For the last week, I have been reading the articles that I found on multiliteracies. I chose to read those that are teacher’s sharing of their experience in teaching multiliteracies in the classroom. As I was reading the articles, I questioned myself: the “multiliteracies” lessons that other teachers had done, sounded familiar and seemed to be what we had been doing on a daily basis without labelling it as “multiliteracies” lessons. For example, when we read stories to primary classes, we would direct students’ attention to the illustrations of the book (visual). We would also use multimodal format in teaching literacies. That led me to ask another question: Is “multiliteracies” a new pedagogy in literacy teaching, or only a “new term” for a basic but old pedagogy?
During my research, I also noticed that most of the work were done in between years 2010 to 2012. This raised my other concern: are there any recently published work on multiliteracies?
I searched online again but did not have any luck in finding recent academic work on the topic. Yet, I came across the name Kathy Hibbert a few times. Dr. Hibbert is a professor in the faculty of education at the University of Western Ontario. Multiliteracies is one of her research interests. I found and followed her on Twitter, moreover, I had visited her blog (The Salty Chip Blog, http://thesaltychip.edublogs.org) as well as the Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative website (http://www.saltychip.com) that she had initiated to provide a platform for teachers to share ideas and learn collaboratively. On her blog, there are links to other website regarding “multiliteracies,” but the “Centre for Multiliteracies” and the “Multiliteracies Project” are no longer existed. There is a link to the “Emergent Multiliteracies in Theory and Practice” website which still exists, still, the works posted on the website were from year 2012 or prior. I had also checked on the Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative website. Unfortunately, after I had registered and logged in, I found the lately post was done in 2012.
The research process up to this point was quite disappointing, but at the same time, raised the alarm if this is a current educational matter that I should focus on for my inquiry project. The BCTF (BC Teachers’ Federation) report on “multiliteracies” was one of my research result. I read it last and I agreed totally to the union’s view on it. The report includes a summary of a “Multiliteracies collaborative research project” done in partnership of the BCTF, UBC, and the Vancouver School Board. The report concludes, and I quoted from the report, that “a considerable number of teachers were engaged in multiliteracies pedagogy that they had initiated as autonomous professionals in response to student’s needs, local community composition, and with an awareness of technological, communication and media changes in society at large.” (p. 17-18) Multiliteracies is already existed in our practices because we, teachers, would modify our teaching according to the student’s needs and change in the world, not because we all have read and studied the “Multiliteracies Pedagogy.”
In conclusion, I am going to put a period on my research in multiliteracies. I am still interested in using multimodal format in teaching literacies, and perhaps, that would be my focus in my next inquiry.
References:
British Columbia Teachers’ Frederation. “Understanding the concept and evolution of the Multiliteracies literature since 1996, with a consideration of its relevance to a Canadian teacher union engaged in a Multiliteracies collaborative research project.” Web. 26 Sept. 2015.
http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/21CL/MultiliteraciesNaylor.pdf
Barton, G., & Unsworth, L. (2014). Music, multiliteracies and multimodality: Exploring the book and movie versions of Shaun Tan’s ‘The lost thing’. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(1). Web. 26 Sept. 2015
Biswas, Shampa. “How to Teach Multiliteracies?” The Canadian Journal for Teacher Research, 3 July 2014. Web. 26 Sept. 2015.
http://www.teacherresearch.ca/blog/article/2014/07/03/245-how-to-teach-multiliteracies
Dallacqua, K., Kersten, S., & Rhoades, M. (2015). Using Shaun Tan’s work to foster multiliteracies in 21st-Century classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 69(2), 207-217. doi:10.1002. Web. 26 Sept. 2015
Emergent Multiliteracies in Theory and Practice.
http://multiliteracies4kidz.blog.yorku.ca
Hibbert, Kathy. Website: http://www.kathyhibbert.com
Main, Kristin L. (2011) “Mapping Multiliteracies onto the Pedagogy of K-12 Teachers.” University of Toronto. Web. 26 Sept. 2015
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/27590/1/Kristin_Main_PhD_thesis_2011.pdf
Natalie Cooper , Lori Lockyer & Ian Brown (2013) Developing multiliteracies in a technology-mediated environment, Educational Media International, 50:2, 93-107, DOI: 10.1080/09523987.2013.795350
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2013.795350
The Salty Chip Blog. Website: http://thesaltychip.edublogs.org
The Salty Chip: A Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative.
Website: http://www.saltychip.com
A good critical post that explores your experiences, findings, and evaluates your potential resources with a well informed perspective. You’ve found some helpful articles and identified some key gaps in the research, but also realized and shared that this work is still happening around BC with practitioners in the classroom. I wonder if others are sharing their experiences on blogs and social media? Some twitter searching might be beneficial in the future. Great works cited list.
Thanks for your helpful comments. I have searched Twitter using “@”, didn’t know until after I did the post that I am supposed to use “#”. I found a number of tweets on multimodal literacy, but not a lot.