Cultural Studies of Technology for Education |
The idea of a multiliterate approach to literacy pedagogy was proposed, researched, and published 20 years ago by the New London Group. The authors argue that given the changing climate of the late 90’s (multiplicity of language and diversity of culture) a broader view of literacy was needed. The development of Multiliteracies pedagogy revisits traditional paradigms and uses Lyotard’s critique of it as a tool, which pushes a technocratic agenda, and focuses on performativity to suit societal needs, developing students into what Dewey termed “instrumental” to societal benefits. The New London Group takes this notion and develops a new paradigm arguing that “the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors’ twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment” (NLG 1996). The focus has moved from students being “instrumental” to societal goals to being designers of their own social futures, defining their own level of performativity, and feeling fulfillment from employment on their own terms. This shift is essential. 20 years later, although multiliteracies pedagogy has found a platform to which its voice can be heard, more work needs to be done in implementing these ideas in schools and within teacher’s pedagogies. Where this study lacks contemporary research and analysis, Buckingham and Mills provide in full force; allowing us to find the foundational theories of multiliteracies pedagogy but build upon it with 20 years of additional research and the continuous changing climate of Digital Literacies. "Designing restores human agency and cultural dynamism to the process of meaning making" The framework of multiliteracies is built on design pedagogy. What this entails is that “literacy educators and students must see themselves as active participants in social change, as learners and students who can be active designers- makers – of social futures” (NLG 1996). Nearly 10 years later, Buckingham’s “Digital media literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet” takes up the issue of the term “literacy” equating a standardized set of skills and knowledge, and arguing that digital media literacy—one of many facets of multiliteracies—“require new forms of cultural and communicative competence” (Buckingham 2007). Buckingham utilizes the “what” of Multiliteracies explored in NLG to advocate, “Literacy studies cannot be confined simply to the acquisition of skills…it must also entail a form of ‘critical framing’ that enables the learner to take a theoretical distance from what they have learned, to account for its social and cultural location, and to critique and extend it” (Buckingham 2007). Students must become “active” learners in order to design their own social future. In 2010, Mills’ “A Review of the ‘Digital Turn’ in the New Literacy Studies” recognizes that opportunities for a celebration and visibility of diverse cultures can exist in this paradigm, yet the language of multiliteracies must be learned in order to participate. Mills found that “media design projects lead to a diversification and enrichment of student’s learning ecologies…this research is yielding successful models for supporting students as globally recognized designers, authors, and critics of the digital media in official and unofficial spaces of learning” (Mills 2010). We see a repetition in terminology bridging all three texts ranging a 20-year span because the call to challenge traditional paradigms and using students as instruments to the larger “system” still remains. Mills provides practical research and examples of students becoming active participants inside and outside of schools. Becoming “active” means that a student has the tools and knowledge necessary to design their own pathways and definitions of “success” whether meeting larger society’s needs/ expectations, or not. "The key here is juxtaposition, integration, and living with tension" The “how” of Multiliteracies formulated by the NLG argues that “pedagogy is a complex integration of four factors: Situated Practice; Overt Instruction; Critical Framing; and Transformed Practice” (NLG 1996). Buckingham, as we saw earlier, explored how Critical Framing specifically can fit ‘awkwardly’ with the experiential component to media literacies, which incorporate aspects of ‘immersion’ and pleasure. As NLG suggests, these four aspects of pedagogy do not need to be in play at every moment or on a continuum; these four factors exist simultaneously and are situational based on the student. Buckingham wants the notion of literacy to not be tied to a set of rules and regulations that influence the way students utilize digital media—drawing into a notion of “digital civilization and its discontents” wherein students are continuously placed in glass boxes and told how to produce and reproduce digital media for uses other than their own interests and passions. The critical aspect, Buckingham discusses, comes into play with the exploration of online safety and the ability to access or locate information (as with print) and be able to question “the ways in which it represents the world, and understanding how technological developments and possibilities are related to broader social and economic forces” (Buckingham 2007). Buckingham also creates his own four conceptual aspects, which are essential components to media literacy: Representation, Language, Production, and Audience (Buckingham 2007). Production fits perfectly into the NLG’s ‘design as pedagogy’ framework, as well as the ‘critical framing’ component fits into questions of ‘representation’ online. Where Mills and Buckingham dive deeper into New Media Literacy studies is their exploration of language, specifically the meta-language necessary in order for students to not only navigate diverse digital media, but in order for them to design and re-design elements of it. Mills’s work also builds upon the “how” of multiliteracies as she acknowledges the shifts away from “Traditional authority to an epistemology of shared knowledge and expertise” (Mills 2010). Allowing students to take on roles as designers allows them to develop a meta-language in a diverse set of online discourses, and as Mills focuses on, the opportunity for students to engage with their own cultural identities and diverse communities. Drawing from Kress’s study of ‘modes’: NLG, Buckingham, and Mills discuss the multimodality, intertextuality, and hybridity of New Literacy Studies which are already being created outside of school, where schools must play “catch-up” to ensure that students have opportunities to “make and re-make media rather than being make by them” (Mills 2010). Technological determinism is an arguable ‘discontent’ of digital media, and as such students must be ‘active’ participants in the digital ‘game,’ to echo Lyotard, in order to avoid becoming passive ‘instruments.’ Mills also extends NLG and Buckingham’s work to bring attention to the dominant western context of New Literacy Studies and how access to marginalized communities and countries creates a “digital divide" that must be explored and researched further. She does include examples of how multimodality and digital media helped ESL students and it provided opportunities to draw on “their interests, cultural experiences, first language, and multiple modes can promote their academic success” (Mills 2010). Mills concludes her work with notes on further research into New Literacy Studies being utilized to produce a “productive international dialogue.” "Curriculum can no longer be confined to a narrow conception of literacy that is defined solely in terms of the medium of print" Over a 20-year span, The New London Group, Buckingham, Mills, and countless others have created a theoretical framework for New Literacy Studies and Multiliteracies to break away from the traditional paradigm and develop a new one that reflects the “Digital age” of the 21st century. This paradigm, with it’s transformational shift from students as instrumental to societal gains through required skills and knowledge to designers/re-designers of their social futures reshapes the very “postmodern” system Lyotard discussed. This essential paradigm provides valuable pedagogy theory to support some of the compelling resources explored in Buckingham and Mills’s work. For example, multimodal designs motivate ESL students to find their voice and advocate for themselves. Geo-locational apps, like the one Victoria and I demonstrated in class, allow students to become designers with multimodal interfaces and interact with their surrounding communities from a critical lens; or re-design the app to meet their creative needs. That is the value in a multiliteracies pedagogy: it works to transform current traditional educational forms, policies, and practices to move beyond the solely “overt instruction”, the technocratic paradigm that sees students as empty vessels in need of outputting and inputting information to create skills and knowledge to suit the needs of a dictating body. This new paradigm seeks to dismantle these limiting traditional paradigms and to activate students as players to a game in which they have the ability to design and re-design.
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