal ways of communication. The New London Group proposes the teaching of all representations of meaning including, linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural, which are subsumed under the category of multimodal. A pedagogy of multiliteracies includes a balanced classroom design of Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing and Transformed Practice. Students need to draw on their own experiences and semiotic literacy practices to represent and communicate meaning.The changes that transpire through the field of education affect learning processes, while the application of learning processes affects the use of multiliteracies. These include the functional, critical, and rhetorical skills that are applied in diverse fields and disciplines.
Educational pedagogies, including purpose-driven education, integrate the use of multi-literacy by encouraging student learning through exploration of their passions using their senses, technology, vernaculars, as well as alternative forms of communication.
New London Group
The New London Group is a group of ten academics who met at New London, New Hampshire, in the United States in September 1994, to develop a new literacy pedagogy that would serve concerns facing educators as the existing literacy pedagogy did not meet the learning needs of students. Their focus was on replacing the existing monolingual, monocultural, and standardized literacy pedagogy that prioritized reading and writing, with a pedagogy that used multiple modes of meaning making. They emphasised the use of multiple modes of communication, languages, and multiple Englishes to reflect the impact of new technologies and linguistic and cultural diversity, instead of developing competence in a single national language and standardized form of English. The ten academics brought to the discussion their expertise and personal experience from different national and professional contexts. Courtney Cazden from the United States has worked in the areas of classroom discourse and multilingual teaching and learning; Bill Cope from Australia, on literacy pedagogy and linguistic diversity, and new technologies of representation and communication; Mary Kalantzis from Australia, on experimental social education and citizenship education; Norman Fairclough from the United Kingdom, on critical discourse analysis, social practices and discourse, and the relationship between discursive change and social and cultural change; Gunther Kress from the United Kingdom, on social semiotics, visual literacy, discourse analysis, and multimodal literacy; James Gee from the United States, on psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language and literacy; Allan Luke from Australia on critical literacy and applied linguistics; Carmen Luke from Australia, on feminism and critical pedagogy; Sarah Michaels from the United States, on classroom discourse; and Martin Nataka on indigenous education and higher education curriculum. The article "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures", published in 1996, documents the New London Group's "manifesto" of literacy pedagogy that is recommended for use in educational institutions, in the community, and within organizations."A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies"
The multiliteracies pedagogical approach involves four key aspects: situated practice, critical framing, overt instruction, and transformed practice. Situated practice involves learning that is grounded in students' own life experiences. Critical framing supports students in questioning common sense assumptions found within discourses. Overt instruction is the direct teaching of "metalanguages" in order to help learners understand the components of expressive forms or grammars. Transformed practice is where learners engage in situated practices based in new understandings of literacy practices.Situated practice
Situated practice, originally formulated by the New London Group as one of the related components of multiliteracies pedagogy, is constituted by immersion in meaningful practices within a community of learners who are culturally and linguistically diversified. It involves situating meaning making in real-world contexts and taking account of the affective and sociocultural needs of learners. This aspect of the curriculum needs to draw on the lifeworld experiences of students, as well as their out-of-school communities and discourses, as an integral part of the learning experience. In order to apply situated practice to curriculum realities, Cope and Kalantzis reframed it as "experiencing". They believe human cognition is situated and contextual, and meanings are grounded in the real world of patterns of experience, action and subjective interest. Experiencing takes two forms.- Experiencing the known–learners bring their own, invariably diverse knowledge, experiences, interests and life-texts to the learning context. Activities of experiencing the known involve showing or talking about something familiar: listen, view, watch and visit, reflecting on learners' own experiences, interests and perspectives.
- Experiencing the new–learners are immersed in new situations or information, observing or taking part in something that is new or unfamiliar, but within the zone of intelligibility and close to their own life-worlds. For example, teachers introduce something new but which makes sense by immersion in experiments, field trips and investigations in projects.
However, the New London Group points out limitations to situated practice. First, while situated learning can lead to mastery in practice, learners immersed in rich and complex practices can vary significantly from each other and situated practice does not necessarily lead to conscious control and awareness of what one knows and does. Second, situated practice does not necessarily create learners who can critique what they are learning in terms of historical, cultural, political, ideological, or value-centered relations. Third, there is the question of putting knowledge into action. Learners might be incapable of reflexively enacting their knowledge in practice. Therefore, they clarify that situated practice must be supplemented by other components and powerful learning arises from weaving between situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice in a purposeful way.