Elaborating Multiliteracies through Multimodal Texts

Changing Classroom Practices and Developing Teacher Pedagogies

Geoff Bull, Michèle Anstey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351370950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Elaborating Multiliteracies through Multimodal Texts: Changing Classroom Practices and Developing Teacher Pedagogies is the complementary volume to Foundations of Multiliteracies: Reading, Writing and Talking in the 21st Century which provides a comprehensive introduction to multiliteracies, classroom talk, planning, pedagogy and practice. This second volume, embeds an action learning model, encouraging readers to explore classroom practice around multiliteracies, collect data about their pedagogy and enact change. It provides in-depth examination of the five semiotic systems, including a suggested school-wide sequence, explores reading and writing processes with multimodal texts and explains how to develop dialogic practices through talk around multimodal texts. The links between inquiry and action learning are explored in order to demonstrate how these approaches can change classroom practices and talk around multimodal texts.

Several features have been designed to help translate knowledge of multiliteracies into effective classroom practice:

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• Graphic Outlines orient the reader to the concepts in the chapter.

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• Reflection Strategies enable the reader to gauge their understanding of key concepts.

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• Theory into Practice tasks enable the trialling of specific theoretical concepts in the classroom.

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• Auditing Instruments inform assessment of student performance and evaluation of teacher pedagogy.

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• QR codes address the multimodal and digital nature of new literacies link the reader to multimodal texts.

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• Action Learning Tasks enable readers to investigate specific aspects of their multiliterate pedagogy, plan and implement change, based on their findings.

1 The action learning cycle: Designing multimodal pedagogies

This chapter will investigate what students need to know and be able to do with multimodal texts by tracing the change in the concept of literacy to consideration of literacies and multiliteracies. It will define the characteristics of a literate and multiliterate person through exploring semiotic systems and the changing nature of texts and will propose that reading and writing might be more usefully seen as consumption and production. The chapter will introduce the Action Learning Cycle as a way of examining and changing teaching practices around new texts, multiliteracies and multimodality. It will introduce new tools that have been designed by Anstey and Bull to support understanding the relationships among professional knowledge, planning and teacher practice. Finally, the chapter will explain how the Action Learning Cycle and how it can be used to support the design and redesign of teachers’ pedagogy. As stated in the introduction to this book, the purpose of Elaborating Multiliteracies is to increase the readers’ knowledge about multiliteracies and enable the implementation of a multiliterate pedagogy. Therefore, the information about the Action Learning Cycle in this chapter provides specific knowledge and Action Learning Tasks for the reader to begin an action learning project focussing on the development of a multiliterate pedagogy in their classroom. The project can be further refined and implemented as the reader engages with subsequent chapters and the Action Learning Tasks within them.

Reviewing what teachers and students need to know and be able to do with multimodal texts and technology

Redefining literacy, reading and writing – a psychological process

In the period following the end of World War Two, literacy was seen as a collection of knowledge and skills that enabled individuals to participate effectively in the society of the time. This was defined by a 1962 UNESCO document (cited by Oxenham, 1980, p. 87) as attaining a level of reading, writing and arithmetic that made it possible to adequately function and to ‘use those skills toward his own and the community’s development’. Earlier UNESCO (cited by Harris & Hodges, 1995, p. 140) had defined literacy as the ability of a person ‘ … who can with understanding both read and write a short, simple statement on his everyday life’. This view of literacy as a finite and unique set of skills pertaining to a particular society was reinforced by the idea that literacy was a form of communication that was language dominated. It followed that language was predicated on the understanding that the basics of grammar, spelling, punctuation and comprehension were essential requirements for both reading and writing and provided what Luke (1995) referred to as a basic toolkit. Cope and Kalantzis (2000, p. 5) suggested when describing the literacy of this era as ‘What we might term “mere literacy” remains centred on language only, and usually on a singular national form of language at that, being conceived as a stable system based on rules’. Later Kalantzis et al. (2016, p. 4) commented that students of this era ‘… became knowledgeable in the sense that they recognised received rules and conventions. They learned complicated spelling rules, or the grammar of adverbial clauses, or the lines of great poets’. At this time in Australia, literature in the form of poetry, prose and plays was dominated by the British tradition, possibly because the population was almost entirely of British heritage. This led some cynics to suggest that Australian students spent their time in English lessons studying the writing of ‘dead English males’. Street (1993, p. 2) suggested that these traditional approaches were ‘highly biased’ because they focussed mainly on genres from the Western literary canon that were mainly concerned with ‘… the literate activities and output of the intellectual elite’. During this time, it was not possible to study Australian literature at university level because it was not seen as part of the canon that was worthy of attention or to have sufficient prestige. Literacy was therefore defined by what educationists of the time thought was appropriate for the civic, economic and work contexts that students would be entering, or as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; cited by Lo Bianco & Freebody 2001, p. 21) stated, students ‘… who are able to use their skills to function fully in the workplace, the community, and the home’. It was also socially and culturally determined by the values held by the community of the time, as the goal of education generally was to pass on and maintain the heritage and literacy skills needed to maintain it. The literacy of this period has been variously described as old basics by Luke (1995) and Luke and Freebody (1997), as traditional by Anstey and Bull (2004, 2006) and heritage based by Kalantzis et al. (2016). Further information about these ideas can be found in Chapter One of the complementary volume Foundations of Multiliteracies: Reading, Writing and Talking in the 21st Century.

This view of literacy and literature as old basics was challenged firstly by the mass migrations following the war that not only affected the population of Australia, but also populations in the U.S. and the U.K. At the same time, the development of affordable air travel made it more likely that individuals would meet people from different backgrounds, societies and cultures. These two developments increased the diversity of populations around the world and made available a range of views about what literacy was and how it might be enacted. The view that literacy could be regarded as a set of knowledge and skills, essentially a psychological process, was no longer sufficient. The greater diversity of populations together with increasing mobility meant that literacy had to be regarded not only as a psychological process, but also as a social process with concomitant social practices. It was during this time that a significant amount of research was carried out in the U.K. and the U.S. about the social and cultural factors that affected the development of language and literacy in particular groups. It marked a change in the way literacy was perceived, as researchers were now focussing on the practices associated with literacy and about how language was used in social settings.

Reflection Strategy 1.1

• The purpose of this Reflection Strategy is to determine what views about literacy are held by the individuals in your educational setting.
• Ask the people who you work with in your school/setting to reflect on their views about the nature of literacy. Have them commit these views in writing and then collect them. (Make sure that you inform participants beforehand that their views are to be collected and analysed. It may be that the group will prefer their views to be anonymous.)
• The views should be analysed and placed into one of four categories:
  • Those individuals who define literacy as a psychological process – a belief that literacy is a unitary set of skills and knowledge,
  • Those individuals who define literacy as a social practice – a belief that literacy is a communicative process relating to interaction among different sociocultural groups,
  • Those individuals who define literacy as a balance between psychological processes and social processes,
  • Those individuals who do not have a clear definition of literacy.
• Use these four categories in a discussion about how these disparate ideas may influence students learning about literacy. At this point it may be useful to have a further discussion about the benefits of a school-wide developmental approach and sequence to literacy instruction.

Redefining literacy, reading and writing — a social process

One of the first researchers in the U.K. to investigate the social origins of literacy and language development was Bernstein who, in his earlier work (Bernstein, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1971), proposed that there was a link between the literate practices involving talk in the home and social class membership and sociocultural practices in families. He suggested that there was a relationship between particular family types found in working class and middle class families and what he termed codes. He advanced a theory that restricted codes developed in working class families and elaborate codes in middle class families. Bernstein suggested (1964, pp. 118–139 and 1971, pp. 170–189) that elaborate code users drew their utterances from a broad range and variety of alternatives and therefore their language use was less predictable, more explicit and therefore more complex (elaborate). The literacy that developed in such families was more flexible and creative. Conversely, restricted code was more predictable and implicit and less complex. It followed that the restricted code was therefore less flexible and less creative. Bernstein further suggested that working class families could be identified as position-oriented families because they were more regulated and less open to change in family social structures, whereas middle class families, or person-oriented families, had more fluid roles and family structures and were therefore less regulated. A more detailed discussion of the codes and family types can be found in Anstey and Bull (2004, 2006, 2018) and Edwards-Groves, Anstey and Bull (2014). See also a detailed explanation in Chapter Two of the complementary volume Foundations of Multiliteracies: Reading, Writing and Talking in the 21st Century.

Bernstein’s theory became widely accepted and led to the belief that students from working class families could be seen as ‘culturally disadvantaged’ or ‘culturally deprived’. Some schools adopted the position that failure at school was determined by family background and therefore families were held responsible for lack of student success rather than the school. This shift in accountability became widely accepted in educational circles and resulted in some teachers adopting the position that students from working class homes were somehow deficient in literacy. This led to the formation of the term Deficiency Hypothesis as a way of relating student performance to family background and child-rearing practices. The deficiency hypothesis was not proposed by Bernstein but its effect was to ‘blame the victim’ and shift responsibility away from teachers and the schools. This may explain why this misinterpretation of Bernstein’s ideas gained such wide acceptance even though they were controversial and were the subject of many challenges in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

It is interesting to note that despite the challenges and the controversies surrounding the work of Bernstein, his ideas continue to be widely accepted and researchers still find evidence for teacher beliefs and acceptance of the central ideas underlying the theory. In their study of literacy practices in low socioeconomic communities, Freebody and Ludwig (1998) found that schools continued to hold to the belief that poor student performance was related to working class membership some three decades after Bernstein proposed his initial theory. This is in spite of the fact that Bernstein (1973, 1975, 1990) reviewed and revised his theory in his later research.

There was some support for Bernstein’s proposals in the early stages of the development of his theory in Australia (Poole, 1972), the U.K. (Lawton, 1968) and the U.S. (Williams & Naremore, 1969). However, there were also some questions raised about the efficacy of his theory. Labov (1966, 1969a, 1969b), while disagreeing with the proposition that poor performance could be explained by social class membership, did not abandon the theory altogether but rather suggested important modifications. He agreed with Bernstein’s view that sociocultural factors affected, and partly determined, literacy performance. In his study of African American students, he proposed that difference in student performance could be better explained through the concepts of standard English (SE) and non-standard English (NSE) rather than restricted and elaborate codes. Labov suggested that African American students learnt a non-standard variant of English at home that was not valued by the school. This position became known as the Difference Hypothesis and reversed Bernstein’s theory that the home was accountable for poor student performance by suggesting that the school was accountable because of its refusal to acknowledge that NSE was an acceptable dialect of English, albei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, tables and QR codes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The action learning cycle: Designing multimodal pedagogies
• 2 Multiliteracies and inquiry: Implications for pedagogy, planning and practice
• 3 The codes and conventions of the semiotic systems: Developing a metalanguage for literacy inquiry
• 4 Developing dialogic talk and dialogic pedagogy: Designing multiliterate classrooms
• 5 Investigating the reading process in multiliterate classrooms: Consuming multimodal texts
• 6 Investigating the writing process in multiliterate classrooms: Producing multimodal texts
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index