Multiliteracies

This multiliteracies-oriented test is currently being used in intermediate Italian courses at a large public university in the southwestern United States. It was designed to replace the traditional oral assessments that are question-answer based, during which learners are providing predictable short answers to predictable, predetermined questions. In the multiliteracies-oriented test presented here, students perform tasks designed using the pedagogy of multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kern, 2000; New London Group, 1996). A multiliteracies framework perceives learning as a process of discovery (Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2015, p. 23), and learners are not only preparing for an assessment, but they are also engaging in forethought, design, and reflection while reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Competence-based education (CBE) has become a central topic in transnational education policy. The approach has been applied at various education levels around the world, and it has been promoted by various international actors, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU). During the latest curriculum reform, the Finnish education system took a step towards CBE as new transversal competences were introduced into the national level core curricula (Uljens & Rajakaltio, 2017). Even though CBE has been studied widely, there is a need for contextual understanding (Nordin & Sundberg, 2016; Weninger, 2017b). In this dissertation, I focus on the contextualisation of CBE within the Finnish curricular framework of basic education. The results provide conceptual tools to understand, develop and implement a competencebased curriculum.

This dissertation is constructed on two interrelated levels following the inductive logic of grounded theory research. Firstly, on a more specific—micro—level, I focus on the individual concept of multiliteracy to understand how it is contextualised in curricular contextualisation of the CBE. Based on these research topics, I locate this dissertation to cross the following three areas of educational research: 1) on the micro level, the results offer new contextual knowledge about multiliteracy for literacy studies (Kulju et al., 2018; Mills, 2010; Zhang et al., 2019); on the macro level, the results provide new knowledge 2) in the field of curriculum studies, addressing curricular contextualisation in particular (Fernandes et al., 2013; Leite et al., 2020) and 3) in the field of education studies, focusing CBE (Priestley & Sinnema, 2014; Sinnema & Aitken, 2013; Voogt & Erstad, 2018).

This dissertation consists of three published peer-reviewed research articles and an integrative chapter synthesising the dissertation. The curricular contextualisation of CBE is studied in this research using the method of qualitative content analysis. The broader methodological framework is oriented from qualitative grounded theory research. The research data consist of international peer-reviewed research articles collected in 2015 (n=14) and Finnish local curricula collected in 2017 (n=219) and in 2019 (n=220). The first sub-study (Palsa & Ruokamo, 2015) focused on the relationship between the conceptualisations of the concept of multiliteracy in the Finnish core curriculum and the international research discussion. The second sub-study (Palsa & Mertala, 2019) addressed the contextualisations of the concept of multiliteracy within the Finnish local curricula for basic education. The third sub-study (Palsa & Mertala, 2020) focused further on the contextualisation of multiliteracy in the specific disciplinary settings of social studies and mathematics in the lower secondary education.

On the micro level, the findings clarify the relationship between the conceptualisations of multiliteracy between the national level core curriculum and the international research discussion. In addition, the research provides new contextual knowledge about how multiliteracy is contextualised in the local curriculum in general and in the disciplinary settings of social studies and mathematics on the levels of rationale (the ‘why?’), definition (the ‘what?’), and practice (the ‘how?’).

On the macro level I introduce new theoretical concepts—conceptual contextualisation and disciplinary contextualisation—and a theory, which helps in understanding the different dimensions of the conceptual contextualisation of CBE. The research findings support education through the development and implementation of the curriculum.

Nos dias atuais, as teorias fundamentadas nos Novos Letramentos representam uma importante referencia para o ensino de Lingua Inglesa no Brasil, propondo uma educacao linguistica que, ao mesmo tempo, possa fortalecer a consciencia critica e favorecer a agencia cidada. Nessa perspectiva, o presente artigo relata a experiencia de um projeto de extensao voltado para o ensino de ingles para adolescentes e jovens, com foco na profissionalizacao e no letramento critico, com o objetivo de evidenciar de que forma a proposta curricular e metodologica do projeto,alem de promover o desenvolvimento do conhecimento da lingua inglesa, constituiu-se um espaco de engajamento dialogico e de expansao de perspectiva dosparticipantes. O estudo foi desenvolvido com base na analise de fragmentos das aulas, registrados em video, dos planos de aula e material didatico utilizado, alem das postagens dos jovens participantes acerca dos temas abordados em uma pagina do projeto em uma rede social. As categorias...

The claim that 'The earlier, the better', for purposes of language learning, currently stands as an unquestionable nugget of wisdom. Sound wisdom, however, arises from questions confronting what we think we know with factual knowledge. This is precisely what this book does, by providing readers with timely evidence to enable critical assessment of this claim. The cogent insights that this book affords about the what, the how and the why of early language learning (ELL) show that the evidence is both sobering and heartening.

The article focuses on the concept of "literacy", from a pedagogical and media-educational point of view. At the beginning, it centers on the reasons for the gap between school and media cultures; then, it argues that the concept of literacy – in its most modern form, which include the idea of "multiliteracies" – is the cornerstone to link the media culture to school activities, that is the theories and practice of media education (or media literacy education).
In the second part, the article shows the goals of media literacy education (understanding, critical viewing, and produce media messages) and some possible connections between this area and other school's goals, as critical thinking, civic participation, and gender identity development, health, and aesthetic education.

Given the dynamic, global and multimodal character of English in the
21st century, it should be reasonable to expect English language (EL) teaching to accommodate the influences of media and technology on modern communication practices. In Singapore, education policy therefore highlights multiliteracies as one of three foci for the EL classroom. Yet, scant attention has been paid in research and practice to the impact of technology-mediated communication on writing pedagogy. This paper presents the findings of an extensive multiple-case study research project which sought to establish how multiliteracies pedagogy was being utilized in Singaporean secondary teachers’ classrooms and the significant internal and external factors that contributed to classroom practice.

Article that aims to show and discuss a multimodal activity proposed at a public school in Brazil in the context of English classes to students in the last years of elementary school. This is a part of a bigger research, which became a doctoral theses, about the use of multimodal critical practices in English classes in public schools in Brazil.

This book provides a practical and theoretical look at how media education can make learning and teaching more meaningful and transformative. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes a case study involving an elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. The ideas and experiences of working teachers are analyzed through a critical media literacy framework that provides realistic challenges and hopeful examples and suggestions. The book is a valuable addition to any education course or teacher preparation program that wants to promote twenty-first century literacy skills, social justice, civic participation, media education, or critical technology use. Communications classes will find it useful as it explores and applies key concepts of cultural studies and media education.

... Walking the dream. Cookeville, TN: One Step. Back. Back to menu. About the Author. Leslie Rush is an assistant professor of English education at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY, USA. She teaches courses in secondary English methods and in qualitative research. ...

Resumo: Este trabalho focaliza -na tentativa de estabelecer uma relação -os estudos dos multiletramentos e das práticas de comunicação e produção de significados no mundo contemporâneo, na tentativa de colaborar com a reflexão sobre novas (outras) formas de ensino de português como segunda língua (L2) para surdos. A análise de uma situação de interação entre jovens surdos complexifica as relações entre sujeitos e recursos semióticos e linguísticos e, ao ser assim considerada, traz contribuições para que os aspectos culturais e identitários surdos sejam contemplados na participação efetiva desses alunos em práticas de multiletramentos envolvendo estratégias de ensino de português como segunda língua. Palavras-chave: Multiletramentos; Multilinguismo; Multimodalidade; Educação de surdos.

The aim of teaching "religion and culture" is to develop a competence in dealing with religious issues and traditions. The teaching follows the concept of teaching about religion, which means that students should learn about religions that are present in our society.

This paper uses a case study of the drawings, early writings and imaginative role play of two children to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways that are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practices in which children routinely engage but which are often overlooked and devalued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children's drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interests. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the child's affect and creativity and builds agency and voice.

When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not “What did I write?” but “Is this right?” This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention to compensate for a mandated curriculum that overemphasized convention.

The challenges for young children learning to write are many, as they try to respond to their teachers' expectations, 'school language' and the complex, abstract notion of writing. Scaffolding the learning of young children is challenging for teachers, as they attempt to respond to the diverse needs of students, curriculum requirements and the expectations of employers and the community. Through conversation teachers and students work at understanding the expectations and needs of the other. The research study discussed in this article examined teacher/student conversations that focused on writing in three Australian Kindergarten classrooms in 2007. In some of the conversations analysed, the teachers and children appear to 'connect' and the children move forward with their learning as a result. This was not, however, always the case. The language of school literacy appears to be a particular barrier for some students. The author identifies the need for a 'shared language' if teachers' efforts to scaffold children's early attempts at writing are to be fruitful. Teachers must also know their children well.

A forma como avaliamos a compreensão da leitura dos alunos, tal como discutido
por Maurício Canuto Rocha na sua tese Leitura e ensino: silenciamento de sentido
no livro didático (2006), demonstra que pretendemos apenas que estes descodifiquem
as pistas gramaticais, e não que interpretem e reflictam sobre o significado do texto.
A utilidade do livro como objecto físico, face ao livro digital e às novas tecnologias,
tem vindo a ser questionada nas últimas décadas, pelo que devemos voltar-nos para
outras formas de interpretar o livro e estimular a compreensão e o interesse pela leitura,
recriando a necessidade do livro como objecto físico.
O papel do leitor em relação ao livro é mais importante quando é activo, ou seja,
há uma interacção com o livro e este não existirá da mesma forma sem o leitor.
Os livros móveis, cuja aplicação inicial era a de facilitar a compreensão de mapas astrológicos,
astronómicos e conjugações matemáticas, possibilitam ao leitor, através
de mecanismos de papel, jogos ou intervenções gráficas, criar e interpretar a história
à sua imagem, facilitando assim a reflexão sobre o seu significado.
Propõe-se, com este relatório de projecto, a re-interpretação do livro Onde moram as
casas (Carla Maia de Almeida, 2012), integrado no programa Ler+, para crianças do
primeiro ciclo do ensino básico, através da utilização de dispositivos mecânicos
e móveis, de forma a estimular a interacção dos jovens leitores com o texto, o livro,
e a sua criatividade pessoal.

Because of the vast changes to the communication landscape over the last two decades, along with the influence of emerging technologies on students’ writing practices, empirical studies that describe students’ experiences in multimodal composing are required to determine how the goals and practices of composition teaching might be better supported and reimagined. In response to this exigency, this article presents findings from an empirical study of graduate and undergraduate writers’ multimodal composing processes. Findings from focus group interviews and written reflections show that students’ attempts to draw on their print-based rhetorical knowledge while composing multimodally worked well when they perceived print-based and multimodal composing tasks as similar, but they faced significant difficulties when they perceived the need to adapt their print-based composing knowledge to suit new or unfamiliar aspects of multimodal composing. Specifically, students found it difficult to conceptualize an audience and negotiate the multiple semiotic resources afforded by multimodal composing. In an effort to mitigate such challenges, we provide two conceptual frameworks that help students move more fluidly between print-based and multimodal composing. These pedagogical approaches enable writing specialists to better support students’ efforts to engage successfully in multimodal composition tasks.

In this commentary, the articles of the special issue will be discussed in relation to how they address classroom dialogue to promote new forms of education. The articles present possibilities to rethink learning and education through the analysis of classroom dialogue. The commentary will address how the outcomes of the included papers lead to reflections about how practitioners and researchers may rethink school and society in a more emancipating, revolutionary, and transformative way.

Most young children love to draw and they all need to learn to write. However, despite the research over the past 30 years which identifies a strong relationship between emergent writing and drawing, in some classrooms young children are being obliged to see drawing and writing separately rather than as a unified system of meaning making. In this article I highlight one outcome of the fourth phase of an ongoing research project which focuses on writing in the first year of formal schooling. In 2009 I challenged 10 teachers working with children in the first year of school to make drawing central to their writing program, particularly during the first half of the year. I wanted to examine the relationship between children's drawing and learning to write in the first six months of formal schooling in an era where visual literacy and linguistic literacy combine. This required a shift in teachers' priorities. The result of the research is unambiguous: if teachers encourage emergent writers to see drawing and writing as a unified system for making meaning children create texts which are more complex than those they can create with words alone. The findings, if not new, are significant for two reasons. Firstly, in an era where visual literacy is central to new literacies it does not make sense to ignore the research which identifies the important relationship between drawing and emergent writing. Secondly, the findings remind us of the power of building on from the known to the new; meaning making through talking and drawing are the known, and writing as script is the new. The approach discussed also leads children to develop a positive attitude towards themselves as writers.

This quasi-experimental, mixed model study explored the use of an instructional approach that provided direct instruction and experiences in multicultural education while empowering preservice teachers to examine their perspectives using a hybrid classroom format. The purpose of the study was to explore preservice teachers’ attitudes and dispositions toward the integration of multicultural education and multiliteracies to promote literacy among struggling readers. For the purposes of this study, we defined multicultural education as a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create educational opportunities for all students, including students who are traditionally disenfranchised, to meaningfully and successfully engage in the education process. The study used a convenience sample of preservice teachers enrolled in a graduate-level educational program at a small private university in the Northeast. Results indicate opportunities for the use of an instructional approach that provides direct instruction and experiences in multicultural education while empowering preservice teachers to examine their perspectives in a hybrid classroom environment.

Historically, comics have been viewed as a "debased or simplified word-based literacy," explains Dale Jacobs, who considers comics to be complex, multimodal texts. Examining Ted Naifeh's Polly and the Pirates, Jacobs shows how comics can engage students in multiple literacies, furthering meaning-making practices in the classroom and beyond. We are better able to "hear" the narrator's voice because we can see what words are emphasized by the bold lettering, and we associate particular kinds of voices with the narrative voice of a pirate's tale, especially emphasized here by the shape of the text boxes.

TEACHING PRODUCTIVITY AND ITS ENEMIES is a distribution of my original doctoral dissertation "Language Tangle : Predicting and Facilitating Outcomes in Language Education" ( https://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804346 )  with a new title better reflecting its actual theme, barriers to teaching productivity.

Although the keys to teaching success are elusive, some of the destructive forces at work against success have enough constancy to be worth the trouble of a well-developed defence system. I will collectively describe forces acting against teaching success as “the enemies of language teaching productivity”.  A productive teacher is one who adds to the learning productivity of students. A productive student is one who  acquires and retains what needs to be learned (a skill, a body of knowledge or a method of thinking) with the most efficient use of his or her mental resources, time and money...

As a working teacher, I am concerned with managing the psychology of my students as well as my own. The “enemies” in this ghostly arena of the human mind are well known to any experienced teacher. However, the bulk of this book is concerned with other distractors – enemies without. Typically they take the form of individuals and groups within institutions who have agendas which clash with what the teachers and students are trying to achieve. Productivity for these other players has an altogether different meaning from the learner’s pursuit of knowledge...

RESUMO (Abstract in English below)
Esse artigo explora o livro infantil interativo como forma de expressão literária que exige do leitor infantil orques-trar diversos tipos de letramento para, em última instân-cia, desenvolver sua capacidade de ler criticamente textos multimodais, digitais e interativos diversos. O modelo de análise envolvendo os níveis perceptivo, estrutural e ideológico (SERAFINI, 2010; 2015) é proposto para promover, por meio dos livros digitais, a articulação de múltiplos letramentos na escola.

ABSTRACT
This work explores the interactive book app for children
as a form of literary expression that requires from the
young reader the capacity to orchestrate various forms
of literacy to promote their ability to read critically
multimodal, digital and interactive texts. Serafini’s
model for the analysis of picturebooks in three levels,
perceptive, structural, and ideological (SERAFINI,
2010; 2015), is proposed as a didactic tool to promote
these multiliteracies at school through the reading of
picturebook apps.

"Recently, educators have begun to consider what is required in literacy curricula and best teaching practices given the demands placed on the educator sector and on literacy in general.

Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom features theoretical reflections and approaches on the use of multiliteracies and technologies in the improvement of education and social practices. Assisting educators at different teaching levels and fostering professional development and progress in this growing field, this innovative publication supports practitioners concerned with teaching at both a local and global level."

Synsemia means the deliberate and conscious disposition of elements of writing in the space in order to communicate in a reasonably unambiguous way and in a regular manner, through the space articulation. These regularities can be valid only for a specific text (but coherent, rigorous and interpreted without the aid of the author), or defined by specific patterns and consolidated habits of use.

Teaching multiliteracies has been crucial for preparing students to cope with the realities of the technological world. However, teacher education programs are not prepared yet to bridge the gap between traditional literacy and multiliteracies. This concept paper explores how teaching multiliteracies could shape future learning practices in schools. The integration of multiliteracies to classroom pedagogy would help raise standards and reduce literacy gaps in the classroom.

This paper suggests how the ‘weird fiction’ of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft’s famous monster, as a ‘Cthulhuic literacy’ and is framed by Multiple Literacy Theory that positions learning as intrinsically relational and encourages teachers to use affect positively to enhance textual practice (Masny & Cole, 2009). Affect is put to work in the classroom as an organising principle, beginning with the choice of text to be used and continuing through the particular ways in which teacher and students work with the selected text.

*Winner of the 2018 International Writing Centers Association Best Article Award. Disciplinary histories of composition studies argue that the mission of communication programs shifted during World War II: from striving to democratize higher education to promoting uncritical patriotism. Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) rarely figure into these histories, in part because they seldom appeared in the era’s scholarly publications. Recently digitized African American newspaper archives invite a counter narrative of wartime democratizing pedagogy. Press coverage highlights the Hampton Institute Communications Center, the most widely publicized and politicized site of literacy instruction during the war. The controversy it engendered shows Hampton and other HBCU curricula forwarding wartime literacies that constituted patriotic resistance to Jim Crow segregation.

This work explores the interactive book app for children as a form of literary expression that requires from the young reader the capacity to orchestrate various forms of literacy to promote their ability to read critically multimodal, digital and interactive texts. Serafini's model for the analysis of picturebooks in three levels, perceptive, structural, and ideological (SERAFINI, 2010; 2015), is proposed as a didactic tool to promote these multiliteracies at school through the reading of picturebook apps.

resuMo Este artigo busca discutir, em particular, as implicações da nova base epistemológica digital nos processos de avaliação da aprendizagem de línguas. Para tanto, faz-se necessário compreender as mudanças ontológicas e epistemológicas das sociedades pós-tipográficas, as quais redefinem conceitos como linguagem, texto e gênero em face da amplitude de novas multissemioses ou multimodalidades em curso. Compreendidas essas mudanças conceituais, o texto trata das especificidades da avaliação da aprendizagem de línguas à luz das novas demandas sociais. O artigo conclui em favor da revisão de formas de ensinar e avaliar línguas, seja materna ou estrangeira, de modo que a prática escolar atual responda às novas éticas e estéticas emergentes nas sociedades multiletradas. PAlAvrAs-chAve AvAliAção dA AprendizAgem • línguAs • multiletrAmentos • multimodAlidAde.

The authors anchor their discussion in multiliteracies, approaching redesigning pedagogy as transformed practice. The fundamental premise of transformed practice is that there is a transfer of the practices of meaning making across contexts or cultural sites. Within a cross- disciplinary curriculum, students can 'analyse, discuss, recreate and produce texts with particular awareness of language and ideology, using strategies from across disciplines'. This approach to knowledge stands in contrast to the epistemological assumptions embedded in an 'interdisciplinary' curriculum, where knowledge is seen as a thing, devoid of the interactions and contexts that create it. Using Bourdieu's metaphors of field, habitus and capital, they unpack the processes of knowledge and meaning making, and suggest ways teaching cross- disciplinary multiteracies in a way that develops students' learning of disciplinary knowledge and discourse. Their article draws on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school in New York's Chinatown, where they worked closely with teachers in redesigning the cross-disciplinary curriculum

This article presents the results of a review of published literature on the use of the multiliteracies pedagogy to teach English Language Learners (ELLs). A total of 12 studies were selected for the literature review based on three inclusion criteria: (1) studies using the multiliteracies framework or other aspects of the multiliteracies pedagogy such as multimodality; (2) studies with ELL participants; and (3) studies conducted within the last 10 years. Through a detailed review and analysis of these studies, five emerging themes related to the potential benefits of the multiliteracies approach were identified and discussed in this article: (i) student agency and ownership of learning; (ii) language and literacy development; (iii) affirmation of students' languages, cultures and identities; (iv) student engagement and collaboration; and (v) critical literacy.

Nell’odierna scuola multiculturale la media education può rappresentare un potente strumento di promozione del pensiero critico, dell’espressione creativa e della partecipazione democratica degli studenti. Tuttavia, affinché la media education possa declinarsi concretamente in una pratica significativa di educazione alla cittadinanza sono necessari un maggiore riconoscimento della sua rilevanza sul piano delle politiche educative, un ripensamento dei suoi strumenti in chiave interculturale, una progettazione della didattica mediale particolarmente attenta all’inclusione degli allievi svantaggiati e una formazione sistematica del corpo docente all’insegnamento in classe della media literacy. Attraverso il resoconto analitico dei risultati del progetto Media education for equity and tolerance (Erasmus Plus, 2016-19), questo volume offre strumenti teorici e metodologici per la progettazione della media education in contesti multiculturali e indicazioni utili per generare percorsi di apprendimento socialmente situati.