My favourite quotes from multiliteracies:

 

The development of a theory in learning in which transformation or redesign is a pivotal microdynamic is one of the key developments in the mulitliteracies theory since the mid 1990s (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).

 

Creativity, innovation, dynamism and divergence are normal semiotic states. This is the prospective view of semiosis, a view that puts imagination and creative reappropriation of the world at the centre of representation and thus learning (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).

 

Theorists have continued to develop a new metalanguage or grammar for describing the confluence of different words, images, sounds, gestures and spatial elements of multimodal textual designs (Mills, 2009).

 

The pedagogy of multiliteracies consists of designs of meaning:

 

Available Designs: found and findable resources of meaning: culture, context and purpose-specific patterns and conventions of meaning making. Designing: the act of meaning: work performed on/with Available Designs in representing the world or other's representations of it, to oneself or others. The Redesigned: The world transformed, in the form of new Available Designs, or the meaning designer who, through the very act of Designing, has transformed themselves (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).

 

Multiliteracies can also consist of four components:

Situated Practice, which draws on the experience of meaning-making in lifeworlds, the public realm and workplaces; Overt Instruction, which students develop an explicit metalanguage of Design; Critical Framing, which interprets the social context and purpose of Designs of meaning; and Transformed Practice, in which students, as meaning-makers become Designers of social futures (New London Group, 1996, p. 65).

 

The mulitliteracies approach attempts to explain what still matters in traditional approaches to reading and writing, and to supplement this with knoledge of what is new and distinctive about the ways in which people make meanings in the contemporary communications environment (Cope & Kalantzis, 2012, p. 1)

A pedagogy of multiliteracies, allows alternative starting points for learning (what the learner perceives to be worht learning, what engages the particularities of their identity. It allows for alternative forms of engagement, such as the varied experiences that need to be brought to bear on the learning, the different conceptual bents of learners, the different analytical perspectives the learners may have on the nature of cause, effect and human interest. It allows for divergent learning orientations... different modalities for meaning making, embracing alternative expressive potentials for different learners... each meaning maker designs the world afresh in a way that is uniquely transformative of found meanings (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 188).

 

Literacy teaching is not only about skills and competence; it is also aimed at creating a kind of person, an active designer of meaning, with a sensibility open to differences, problem solving, change and innovation. The logic of Multiliteracies recognizes that meaning making is an active, transformative process. Pedagogy based on that recognition is more appropriate for today's world of change and diveristy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2012, p. 188).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). "Multiliteracies": New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4,

164-195. doi: 10.1080/15544800903076044

 

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2012). Literacies. Melborne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.

 

Mills, K. (2009). Multiliteracies: Interrogating competing discourses. Language and Education, 23(2), 103-116. Retrieved from

http://newarcproject.pbworks.com/f/Multiliteracies2010_KathyMills.pdf

 

New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1),

60-92.