Text I The “literacy turn” in education: reexamining what it means to be literate In response to the phenomena of mass migration and the emergence of digital communications media t

Text I

The “literacy turn” in education: reexamining what it means to be literate

In response to the phenomena of mass migration and the emergence of digital communications media that defined the last decade of the 20th century, the New London Group (NLG) called for a broader view of literacy and literacy teaching in its 1996 manifesto, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. The group argued that literacy pedagogy in education must (1) reflect the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of the contemporary globalized world, and (2) account for the new kinds of texts and textual engagement that have emerged in the wake of new information and multimedia technologies. In order to better capture the plurality of discourses, languages, and media, they proposed the term ‘multiliteracies’.

Within the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies, language and other modes of communication are viewed as dynamic resources for meaning making that undergo constant changes in the dynamics of language use as learners attempt to achieve their own purposes. Within this broader view of literacy and literacy teaching, learners are no longer “users as decoders of language” but rather “designers of meaning.” Meaning is not viewed as something that resides in texts; rather, deriving meaning is considered an active and dynamic process in which learners combine and creatively apply both linguistic and other semiotic resources (e.g., visual, gesture, sound, etc.) with an awareness of “the sets of conventions connected with semiotic activity [...] in a given social space” (NLG, 1996, p. 74).

Grounded within the view that learning develops in social, cultural, and material contexts as a result of collaborative interactions, NLG argued that instantiating literacy-based teaching in classrooms calls on the complex integration and interaction of four pedagogical components that are neither hierarchical nor linear and can at times overlap: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. [...]

Although the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies was conceived as a “statement of general principle” (1996, p. 89) for schools, the group’s call for educators to recognize the diversity and social situatedness of literacy has had a lasting impact on foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. The reception of the group’s work along with that of other scholars from critical pedagogy appeared at a time when the field was becoming less solidly anchored in theories of L2 acquisition and more interested in the social practice of FL education itself. In the section that follows, we describe the current state of FL literacy studies as it has developed in recent years, before finally turning to some very recent emerging trends that we are likely to see develop going forward.

(Adapted from: https://www.colorado.edu/center/altec/sites/default/files/ attachedfiles/moving_toward_multiliteracies_in_foreign_language_teaching.pdf)

The manifesto mentioned in Text I was announced