The Cope, B. & Kalantzis, N., 2009, “Multiliteracies”: New Literacies, New Learning, was an excellent follow-up to The New London Group’s, 1996, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing of Social Futures. I highly recommend it as a follow-up read if the 1996 article was of interest. The follow-up, for me, helped make better meaning of the initial work. This, in part, is because the world had greatly evolved from 1996 to 2009 and has again since. The 2009 article was better able to anticipate the realities of today.
I found the concept of the “pedagogy of multiliteracies” a powerful one, however, as I pondered issues called out by Cope & Kalantzis themselves, I wonder if two dimensions need to be incorporated into the conceptual model: time & money (or using a more academic term – financial literacy). As we discuss literacy, the ability to communicate and make meaning, two ways that we can directly infer what a person’s values and priorities are is through observing how they spend their time and their money.
Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, described a movement to self-governing communities. This brought to mind images of the past of community barn-raising and community quilting bees. The important concept here is that members of these societies understood that they were interconnected and if a community member wanted the help of their neighbor, they themselves also had to contribute to the community. Over the course of history, money and other financial transactions have replaced bartering and similar systems. Financial transactions have become the most efficient way to communicate what is valued and how much it is valued. Yet, while we are interconnected more than ever before, we are more removed from the impact that our financial transaction has on others than ever before.
How we spend our time is another indicator of what we value and prioritize. In the Wesch, M., (2007) digital ethnography video, a student says she only reads 49% of the readings assigned to her and only 26% of them are relevant to her life. This student’s statements seem to suggest that if the readings were more relevant, she would invest more time reading them. From the video, would the neighbor who paid for university but never attends classes do so if the lectures were more relevant and meaningful?
While Cope & Kalantzis touched on shrinking education budgets caused by neoliberalism and the alarming concentration of ownership of media & communication channels, they fell short of incorporating dimensions into their vision of “pedagogy of multiliteracies” that can surface the mechanisms that are feeding neoliberalism and concentration of wealth and power. Individually and collectively, our society needs to better understand how we are communicating our values: when we buy cheap oversees products versus more expensive local products, when we choose “free” services from the internet versus subscription services (are we valuing sponsored content or valuing quality paid content?), when we choose to surf the web instead of challenging the professor to be more engaging? A more complete “pedagogy of multiliteracies” should include financial literacy and an element related to value and cost of time.
References:
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, N. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New Literacies, New Learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4:3, 164-195, DOI:10.1080/15544800903076044
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. Retrieved, August 15, 2009, from http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/multiliteracies_her_vol_66_1996.pdf
Wesch, M. (2007), A Vision of Students. Retrieved from http://blogs.britannica.com/2008/10/a-vision-of-students-today-what-teachers-must-do.
EdPawliw
August 1, 2018 — 8:49 pm
Hi Alicia
Your mention of time and money as proposed additional dimensions of multiliteracies cover areas of new digital media, its application, affordance, and lead time to implementation that I believe all educators struggle with. For what it is worth, here are my thoughts on the issue of the time/financial dimensions and my logic (or opinion as one may call it). I go through a fair number of hours evaluating applications that are used in program delivery and support and look at these from a couple of different angles. Our access to digital tools was meant to allow us to enhance the educational experience for our students. While this may be true, the lead time to gain competence and implement them seem to run counter to the preconception. For instance, this past year our computers were upgraded to Windows 10 part way through the school year (mandated for some sort of school district security initiative). The circuit board design software we used was not supported in this build and we had to scramble to find a new application. This leads straight into the financial dimension you mention. Once upon a time we had a budget to purchase software for supporting and enriching the educational experience. That ship sailed many years ago in my teaching assignment. I imagine this scenario is similar across many teaching contexts these days. There is no budget for evergreening digital resources. Now, what does this tell us about administrations’ values and priorities as far as building the digital multiliteracies of our learners if we don’t have support in this vein?
In my school, I have autonomy to deliver curriculum as I see fit, probably a pretty good gig compared to others. Teaching applied technology courses (Robotics and Construction), digital applications are pretty important if the learners are to get an educational experience that is relevant in the real world. So, how does one offer such an experience without a budget for these resources? Here is where many thoughts on the subject diverge. In my logic, we enter into a barter system of sorts. We use free software in order to provide the learner with a valued experience since we have no budget for a purchased version. What are the components of this deal? This benefits the software supplier as they have possible future clients, the student benefits from learning an industry standard application that looks good on a resume, and the school benefits as there is no cash outlay for a professional software package. Previously we had to pay for a specified number of seats of AutoDesk applications. Now we get to use any of this company’s products free on perpetual three year licenses. Upgrades every year are free too. This is where we found our solution to our circuit design software issue. As it turns out, the application was a superior product compared to our old software. The barter system in this case is alive and well and works for all parties. I have former students telling how they use these applications in their post-secondary schooling and work worlds. If one squints the right way, here we have a globally scaled community that benefits all in a full-circle system just like our perceptions of the old small isolated communities with barn raisings and such.
On another point you bring up, for students that do not see relevance in course content, this is probably because they haven’t been enlightened as to why the information is important in their personal context. An example. I showed a grade 12 student how Geometry (constructions) and Trigonometry (calculations) are used to solve their construction design problem. Their response was that this was the first time they were made aware of how this information was useful in the real world, and had they known this they would have paid closer attention in Math class. Here we are simply turning information into knowledge through relevance and personal context. Perhaps if the student that was in Wesch’s ethnography video that you cite was shown personal relevance then maybe she would have engaged more with course content. Motivation has different levels and types in our diverse population so this cannot be assumed as static across all learners by the teacher. It is helping learners create personal connections that is the underlying strategy to create buy-in. Disseminating content using multimodal means allows us to present many different possibilities for connection through which we draw the student in. Of course there will always be those that it just is not for them. But even for these students, we still keep trying to find them something that they walk away with so they don’t see the time as a waste, whether it is perseverance, content, or a fun experience.
The advent of open source digital resources are shifting the power balance in education and in many cases a democratizing influence as well. Big corporations such as the afore mentioned AutoDesk provide open access for their product for educational purposes in the hopes of having at least a few students carry on in the field and then purchase the application when they get into their career path. There is a reason that a company such as this has so many of their applications as industry standard. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It could be chalked up to good marketing and being a good community and corporate neighbor. You can have free access to a quality sponsored product for educational purposes that doesn’t contravene ethical standards.
Davis (1989) talks of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness while Bates (2016) presents the SECTIONS model for selecting and using media in education. These two strategies provide us with a means for analyzing resources for fit from a number of different criteria, not just pedagogical considerations. Especially in Bates’ SECTIONS model, the dimensions of cost and time, which is looked at in a number of different contexts, are covered in his digital technology selection tool. At the end of all this we educators, as a professional operating in loco parentis, must make the value judgement on each particular possible implementation as to whether it is of value and supports the educational process and one that we can live within operational and functional circumstances that are in most cases set by others.
References:
Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. British Columbia: SFU Document Solutions.
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319. doi:10.2307/249008