A multiliteracies perspective on the new literacies

The new communications environment of the 21st century offers unprecedented opportunities for multimodal meaning making, a transformed dynamics of social agency and divergence of discourses. Multi-literacies theory presents a set of educationally useable conceptual schemas and suggestions for an expanded repertoire of literacy practices as a response to these opportunities (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000a). The following discusses the theory and case study of a collaborative application if a set of schemas to address contemporary issues in multiliteracies pedagogy (Cloonan, 2008a).

From literacy to multiliteracies : diverse learners and pedagogical practice

In this paper, we provide specific examples of the educational promises and problems that arise as multiliteracies pedagogical initiatives encounter conventional institutional beliefs and practices in mainstream schooling. This paper documents and characterizes the ways in which two specific digital learning initiatives were played out in two distinctive traditional schooling contexts, as experienced by two different student groups: one comprising an elite mainstream and the other an excluded minority. By learning from the instructive complications that arose out of attempts by innovative and well-meaning educators to provide students with more relevant learning experiences than currently exist in mainstream schooling, this paper contributes fresh perspectives and more nuanced understandings of how diverse learners and their teachers negotiate the opportunities and challenges of the New London Group's vision of a multiliteracies approach to literacy and learning. We conclude by arguing that, where multiliteracies are understood as “garnish” to the “pedagogical roast” of traditional code-based and print-based academic literacies, they will continue to work on the sidelines of mainstream schooling and be seen only as either useful extensions or helpful interventions for high-performing and at-risk students respectively.

RTS and RPGs : New literacies and multiplayer computer games

Technopopular culture such as computer games immerses young people in highly complex and engaging worlds, worlds in which literacy and communicative practices are significantly reconfigured and extended by the contexts in which they occur. This paper reports on a study exploring the textual engagement, pleasures and literacies entailed in playing on line computer games amongst a group of young people aged 15-16. It explores the ways in which these young people read and utilised intersections between traditional print-based text, visual images, symbols, sound, interactivity and other elements to play and make sense of a range of Real Time Strategy and Role Playing Computer Games; the place of games and gaming amongst other text-based leisure activities in their lives; and issues of interpretation, representation and response entailed in playing with real or virtual partners in cyberspace.

Process drama and digital games as text and action in virtual worlds : developing new literacies in school

This article explores the intersections between drama and digital gaming and the educational possibilities for literacy of both. The article draws on a model for the educational uses of digital gaming and three case studies from the Australian Research Council funded three and a half year project, Literacy in the digital world of the twenty first century: Learning from computer games. This model theorises the scope of the possibilities for literacy outcomes from the usage of computer games. The article describes how the model works, and then applies the model to drama education, specifying some new ways of thinking about the literacy outcomes from drama education. Process drama is theorised as the creation of text-in-action.

Teacher agency and participation in professional learning for new literacies

The proliferation of digital technologies is influencing the relational as well as the technological and meaning-making aspects of literacy learning. There is a renewed focus on student learning that promotes agency and enables new literacies mindsets. However a lack of clarity persists as to the form and content of effective professional learning for teachers of new literacies. Combining elements from various models of professional learning to foster teacher agency and participation mobilises transformed processes and conditions. This article draws on literature from the areas of new literacies, student agency and teacher professional learning to argue for approaches to teacher professional learning that support new literacy learning. It explores the characteristics of models of professional learning for teachers; describes a professional learning program offered to teachers of literacy; outlines a mixed methods research study in the form of a survey of participants engaged in the professional learning program; and analyses teacher perceptions of their experiences of professional learning and how key characteristics influenced their learning.

Re-envisioning literacy instruction with adolescents: multiliteracies, multimodality and new technologies

Engaging students' lifeworlds and the concerns of their communities in globalised, semiotic and information societies is imperative in New Times. As youth continue to exhibit their proficiency with new literacies emerging from Internet communication technologies (leTs), education-particularly curriculum and instruction-remains largely focused around monomodal, print-only literacy practices, often ignoring students' hybrid multiple voices. This paper reports on two curricular interruptions to the progressive reading and writing workshop that acknowledged adolescents' engagement with digital technologies and their new multimodalliteracy practices in a year eight public classroom within a small urban academy of technology.

The arobase in the libr@ry : new political economies of children’s literatures and literacies

This essay--part of a special issue on the work of Gunther Kress--uses the idea of affordances and constraints to explore the (im)possibilities of new environments for engaging with literature written for children (see Kress, 2003). In particular, it examines a festival of children's literature from an Australian education context that occurs online. The festival is part of a technologically mediated library space designated by the term libr@ry (Kapitzke & Bruce, 2006). The @ symbol (French word "arobase") inserted into the word library indicates that technological mediation has a history, an established set of social practices, and a political economy, which even chatrooms with "real" authors may alter but not fully supplant.

The multiliteracies classroom

Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope write in the foreword: “The Multiliteracies Classroom demonstrates in convincing detail how powerful learning can be achieved. Along the way, the book seamlessly weaves cutting-edge theoretical ideas into the fabric of its narrative. In one moment, we hear the lilt of the accents of the children’s discussions. In another, this is connected to the theoretical intricacies of ‘discourse’, ‘heteroglossia’, ‘multimodality’, or ‘dialogic spaces’. We witness the triumphs of a teacher who, in Mills’ words, ‘did not regard literacy as an independent variable. Rather, she regarded it as inseparable from social practices, contextualized in certain political, economic, historic and ecological contexts. Kathy Mills has produced a masterpiece of qualitative research.”

Valuing diversity : a multiliteracies project in a remote Indigenous community

This chapter draws attention to the complex nature of teachers’ work when working with linguistically and culturally diverse students and their communities in an era of new literacies. One multiliteracies project undertaken within a remote Indigenous community in the Torres Straits, Far North Queensland, Australia, is presented. The discussion considers understandings of student diversity as articulated in the Australian Curriculum documents, designs of meaning for written and visual text and the various components of pedagogy introduced into a multiliteracies project. The chapter concludes by highlighting the usefulness of the ‘wide, but not vague’ multiliteracies approach and the importance of an explicit grammar for written and visual text, for meeting the literacy learning needs of one group of 21st century learners.

Beyond the workshop : doing multiliteracies with adolescents

Engaging students’ lifeworlds and the concerns of their communities in globalised, semiotic and information societies is imperative with the complexity of multimodal communication (Lemke 2006) in the ‘new media age’ (Kress 2003). As youth continue to demonstrate their multiliteracies proficiency with new literacies emerging from Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs), education - particularly curriculum and instruction - remains largely focused around monomodal, print-only literacy practices, often ignoring their multiple voices. In New Times (Hall 1996), there has been much rhetoric about the role of education in equipping students for the future. Multiliteracies pedagogy allows individual teachers to reconceptualise pedagogy and curriculum thereby addressing adolescents’ complex and demanding literacy needs (New London Group 1996). This paper presents new and emerging virtual contexts and environments for adolescent literacy instruction highlighting one teacher’s curricular interruptions where Multiliteracies pedagogies replaced the progressive monomodal reading and writing workshop. In conclusion, new perspectives on research related to the education of teachers in the education in post-typographic societies of the 21st century.

Using Media Technologies in English

English has long been the subject where print text has reigned supreme. Increasingly in our networked and electronically connected world, however, we can be using digital technologies to create and respond to texts studied in English classrooms. The current approach to English includes the concept of ‘multiliteracies,’ which suggests that print texts alone are necessary but not sufficient’ (E.Q, 2000) and that literacy includes the flexible and sustainable mastery of a repertoire of practices. This also includes the decoding and deployment of media technologies (E.Q, 2000). This has become more possible in Australia as secondary students have increasing access to computers and online platforms at home and at school. With the advent of web 2.0., with its interactive platforms and free media making software, teachers and students can use this software to access information and emerging online literature in English covering a range of text types and new forms for authentic audiences and contexts. This chapter is concerned with responding to literary and mediated texts through the use of technologies. If we remain open to trying out new textual forms and see our digital ‘native students’ (Prensky, 2007) as our best resource, we can move beyond technophobia, become digital travellers’ ourselves and embrace new digital forms in our classrooms.

Young Australians reading in a digital world

The realities of new technological and social conditions since the 1990s demand a new approach to literacy teaching. Looking onward from the original statement of aims of the multiliteracies movement in 1996, this volume brings together top-quality scholarship and research that has embraced the notion and features new contributions by many of the originators of this approach to literacy. Drawing on large research projects and empirical evidence, the authors explore practical and educational issues that relate to multiliteracies, such as assessment, pedagogy and curriculum. The viewpoint taken is that multiliteracies is a complementary socio-cultural approach to the new literacies that includes pedagogy and learning. The differences are addressed from a multiliteracies perspective – one that does not discount or undermine the new literacies, but shows new ways in which they are complementary. Computers and the Internet are transforming the way we work and communicate and the very notion of literacy itself. This volume offers frontline information and a vital update for those wishing to understand the evolution of multiliteracies and the current state of literacy theory in relation to it.

New media pathways : navigating the links between home, school and the workplace

The terms ‘literacy’ and ‘technology’ remain highly contentious within the field of education. What is meant by ‘literacy’ and the methods used to measure it vary quite markedly in educational and historical contexts across the world. Similarly, while there is a shared concern to research the potential impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on patterns of teaching and learning, there are major discrepancies about which aspects and uses of these technologies should be incorporated into formal learning environments and how this can be accomplished. While government policy makers tend to regard ICTs in relation to ideas of ‘smartness’, efficiency, and the ‘knowledge’ (or ‘new’) economy, educators and educational researchers promote them as offering new tools for learning and critical thinking and the development of new literacies and socio-cultural identities. This clearly has ramifications for the ways literacy is taught and conceptualised throughout the years of schooling, K-12. Outside school, meanwhile, students engage with ICTs on another level entirely, as tools for the maintenance of social networks, for leisure, and for learning and participating in the cultures of their peers. Whatever the differences in perspective, it remains the case that a society’s dominant understandings about literacy and technology will have significant implications for the development of school curriculum.