Book Review: Teaching Multiliteracies across the Curriculum: Changing Contexts Text and Image in Classroom Practice

Abstract

Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts text and image in classroom practice is written as a textbook for literacy educators. Unsworth takes the notion of 'multiliteracies' and applies it to the genres of English, history and science, discussing in some detail how grammatical structures can be used to critically understand print and visual representations of knowledge.A critical grammatical approach is one which has grown from recent shifts in thinking. Pedagogy, in many ways, is still working to accommodate the major theoretical and technological shifts in the late 20th century. The area of literacy is a telling illustration of some of the struggles which have accompanied changes in ideologies and practice. Critical thinking suggests that everything is a text and that all texts are socially constructed as, in turn, are we through the texts we read and write. 'Reading' and 'writing' became configured as 'literacy', or 'literacies', to describe the multifaceted and multimodal ways that texts are read and produced.Conceptualisations of English and literacy have undergone their own political variations. In the 1980s, those from a linguistic tradition sought a more socially critical, systematic approach. These views formed from systemic functional linguistics, or hew' grammar, a grammar which was seen to offer a useful metalanguage for analysis of ideological construction. It is the new grammar position which Unsworth finnly occupies in Multiliteracies across the curriculum. The functional grammar approach gained purchase in curriculum documents and some schools, particularly in primary classrooms. Unsworth claims that it generated a 'fresh and inviting perspective on the nature and role of grammar in teaching' (p. 23), and this linguistic approach has led, for example, to the inclusion of the English Language subject in the Victorian Certificate of Education.However, new language frameworks are rarely accepted without controversy and, in this case, a structured grammatical approach to literacy has had to defend itself against a more broadly personal and social view of language. Unsworth adds another voice to this side of the argument. His textbook is comprehensive in its theoretical framing as well as dense in application of theory to both primary and secondary curriculum, and it is literacy teachers for whom he writes. 'Multiliteracies', now a catchphrase in modern literacy practices, describes the ways that meaning is made from the multiple resources of language and image. Systemic functional grammar offers, according to Unsworth, an effective tool to analyse the different ways that print, visual and electronic texts are constructed. Furthermore his approach to teaching delves into the specific ways that various curriculum subjects deploy different language structures, or genres. H e focuses at some length on the linguistic variations within history, science and English, providing a technical language for analy5is of visual and print texts. Accessible tables are offered comparing genres a...

Multimodal Teaching Proposal in an English as a Foreign Language Subject

“…Simpson and Walsh (2010, p. 26), show that this term is not new: "Evolving from the theorising on the New London Group (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), the term "multiliteracies" was concerned with the many types of communication hended in new and different social and cultural contexts, and for both print and electronic texts". In this sense, Unsworth (2001Unsworth ( , 2008aUnsworth ( , 2008bUnsworth ( , 2010 has spent more than a decade paying attention to how the various modes of communication chosen express their meanings in the teaching-learning process.…”

Technologies in Schools: Stimulating a Dialogue

“…For example, a scientist uses technology differently than a historian. A scientist might use virtual labs to simulate real-life contexts, while an historian uses primary source documents to construct historical arguments (Unsworth, 2002). Technology can afford students the possibility of thinking like a disciplinarian, "becoming multi-literate" across disciplines, and working like disciplinarians, in contexts reflective of these communities of practice.…”

“…Although technology was being used within classrooms, it was still employed as a separate productivity tool, often replicating older forms of information transfer. However, as many have argued, the potential of technology can and should go beyond this (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, in press;Kozma, 1991;Unsworth, 2002). Technology can be more than a tool.…”

Critical Thinking for the Cyberage

“…By paying close attention to visual imagery and multimodal approaches to communication, Kress explores the "semiotic disposition" of children in assessing how they respond to changes within our contemporary mediated environment (Kress, 1997). Likewise, Len Unsworth (2001) sets out to help educators improve student literacy skills through various texts by offering specific curricula designed to help students learn to analyze images, web pages, tables, and charts.…”