Multiliteracies in Education MARY KALANTZIS AND BILL COPE
Definition The term multiliteracies refers to two major aspects of communication and representation multiliteracies refers today. The first is the variability of conventions of meaning in different cultural, social or domain-specific situations. These differences are becoming ever more significant to the ways in which people interact in a variety of social contexts. As a consequence, it is no longer sufficient for literacy teaching to focus, as it did in the past, primarily on the formal rules and literary canon of a single, standard form of the national language. Rather, the sociolinguistic conditions of our everyday lives increasingly require that we develop a capacity to move between one social setting and another where the conventions of communication may be very different. Such differences are the consequence of any number of factors, including, for instance, culture, gender, life experience, subject matter, discipline domain, area of employment, or specialist expertise. For this reason, a multiliteracies approach to literacy suggests we needed to move toward a discipline grounding for literacy learning that takes its cue from contrastive linguistics. Such an approach is based in an account of discursive differences and how one learns to move between different representational settings. The second aspect of language use highlighted by the idea of multiliteracies is multimodality. Multimodality arises as a significant issue today in part as a result of the characteristics of the new information and communications media. The asynchronous meanings across distance that were once the main preserve of the written word are now made in conditions where written linguistic modes of meaning interface with recordings and transmissions of oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial patterns of meaning. For these reasons, the multiliteracies case is that we need to extend the range of literacy pedagogy so that it does not exclusively privilege alphabetical representations. In today’s learning environments, we need to supplement traditional reading and writing with these multimodal representations, and particularly those typical of the new, digital media.
Background The term “multiliteracies” was coined in 1994 by the New London Group, a group of scholars who came together to consider the current state and possible future of literacy pedagogy. The group consisted of Courtney Cazden, Bill Cope, Norman Fairclough, Jim Gee, Mary Kalantzis, Gunther Kress, Allan Luke, Carmen Luke, Sarah Michaels, and Martin Nakata. The group’s initial deliberations produced an article-long manifesto (New London Group, 1996) and then an edited book (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) which includes the original article. In 2009, in consultation with other members of the group, Cope and Kalantzis published a paper reflecting on subsequent developments (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Linguistics , Edited by Carol A. Chapelle. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/978140 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0809 5198431.wbeal0809
2
multiliteracies in education
Sociolinguistic Context The “pedagogy of multiliteracies” as presented in these key texts, took the form of a programmatic manifesto, grounded in a reading of the changing sociolinguistic context. The world was changing in dramatic ways, these interventions argued, and with it our communications environment. For some quite fundamental reasons, literacy teaching and learning would have to change too. The analysis presented by the New London Group was based in an interpretation of changes in the worlds of work, citizenship, and personal life. In terms of the first of the two dimensions of multiplicity, we were and still are witnessing a burgeoning variety of what Gee calls “social languages” in national, ethnic, subcultural, workplace, interest, or affinity group contexts (Gee, 1996). For all the signs that English is becoming a world language, it is also diverging into multiple Englishes at the levels of dialect and register. Whereas traditional literacy curriculum was taught to a singular standard (grammar, the literary canon, standard national forms of the language), the everyday experience of meaning making is increasingly one of negotiating discourse differences. In terms of the second of these two dimensions, the new, digital media accelerates a trend away from a world which privileged the written word as the preeminent site of cultural and epistemic power, to one in which the visual and other modes are becoming considerably more important (Kress, 2009). We have also seen the rise of new and pervasive forms of writing which are in some respects more like speaking than traditional writing: emails, synchronous instant messaging, asynchronous text messaging, and social media posts. These are just a few of the changes which have pervasively changed the communicative spaces of work, public life, and personal identity formation. They are practical reasons that suggest the importance of moving in the direction of a multimodal conception of “literacies” in the plural (Jewitt, 2008). As a consequence, the multiliteracies case is that we need to extend the range of literacy pedagogies so that they do not excessively privilege alphabetical representations, supplementing them in the classroom with multimodal representations, and particularly those typical of the new, digital media.
Design and Multimodality In a pedagogy of multiliteracies, all forms of representation, including language, are regarded as dynamic processes of transformation rather than processes of reproduction. That is, meaning makers are not simply replicators of representational conventions. Their meaning-making resources are to be found in available representational artefacts (written texts, images, multimodal texts, etc.), patterned in familiar, conventional, and thus recognizable ways. However, meaning makers always rework these objects. They do not simply use what they have been given: they are fully remakers of signs and transformers of meaning. The meanings they make are never quite the same as the resources for meaning from which they draw. The pedagogical implications of this shift in the underlying conception of meaning making or semiosis are significant. In the old literacy, learners were passive recipients of systems of representation, expected to reproduce received, sanctioned, and authoritative forms of language. The logic of literacy pedagogy made it an instrument of social design which buttressed a regime of apparent stability and uniformity (Kress, 2003). A pedagogy of multiliteracies, in contrast, requires that the enormous role of agency in the meaning-making process be recognized. Through this recognition, it seeks to create a more productive, relevant, innovative, creative, and even life-transforming pedagogy. Literacy teaching is not about skills and competence: it is aimed at creating a kind of
multiliteracies in education
3
person who is an active designer of meaning, with a sensibility open to differences, change, and innovation. The logic of multiliteracies recognizes that meaning making is an active, transformative process, and a pedagogy based on that recognition is more likely to open up viable life courses for a world of change and diversity. The multiliteracies theory replaces static conceptions of representation such as “grammar” and “the literary canon” with a dynamic conception of representation as “design.” The word “design” has a fortuitous double meaning, simultaneously describing intrinsic structure or morphology, and the act of construction. Design in the sense of construction, is something that you do in the process of representing meanings, to oneself in sense-making processes such as reading, listening or viewing, or to the world in communicative processes such as writing, speaking, or making pictures. The multiliteracies view of design has three aspects: (available) designs (found representational forms); the designing one does (the work you do when you make meaning, how you appropriate and revoice and transform available designs); and the (re-)designed (how, through the act of designing, the world and the person making meanings are transformed). No two acts of design simply reproduce the world as found. They re-represent the word, adding inflections of identity and voice, sometimes subtly, other times significantly, but always importantly. In its more recent iterations, multiliteracies theory suggests there are seven modes of meaning: written, oral, audio, visual, spatial, tactile, and gestural modes (Kalantzis & Cope, in press). Written meaning is significantly different in its characteristic forms from oral meaning, even though it is closely linked through language. There are also in today’s new media some increasingly important, hybrid forms. Written and visual meanings are closely juxtaposed in today’s communications environment. Meanwhile, oral and audio modes are closely related, not only in everyday speech, but in audio and visual recordings. Written meanings are framed by place and tangible objects (spatial and tactile meanings). Gestural meanings are not only integral to speech: they are also communicated synchronously and asynchronously in video. Most things that can be expressed in one mode can be expressed in another, to the extent even that linguistic meanings in their entirety can be carried in writing, speech, touch (Braille), and gesture (sign languages). In a pedagogy of multiliteracies, the grammar of writing is replaced by a more broadranging “design analysis,” in which capacities to mean the same kinds of thing can be found across all modes. However, each mode also offers characteristic affordances. We can picture a scene visually in a painting or a photograph for someone who is not present. We can also describe the same scene in writing. These are both modes of representation at a distance. However the semantic effects can never be the same. And the mode of interpretation of the represented meaning by the viewer or reader is always and essentially different. In Kress’s explanation, image favors simultaneity (seeing the picture all at once); writing favors temporal and causal sequences (working one’s way consecutively across interlinked clauses) (Kress, 2003). Not only are more of our contemporary texts multimodal, in which modes are inextricably juxtaposed, but multiliteracies theory also suggests that our human meaning capacities are always intrinsically synaesthetic. We naturally and continuously move between one mode and another. The metaphors which drive our meaning systems confirm this contention. Consider, for instance, the pervasiveness in our oral and written language of words for seeing, feeling, and being in space. Traditional schooling artificially attempts to isolate the meaning system of language, privileging in particular conventional alphabetical literacy. Doing this is to neglect the power of mode shifting as a learning strategy, representing a learnable meaning in one mode then another, or in parallel in two or more modes. A considerable amount of work has been done in recent years to analyze the use of multimodal texts in everyday life and classrooms. Kress and colleagues have conducted
4
multiliteracies in education
seminal theoretical and empirical work, “parsing” everyday multimodal and classroom texts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Kress, 1999; Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001). Unsworth has undertaken comprehensive analyses of a range of multimodal classroom texts (Unsworth, 2001; Unsworth, 2009). Many other outstanding analyses have been made of the uses of multimodal texts in the classroom (Stein, 2001; Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003; Hull & Nelson, 2005).
Pedagogy In the original formulations of the New London Group, four major dimensions of pedagogy were identified: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. In applying these ideas to curriculum practices over the past decade, Kalantzis and Cope have reframed these ideas somewhat and translated them into the more immediately recognizable “knowledge processes”: experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying (Kalantzis & Cope, 2010). Whichever terminology is used to categorize learning activity types, the essential idea in the multiliteracies approach is that learning is a process of “weaving” backwards and forwards across and between different pedagogical moves (Luke, Cazden, Lin, & Freebody, 2004): Situated practice/experiencing: Human cognition is situated. It is contextual. Meanings are grounded in real-world patterns of experience, action and subjective interest (Gee, 2004). One key pedagogical weaving is between school learning and the practical out-of-school experiences of learners. Another is between familiar and unfamiliar texts and experiences. These kinds of cross-connections between school and the rest of life Cazden calls “cultural weavings” (Cazden, 2006). Overt instruction/conceptualizing: Specialized, disciplinary knowledges are based on finely tuned distinctions of concept and theory, typical of those developed by expert communities of practice. Conceptualizing is not merely a matter of teacherly or textbook telling based on legacy academic disciplines, but a knowledge process in which the learners become active conceptualizers, making the tacit explicit and generalizing from the particular. In the case of multiliteracies teaching and learning, overt instruction/ conceptualizing involves the development of a metalanguage to describe “Design Elements.” Critical framing/analyzing: Powerful learning also entails a certain kind of critical capacity. “Critical” can mean two things in a pedagogical context—to analyze functions or to be evaluative with respect to relationships of power (Cazden, 2006). In the case of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, this involves analyzing text functions and critically interrogating the interests of participants in the communication process. Transformed practice/applying: This entails the application of knowledge and understandings to the complex diversity of real-world situations. In the case of multiliteracies, this means making texts and putting them to use in communicative action. These dimensions are pedagogical orientations or knowledge processes. They are not a pedagogy in the singular or a sequence to be followed. Rather, they are a map of the range of pedagogical moves from which to choose. They also have their roots in well-known pedagogical traditions, extending these traditions by supplementing them in order to offer students a more balanced range of activity types. Didactic teaching tends to emphasize the overt instruction of conceptual, disciplinary schemas at the expense of experiential and critical activities. Progressivisms tend to focus on grounded learner experiences, sometimes
multiliteracies in education
5
neglecting deep conceptual work. Critical pedagogy adds analysis and application to the mix, but sometimes leaving little time for harder edge conceptual learning processes and for moving students into new and unfamiliar experiential domains. Multiliteracies pedagogy connects with all major pedagogical strategies, suggesting however that teachers supplement their existing practices by expanding the range of their pedagogical repertoires. In contemporary classrooms where extraordinary diversity is typically highly visible, the capacity of a pedagogy of multiliteracies to address learner differences has now been well documented (Healy, 2007; Cummins, 2009). The multiliteracies approach suggests alternative starting points for learning in the varied experiential worlds of learners. It allows for alternative forms of engagement, or divergent learning orientations in the form of a variety of knowledge processes. It allows for different modalities in meaning making, embracing alternative expressive potentials for different learners and promoting synaesthesia as a learning strategy. It also recognizes the active nature of “design” and the learning potentials that arise from expressing identity in the learning process (Kalantzis & Cope, 2008; Mills, 2010). There is now substantial literature documenting multiliteracies pedagogies in practice (Anstey & Bull, 2006; Cole & Pullen, 2009). Kalantzis and Cope have adapted and extended the original multiliteracies pedagogy in their “learning by design” approach and Weblearning design and delivery platform, which a number of researchers have tested and reported upon (Mills, 2006; Neville, 2008; Cloonan, 2010; Cloonan, Kalantzis, & Cope, 2010; Pandian & Balraj, 2010; van Haren, 2010). An exciting body of work has also emerged from South Africa, centered around the research of Denise Newfield and Pippa Stein (Newfield et al., 2001; Stein & Newfield, 2002). SEE ALSO: Code Mixing; Conceptualizing and Researching “New Literacies”; Genre-Based Language Teaching; Identities and Language Teaching in Classrooms; Linguistic Diversity; Multimodality and Literacy; Multimodal Teaching and Learning; Multimodal Text Analysis; Teaching Writing; Using Metalanguage in Teaching
References Anstey, M., & Bull, G. (2006). Teaching and learning multiliteracies: Changing times, changing literacies . Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Cazden, C. B. (2006, January). Connected learning: “Weaving” in classroom lessons. Keynote address at the Pedagogy in Practice 2006 Conference, University of Newcastle, England. Chandler-Olcott, K., & Mahar, D. (2003). Adolescents’ anime-inspired “fanfictions”: An exploration of multiliteracies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(7), 556. Cloonan, A. (2010). Multiliteracies, multimodality and teacher professional learning. Champaign, IL: Common Ground. Cloonan, A., Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2010). Schemas for meaning-making and multimodal texts (pp. 254–75). In T. Locke (Ed.), Beyond the grammar wars. London, England: Routledge. Cole, D. R., & Pullen, D. L. (2009). Multiliteracies in motion: Current theory and practice. London, England: Routledge. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London, England: Routledge, p. 350. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164–95. Cummins, J. (2009). Transformative multiliteracies pedagogy: School-based strategies for closing the achievement gap. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 11(2), 38–56. Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London, England: Taylor & Francis.
6
multiliteracies in education
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London, England: Routledge. Healy, A. (2007). Multiliteracies and diversity in education: New pedagogies for expanding landscapes. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. Hull, G. A., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality. Written Communication, 22(2), 224–61. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 241–67. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2008). New learning: Elements of a science of education . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2010). The teacher as designer: Pedagogy in the new media age. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(3), 200–22. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (in press). Literacies. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kress, G. (1999). Early spelling: From convention to creativity. London, England: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London, England: Routledge. Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London, England: Routledge. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London, England: Continuum. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design . London, England: Routledge. Luke, A., Cazden, C., Lin, A., & Freebody, P. (2004). The Singapore classroom coding scheme (Technical report). Singapore: National Institute of Education, Center for Research in Pedagogy and Practice. Mills, K. A. (2006). “Mr Travelling-at-will Ted Doyle”: Discourses in a multiliteracies classroom. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 29(2), 132–49. Mills, K. A. (2010). The multiliteracies classroom. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. Neville, M. (2008). Teaching multimodal literacy using the learning by design approach to pedagogy . Melbourne, Australia: Common Ground. Newfield, D., Stein, P., Rumboll, F., Meyer, L., Badenhorst, C., Drew, M., . . . McCormick, T. (2001). Exploding the monolith: Multiliteracies in South Africa. In M. Kalantzis & B. Cope (Eds.), Transformations in language and learning: Perspectives on multiliteracies . Melbourne, Australia: Common Ground. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. Pandian, A., & Balraj, S. (2010). Driving the agenda of learning by design in science literacy in Malaysia. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(3), 301–16. Stein, P. (2001). Classrooms as sites of textual, cultural and linguistic reappropriation (pp. 151–69). In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Stein, P., & Newfield, D. (2002). Shifting the gaze in South African classrooms: New pedagogies, new publics, new democracies. International Journal of Learning, 9. Unsworth, L. (2001). Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Unsworth, L. (2009). Multimodal semiotics: Functional analysis in contexts of education. London, England: Continuum. van Haren, R. (2010). Engaging learner diversity through learning by design. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(3), 258–71.
Online Resource Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope. Retrieved June 20, 2011 at www.literacies.com
