Artifact Five
Evaluative review of “Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning”
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning”. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164-195. doi: 10.1080/15544800903076044
The “pedagogy of multiliteracies”, explains why we need more than one approach to literacy and develops a social justice focus to argue that learning should be about inclusion not exclusion. The concept of multiliteracies resonates with the values that are frequently discussed in my field of interest, which is adult education and lifelong learning. Cope & Kalantzis (2009) explain that the pedagogy of multiliteracies is about acquiring and utilizing diversified skills, and that this framework for learning literacies is situated within a commitment to education that has a social justice orientation.
With a concern for language and education, and in view of the dramatically changing social and technological contexts of communication and learning, this paper examines the evolving landscape of literacy teaching and learning using the “pedagogy of multiliteracies.” The details of Cope & Kantzis’s analysis are in the questions of “why”, “what”, and “how” of literacy pedagogy. To address the question of “why”, they draw upon an interpretation of what was happening to meaning-making and representation in the worlds of work, citizenship and personal life that might prompt a reconsideration of the approaches to literacy teaching and learning. To the question of “what”, they speak of the need to conceive meaning-making as a form of design or active and dynamic transformation of the social world, and the increasingly multimodal contemporary (linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial) modes of meaning becoming increasingly integrated in everyday communication, media and cultural practices. In response to the question of “how”, they analyze the limitations both of traditional literacy teaching, which set out to address language rules and establish good practice from literary models, and progressivisms that considered the natural learning models that worked for oral language learning to be an adequate and sufficient model for literacy learning. In this vein, Cope & Kalantzis (2009) argue—and I agree with them—that the pedagogy of multiliteracies provides a lens for better understanding the diverse environment in which literacy learning is contextualized. The multiliteracies approach views learning as actively constructing knowledge, with the teacher providing scaffolding for the learners. The concept of multiliteracies offers a framework that supports traditional ways of learning, and also integrates language strands involving reading, writing, speaking, listening, and the use of technology through a broad range of genres such as aural, spatial, visual and multimodal. Literacies must be widened to embrace multimodal communication, including image, sound, gesture and space.
The multiliteracies approach
The key concept of the multiliteracies approach, as it concerns language and education, is to address the central question of what is happening in the world of language teaching and literacy in schools today, and what perhaps should be happening but is not. The world is changing, the communication environment is changing, and in order to keep up with these changes it is appropriate to argue that education, both teaching and learning, should follow suit.
Cope & Kalantzis (2009) talk about the key concepts of multiliteracies – a pedagogical approach developed by a number of American scholars known as the New London Group, who were interested in how new technologies are impacting upon literacy and how these can be woven into teaching practices in schools. First they discuss “Why literacy?” with an interpretation of what is happening to meaning making in the worlds of work, citizenship and personal life that might spur a review of the approaches around literacy teaching and learning. In the second approach, the “what” of multiliteracies applies to the pedagogy of design and multimodality, to develop a theory of transformation as a theory of learning itself and to redesign the modalities of multimodality. Third, the question “how” addresses the limitations of literacy teaching and provides four aspects of pedagogy that serve as knowledge processes. Multiliteracies is an approach to literacy that views learning as actively constructing knowledge. The teacher systematically and consciously supports the less-experienced learner, who in turn critiques knowledge and asks questions such as why this text was produced; the learner`s voice is thus privileged and transforms a current practice into new contexts and/or adapts the practice to suit new cultural situations. However, it is important that the pedagogy of multiliteracies continuously evolves within the framework of current contemporary circumstances.
Central argument
It is paramount that we as educators understand the changes taking place in the world, and the perspective of the pedagogy of multiliteracies approach can provide a useful guide for understanding the practice of teaching and learning. I think the key to this assertion is “the centrality of diversity, the notion of design as active meaning-making, the significance of multimodality and the need for a more holistic approach to pedagogy” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 167). As noted earlier, fundamental to the pedagogy of multiliteracies is the analysis of the questions of “why”, “what”, and “how”. The discourse of multiliteracies evolved as a way to engage learners, primarily in the grade-school system, by looking at the different kinds of “literacies” that students can develop, including technological as well as more traditional writing or oral literacies. Cope & Kalantzis (2009) explain that the reason they developed the pedagogy of multiliteracies was because the world and the communication environment was changing, therefore literacy teaching and learning had to change as well; hence the analysis of why, what, and how.
The “why” of multiliteracies?
To the question of “why”, the pedagogy of multiliteracies responds with an explanation of what is happening to meaning-making and representation in the work sphere, citizenship and personal life that might inspire a reconsideration of our approaches to literacy teaching and learning. Cope & Kalantzis (2009) assert that discourse differences within a language must be taken into account; key to their argument is the broader interpretation of a language in the context of ethnic, national, professional, and interest or other affinity group perspectives. They argue that English has become a world language, but it is also diverging into multiple Englishes. “Whereas traditional literacy curriculum was taught to a singular standard (grammar, the literacy canon, standard national forms of the language), the everyday experience of [English language] meaning-making was increasingly one of the negotiating discourse differences” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p.166). The pedagogy of multiliteracies should address this aspect of learning and personally I would like to do further research in this area as it raises important questions regarding the purpose of education.
The “what” of multiliteracies
To the question of “what”, Cope & Kalantzis (2009) speak of the need to conceive meaning-making as a form of design or active and dynamic transformation of the social world, and the increasingly multimodal (linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial) contemporary modes of meaning becoming more and more integrated in everyday communication, media and cultural practices. As Cope & Kalantzis (2009) describe it, “these constituted the inherent multimodality of contemporary forms of representation” (p.166). In the world of multiliteracies, the traditional emphasis on alphabetical literacy (letter sounds in words, sentences, texts, and literature) ought to be supplemented by having students learn how to read and write multimodal texts that integrate the other modes with language, such as visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning. In the pedagogy of multiliteracies, all forms of representation, along with language, should be viewed as part of an evolving and ever-active process of transformation rather than a system of reproduction. The learner is seen as the meaning-maker who discovers specificities among the extremely varied field of relevant texts in order to develop a theory of semiotic transformation as a theory of learning itself. The meaning-makers do not simply use what they have been given; they are fully engaged in remaking and transforming the meaning. Cope & Kalantzis (2009) make it clear that the act of writing (or reading or making pictures, etc.) is seen as an act of doing something with meaning, and the meaning-maker is seen as an “agent designer”. Designing is an act of motivated representation – purposeful and directed – and an expression of the individual`s identity “at the unique junction of intersecting lines of social and cultural experience” (p.177). One person`s design becomes a potential resource for another person`s creation, and the world is (left) changed as a consequence of the transformational work of designing. In the life of the meaning-maker, this process of transformation is the lifeblood of learning; as Cope & Kalantzis (2009) so vividly put it, “the act of representing to oneself the world and others` representations of it transforms the learner him- or herself” (p. 177).Within the discourses of multiliteracies, how one engages with reading and writing and the text – whether it is visual, oral, created on screen, or created by cursive writing by hand – changes how one experiences the words and the texts. Having a wider repertoire of approaches enhances the likelihood of better reader comprehension, but at the same time there is also an acknowledgment that some ways of experiencing a text or story will not create the same teaching and learning experience (e.g., viewing a movie vs. reading a book) and it will not necessarily be the same experience or lead to the development of the same skills or a similar depth of understanding.
The “how” of multiliteracies
In response to the question of “how”, Cope & Kalantzis (2009) analyzed the limitations of both traditional literacy teaching (which set out to address language rules and establish good practice from literary models), and progressivisms that considered the natural learning models that worked for oral language learning to be an adequate and sufficient model for literacy learning. The authors suggest that literacy education in the pedagogy of multiliteracies “would involve a range of pedagogical moves, including both ‘situated practice’ and ‘overt instruction’ but also entailing ‘critical framing’ and ‘transformed practice’” (p.166). In this context, learning takes place in the same place as it is applied (such as the workshop, kitchen, greenhouse, etc.), and teachers encourage learners to think, understand, interpret, negotiate, and apply their ideas, to focus on important features of the “classroom” task in order to gain experiences that allow them to understand various explanations and to engage in conversations that transfer ideas from one (cultural) situation to another. If I understand it correctly, Cope & Kalantzis (2009) argue that some learners can work their way easily into forming their identity while others cannot, and the difference has to do with social background. Learners who do not come from a culture of writing often fail in school. Perhaps these learners might have been able to extend their repertoire of writing if they had been introduced to the practice via another mode or entry point to literacy, such as synaesthesia, which is more intellectually stimulating and motivating, rather than the old-fashioned literacy teaching, which concentrated on skill and drill. The one-size-fits-all approach must be curtailed, and we as educators must face and encounter the vast array of human differences that we simply cannot ignore any longer—including those of culture, religion, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, class, and life experience. Cope & Kalantzis (2009) explain that if we are not dealing with difference, we exclude those who do not fit the norm.
It also means ineffectiveness, inefficiencies and thus wasted resources in a form of teaching that does not engage with each and every learner in a way that will optimize their performance outcomes. It even cheats the learners that happen to do well by limiting their exposure to the cosmopolitan experience of cultural and epistemological differences so integral to the contemporary world (p.188).
Conclusion
It is important for us as educators to make critically informed choices when we prepare students. The need to address changes in communication related to advances in technology is important. To address this critique, this article on the pedagogy of multiliteracies addresses precisely the question of what constitutes appropriate literacy pedagogy for our times that will provide a platform for engagement and effective learning in a quickly changing and complicated society. The pedagogy of multiliteracies may go a long way toward creating the conditions for critical understanding of the discourses of knowledge, power and career from which genuinely more egalitarian working conditions might emerge.
In my doctoral thesis, I believe that a multiliteracies approach may be helpful in providing insights into the complex ways in which educators must approach their teaching practices. There are a range of pedagogical actions that may prompt teachers to extend their pedagogical repertoires. Recently, there has been an increasing recognition of the need to integrate both experiencing and conceptualizing in educational practice—pedagogical processes highly recommended in the multiliteracies mode of learning: the problem-posing to problem-solving approach. It bears repetition, that social scientists are appreciated by their ability to predict the social consequences of a given social situation. If, for instance, adults, have no option but to play out, albeit unconsciously, what has been impressed into them as children and adolescences, Western civilization may wobble in the face of future. Indeed, the future is already here, in that cohorts so influenced--by social media, say--are mainly the today`s adolescence and young adults. Multiliteracies perspectives of alternative forms of engagement and the rebalancing of agency in the recognition of inherent learning potential aligns well with my pedagogical orientation, the Waldorf education, with its transformative goal to enable learners, as fully as possible, to choose and, in freedom, to realize their individual path through life as adults. A modern art of education, should prepare future generations for a deep insight into the great values—liberty, equality, social equity and fraternity—by which civilization progresses. This, in my view, is a demand all educational approaches all over the world should seek to fulfill.
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