The Things You Do to Know: An Introduction to the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies

Abstract

After a brief history of the context and evolution of the idea of Multiliteracies, this chapter focuses on its pedagogy. Originally framed as Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and Transformed Practice, these four orientations were subsequently translated in the Learning by Design project into the 'Knowledge Processes' of Experiencing, Conceptualizing, Analyzing and Applying. The chapter explores the roots of these orientations in what it characterizes as 'didactic' and 'authentic' pedagogies. Learning by Design is by comparison 'reflexive', combining elements of each of these traditions into a new synthesis. The chapter goes on to spell out the pedagogical specifics of each of the Knowledge Processes, then their epistemological basis as distinctive kinds of ' knowledge-action'. We conclude by contrasting the cognitive emphases of both didactic and authentic pedagogy with the epistemological theory of learning that underpins Learning by Design. Its focus is on action rather than cognition-not what we know, but the things we do to know. Towards a pedagogy of Multiliteracies The short history of a word 'Literacy' is a term that presents itself as emphatic and singular. The emphatic part accompanies the modern insistence that everyone has at least 'basic' levels of competency in reading and writing. 'Literacy' in this sense means some quite definite things to be acquired: to read the ordinary texts of modern society-newspapers, information books, novels; to be able to write using correct spelling and grammar; and to appreciate high-cultural values through exposure to a taste of the literary canon. The singular part arises when literacy is presented as a single, official or standard form of language, one right way to write, and an idealized canon of authors conventionally considered 'great'. By the mid-1990s, the emphatic and singular connotations of the term 'literacy' were beginning to work not-so-well. The mass media and then the internet spawned whole new genres of text which meant that narrowly conventional understandings of literacy were fast becoming anachronistic.

Learners’ identifies at stake: Digital identity texts in the ELF classroom

“…The notion of literacy underlying these texts goes beyond traditional linear text-based 38 reading and writing skills to refer to technologically and non-technologically mediated literacies that are part of students' everyday writing practices in a variety of languages and contexts in and outside school (see Cope & Kalantzis 2015).…”

Expanding Argument Instruction: Incorporating Multimodality and Digital Tools

“…The need for this agency has only increased since the NLG originally conceived multiliteracies (NLG, 1996;Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Pedagogy must in turn be reflexive, constantly evolving to acknowledge student experience and prepare students to recognize, analyze, and apply burgeoning modes and tools to express meaning (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2015. This reflexive pedagogy appears to align well with multiliteracies but demands further implementation and research (Alvermann, 2017).…”

An Empirical Study on the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies of Business English Course

“…Overt Instruction is the direct teaching of "metalanguages" in order to help learners understand the components of expressive forms or grammars. Transformed Practice is where learners engage in situated practices based in new understandings of literacy practices [3].…”