Assessing Multiliteracies: Mismatches and Opportunities

Abstract

While current literacy theories acknowledge the sociocultural and sociopolitical dimensions of literacy learning and teaching, that is, multiliteracies, there exists a gap between theoretical approaches underpinning literacy teaching and assessment. In this dialogue, we re-enact this divergence by collectively defining multiliteracies and deconstructing assessment practices, while speculating on opportunities for reconstruction. Constructing this dialogue across multiple areas of expertise exemplifies multiliteracies because we use critical speaking, listening, writing, reading, and representing, to make sense of our new understandings, and showcase our knowledge construction. Our goal is to explore ways to translate the theories of multiliteracies into assessment practices that make visible children's cognitive-psychological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical processes with all kinds of texts.

From Absence to Affordances: Integrating Old and New Literacies in School‐Based Instruction for English Learners

“…Assessment criteria for print‐based academic literacy are not appropriate for evaluating digital and multimodal texts and products, and vice versa (Wyatt‐Smith & Kimber, ). As Botelho, Kerekes, Jang, and Stagg Peterson () posited, the challenge “is to identify language that can describe concepts, goals for performance, criteria for assessment in multimodal learning, and a metalanguage for defining multimodal meaning‐making (Wyatt‐Smith & Kimber, )” (p. 12). Most researchers can document and analyze the processes and products of learners’ meaning making but do not have specific assessment components, either for new or old literacies learning.…”

Struggling to Thrive: The Impact of Chinese Language Assessments on Social Mobility of Hong Kong Ethnic Minority Youth

“…Types of learning difficulties their students are likely to face at particular age groups and language development stages, as well as possible solutions to these issues, should be addressed while adapting a format similar to CEFR that details the proficiency levels, learning goals and requirements. The current study also points to the need for further research in developing multicultural curricula and pedagogies (Botelho et al 2014) in professional communication and life planning for EM students, which should contribute to the design of institutional or community programs for enhancing one's sense of belonging and self-worth while gaining genuine cultural membership to the multicultural Hong Kong society.…”

“…Such primary Discourses are possibly in competition with secondary Discourses, i.e., the set of cultural practices associated with school, church, or businesses, which are often the dominant Discourses that social status and privilege (Gee 1989(Gee , 1996. Botelho et al (2014) claim that critical engagement with multiliteracies pedagogies for fostering engagement in literate inquiry, meaning making, and communication among culturally and linguistically diverse students brings people closer, and the elicited social interactions create new sociopolitical relationships and possibilities that redefine and recreate school culture.…”

A computer-assisted multiliteracies programme as an alternative approach to EFL instruction

“…Future studies, however, will need to implement the CaMP or similar pedagogical efforts and more carefully examine their long-term effects on EFL students' acquisition of multiliteracies. Having considered the challenging nature of assessing students' multiliteracies (Botelho et al, 2014;Jacobs, 2013), developing effective assessment tools for both students' learning processes and outcomes in similar multiliteracies programs will be required to measure the effectiveness of the program further.…”