Text 1 Multiliteracies Literacy involves more than a set of conventions to be learned, either through print or technological formats. Rather, literacy enables people to negotiate m

Text 1

Multiliteracies

Literacy involves more than a set of conventions to be learned, either through print or technological formats. Rather, literacy enables people to negotiate meaning (Leland & Kasten, 2002). With these negotiations often occurring in technological settings and engaging students’ values and identities (Jewitt, 2008), the New London Group (1996) has proposed the concept of multiliteracies, which views literacy as continual, supplemental, and enhancing or modifying established literacy teaching and learning rather than replacing traditional practices (Rowsell, Kosnik, & Beck, 2008). [The concept of] multiliteracies recognizes both the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the new globalized society and the new variety of text forms from multiple communicative technologies. There is also the need for new skills to operate successfully in the changing literate and increasingly diversified social environment. The New London Group (1996) argues that to be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities, interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes that students bring to learning (p. 18). They must also respond to the different mediums and modes in which students operate. Teachers need new knowledge that reflects these varying and multiple discourses. This huge shift from traditional print-based literacy to 21st century multiliteracies reflects the impact of communication technologies and multimedia on the evolving nature of texts, as well as the skills and dispositions associated with the consumption, production, evaluation, and distribution of those texts (Borsheim, Meritt, & Reed, 2008, p. 87). With literacy continually growing and expanding, there remains a need to support pre-service and practicing teachers’ conceptions and understanding of multiliteracies.

(http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ Multiliteracies-in-the-Classroom-Boche.pdf)

The digital age has been disrupting the normative structures of education in many ways. According to Bohn (2013, p. 97), one of the challenges language educators now face is