Social Diversity within Multiliteracies

Complexity in Teaching and Learning

Fenice B. Boyd, Cynthia H. Brock, Fenice B. Boyd, Cynthia H. Brock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317693307
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literacy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Using a multiliteracies theoretical framework highlighting social diversity and multimodality as central in the process of meaning making, this book examines literacy teaching and learning as embedded in cultural, linguistic, racial, sexual, and gendered contexts and explores ways to foster learning and achievement for diverse students in various settings. Attending simultaneously to topics around two overarching and interrelated themes—languages and language variations, and cultures, ethnicities, and identities—the chapter authors examine the roles that multiliteracies play in students' lives in and out of classrooms. In Part I, readers are asked to examine beliefs and dispositions as related to different languages, language varieties, cultures, ethnicities, and identities. Part II engages readers in examining classroom and community practices related to different languages and language varieties, cultures, ethnicities, and identities.

1 REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, WORKING WITHIN THE “FUTURE”

Advancing a Multiliteracies Theory and Pedagogy

Fenice B. Boyd and Cynthia H. Brock

DOI: 10.4324/9781315777382-1

Introduction

It has been almost twenty years since the literacy field was introduced to the now eminent article written by The New London Group (NLG). Published in 1996, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures presented a theoretical overview of the nexus between the changing social environments and communication systems as related to literacy teaching and learning. NLG’s analysis was trailblazing, particularly as the scholars predicted that redesigning social environments and communication systems would transform the future of literacy teaching, ways we communicate and collaborate, and how we construct meaning. In just seventeen short years, for instance, we can co-construct a text on our computer by screen sharing, collaborate with our colleagues through FaceTime, Google Hangout, or Skype, and teach our students to use and apply digital tools and technology to develop their literacy teaching and learning skills (e.g., iPads, clickers, Smart Boards, and online classes). We submit our manuscripts and grant proposals for scholarly production online. On our smartphones, whether we are riding in a car or flying on a plane, we can read The Help or the New York Times, text family and friends, or play Angry Birds. Predicted by the NLG in 1996, in all aspects of our lifeworlds, these communication systems give us the capability to work in time and space in future-oriented ways.

Cope and Kalantzis (2000) note that one goal for the group’s collaboration was to focus on the big picture relative to literacy teaching and learning; the ten academics had different national and cultural experiences and different areas of expertise. Their intent was to stimulate important discussions about the what and how of literacy pedagogy given the evolving and diverse meanings of the word “literacy” and the “new demands being placed upon people as makers of meaning in changing workplaces, as citizens in changing public spaces, and in the changing dimensions of our community lives—our lifeworlds” (p. 4). The NLG’s work redefined literacy as multiliteracies with the potential to build learning conditions “that lead to full and equitable social participation” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, p. 9). These scholars argued that a pedagogy of multiliteracies centers on modes of representation that reach beyond language alone, differ according to culture and context, and have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects.

A multiliteracies pedagogy views language and other modes of meaning-making as dynamic representational resources. Users constantly remake these representational resources as they work to achieve their various social and cultural purposes, including their goals for literacy achievement and lifelong learning. Jacobs (2012) argues that a multiliteracies pedagogy is more than integrating digital tools and technology, multiple modalities, or popular culture into an existing curriculum. Rather, as a field, we are asked to reconceptualize the very notion of what constitutes the curriculum; it should no longer consist solely of traditional literacy (e.g., reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and technology cast in ways that privilege white middle- and upper-class students. Rather, the curriculum must include multimodal “literacies” and social practices that honor the vast array of linguistic, racial, cultural, sexual, and gendered identities of children in our classrooms. In short, a multiliteracies curriculum must include careful attention to social diversity as well as digital and non-digital multimodal tools. But promoting a multiliteracies pedagogy and curriculum does not forgo reading and writing basics such as decoding and encoding, literal level comprehension, and the use of canonical texts; it requires all stakeholders (e. g., teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, researchers, and policymakers) to rethink why we teach what we teach, what we teach, and how we teach content to ensure the success of all students.

What might this rethinking of pedagogy from a multiliteracies perspective look like? Boyd and Tochelli (2014) illustrate how one teacher used a multiliteracies approach to teach her students how different text types can represent the same historical event in vastly different ways. For analytical purposes, the teacher used three texts—a memoir, a documentary, and a docudrama—to help students think about the depiction of an event and how different modes influence representation, point of view, and meaning. Each text gave a different portrayal of the integration of Little Rock Central High School by nine students, a key historical event. The authors narrate the pedagogical moves where Deborah, the teacher, placed side by side multiple text types to convey how different modes of communication have the potential to shift meaning in significant ways. By providing these multiple readings of the memoir and visual images, Deborah’s instruction was consistent with the multiliteracies approach because she focused “on modes of representation much broader than language alone” (Boyd & Tochelli, 2014, p. 64) to include visual images as dynamic representational resources to assist students in redirecting points of view about the historical events to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. In the next section, we examine the impact of multiliteracies.

Exploring the Reach of a Multiliteracies Framework

The NLG spawned a blitz of professional conversations about theoretical perspectives, critiques about literacy teaching and learning, and discussions about students’ meaning-making experiences, as well as the role that social diversity plays in literacy pedagogy. The extent to which multiliteracies has been taken up within the literacy field is extraordinary, and as a concept, the idea has traveled far beyond the small town of New London to become a worldwide reality (Guo, Cope, & Kalantzis, 2009). Leander and Boldt (2013) note, “More than any other text, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies streams powerfully through doctoral programs, edited volumes, books, journal reviews, and calls for conference papers, as the central manifesto of the new literacies movement” (p. 22). The concentrated efforts behind this one article have been monumentally significant.

We conducted a general search on Google Scholar as one approach to test the extent to which the publication is being utilized. We found an approximate yield of 244 citations. We also entered the term “multiliteracies” into three databases including Education Full Text, Education Research Complete, and Psych Info. This yielded over 300 references. We sorted through these references to identify empirical work pertaining to multiliteracies, which narrowed our list of articles to 121 studies published in peer-reviewed journals. Several features of the studies stand out as particularly compelling. First, scholars from around the world are using multiliteracies to frame their work conceptually. For example, we found studies from Greece, Singapore, South Africa, the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Second, scholars are using a multiliteracies conceptual framework to explore literacy learning-related topics across a broad age span including pre-K, lower and upper elementary, middle grades, high school, and undergraduate and graduate education. We found a range of topics being studied using a multiliteracies conceptual framework including, but not limited to, the following:

• A bridge between school and community literacies
• An exploration of bilingual French and Chinese development in French language schools
• The learning of Aboriginal adolescent students in an alternative school
• An exploration of fan fiction
• Pre- and in-service teachers’ learning about new literacies
• Pedagogical innovations in dual-language early childhood classrooms

As one final example of the prevalence of multiliteracies, we entered the term “multiliteracies” in Google Books Ngram Viewer. When key terms are listed in Ngram, it displays a graph showing how frequently the terms have been displayed in Google Books during the years selected. One-word terms are called unigrams; two-word terms are bigrams. So, for example, if the unigram “diversity” is entered into Ngram Viewer, it compares how frequently “diversity” appears in Google Books for the specified time period compared with all other one-word unigrams used in the same time period in Google Books. The same principle is applicable to digrams. If we entered the digram “social diversity” into Ngram, it would compare the digram “social diversity” with all other two-word digrams in all Google Books during the specified time frame. Ngram models are typically used in disciplines such as computational linguistics, communication theory, and probability. For instance, statisticians create ngram language models to explore letter combinations at the phoneme, syllable, letter, or word levels. Figure 1.1 displays the results of a multiliteracies unigram when we entered it into Ngram Viewer.

FIGURE 1.1 Ngram Results for the Unigram “Multiliteracies.”

As illustrated in the graph displayed in Figure 1.1, between 1996 and 2008 (which is the latest year available for Ngram Viewer), the use of the unigram “multiliteracies” has risen steadily from 1996, when its use was virtually zero, to 2008 when compared with all other unigrams in Google Books.

Clearly, there has been a consistent and steady rise in the development of a multiliteracies framework for teaching and learning. With the heightened use, application, and integration of digital tools and technologies, a great deal of this rise can be attributed to multimodality (cf. Miller & McVee, 2012). Multimodality is one facet of multiliteracies; social diversity is another. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) define multimodality as “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event” (p. 20). Today we are not only consumers of multimodal texts, but also producers of digital tools and technologies that enable us to make meaning in new and innovative ways. The distinction warrants consideration because “meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal in which written-linguistic modes … interface with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial patterns of meaning” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012, p. 2). While for centuries written and oral language has been the privileged standard form of communication, in recent times, multimodality has received prominent attention and ups the ante on representation, communication, and interaction to move beyond the comfort zone of oral and written language, as well as print-based text only, as the principal forms of meaning-making.

Advancing a Multiliteracies Theoretical Framework

Our theoretical framework centers on multiliteracies and the ways in which social, linguistic, cultural, and economic identities complicate as well as intersect with literacy teaching and learning. Figure 1.2 presents an overview of the key theoretical elements we explore within and across all chapters: multimodality, social diversity, teaching, and learning. The word “multiliteracies” is listed in bold at the bottom of the figure to indicate that it is the primary theoretical foundation on which the chapters rest. The three major concepts pertaining to multiliteracies on which we focus, represented by the three circles in the cone, all converge on multiliteracies. We chose a cone as the frame for the three major concepts to illustrate that they transact with one another in a dynamic and cyclical manner. Moreover, all of the chapters center on literacy teaching and learning; hence, all of the topics are funneled through the lens of teaching and learning. We opted to place social diversity at the top of the cone to highlight the fact that it is a concept within multiliteracies that we highlight throughout the book.

FIGURE 1.2 Social Diversity within a Multiliteracies Framework.

According to Kalantzis and Cope (2012), “A multiliteracies approach attempts to explain what matters in traditional reading and writing, and what is new and distinctive about the ways in which people construct meanings in contemporary communication environments” (pp. 1–2). A multiliteracies approach accomplishes these tasks by focusing on two interrelated and significant aspects of meaning-making: multimodality and social diversity. Social diversity centers on “the variability of conventions of meaning in different, cultural, social, or domain-specific situations” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012, p. 1). It is especially significant because meaning-making fluctuates based upon the social context in which one deliberates; participates in life experiences; understands subject matter knowledge; constructs specialist knowledge; functions in a disciplinary domain area of employment; and understands one’s own linguistic, cultural, gendered, and ethnic origins in relation to self and others.

In what ways does a multiliteracies perspective ask us, as a field, to think differently and in new ways about social diversity? Much of the diversity-related literature in the past focused on and was situated within what Kalantzis and Cope (2012) call the “old basic” approach to literacy, which centers on traditional and back-to-basics reading and writing using paper and pencil as tools. More current and important research in literacy and diversity acknowledges the importance of traditional conceptions of literacy, but also focuses on different digital, multimodal, and textual tools as well as unique ways to engage in the use of these tools for meaningful literacy teaching and learning (Albers, Holbrook, & Harste, 2010; Pahl & Rowsell, 2012). Here we focus on these latter new literacy tools and their unique uses in what Kalantzis and Cope (2012) refer to as the “new basics” whereby different people with different skills and backgrounds become privileged and those in positions of power (including teachers, principals, professors, district-level administrators, and so forth) actively and openly qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface: An Overview of the Book
• 1 Reflections on the Past, Working within the “Future”: Advancing a Multiliteracies Theory and Pedagogy
• PART I Exploring Languages, Language Varieties, Culture, Ethnicity, and Identities
• PART II Exploring Languages, Language Varieties, Culture, Ethnicity, and Identities in Classrooms and Communities
• PART III Lessons Learned about Social Diversities within Multiliteracies
• Index