Cope, Bill. and Kalantzis, Mary. Eds. Multiliteracies: Literacy and the Design of Social
Futures. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2000.
Multiliteracies is a must-have resource for educators who wish to move beyond the so-called “Three Rs” of education and tackle the challenges of the 21st century head on. The book is another in the series Literacies that was “developed to reflect the burgeoning research and scholarship in the field of literacy studies and its increasingly interdisciplinary nature.” The members of The New London Group contributed to this volume representing a diverse group of scholars devoted to the social, historical, economic, political, linguistic and semiotic views of how literacy is changing in the digital age. The text is divided into five parts, each tackling a different aspect of the term multiliteracies, the concept that literacy has shifted beyond reading and writing to include the assimilation of information and use of technologies in the making of meaning and dissemination of knowledge.
In Part I, editors Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis provide the “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginnings of an Idea,” detailing the intended purpose of the authors of the text to develop a pedagogy of multiliteracies, “one in which language and other modes of meaning are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve their various cultural purposes” (5). The concept of multiliteracies takes into account the influence of mass media and electronic media on the way we produce and consume knowledge: “Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal—in which written-linguistic modes of meaning are part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns of meaning” (5). The chapters in the text can stand alone; however, combined they provide a cohesive collaboration of The New London Group and their aims at creating a pedagogy of multiliteracies that allow educators to be facilitators and “designers of social futures.”
The second chapter of the text, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,” is the seminal publication of the The New London Group, originally printed in The Harvard Educational Review in 1996. This piece serves as a manifesto and call to action for educators to rise to the demands of the multiple modes available today. They argue that literacy pedagogy should include the “understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment” (9). In this chapter, The New London group explains the concepts of what they call “fast capitalism” in our “post-Ford” area. No longer will workers of the future be required to perform routine tasks in an assembly line, but rather they will be called upon to filter, assimilate and navigate through virtual worlds of information in the most effective ways possible. Essentially, we are preparing students for a much different workplace than the traditional pedagogies of the past account for. They write, “Students need also to develop the capacity to speak up, to negotiate, and to be able to engage critically with the conditions of their working lives” (13).
Part of the new pedagogy of multiliteracies is the idea that we are designers, and that critical analysis and interpretation of the multiple modes of meaning can lead students to the “design of social futures” in their working lives, public lives, and personal lives. There are three available modes of design in this theory, “Available designs, designing, and the redesigned” (23). Students must know what resources are available to them, know how to use those resources in the semiotic process, and understand how resources are “produced and transformed through Designing” (23). The theory of multiliteracies includes the following approaches to education: “situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice” (35). The International Multiliteracies Project seeks to provide an innovative pedagogy for the 21st century: “In an economy of productive diversity, in civic spaces that value pluralism, and in the flourishing of interrelated, multilayered , complementary yet increasingly divergent lifeworlds, workers, citizens, and community members are ideally creative and responsible makers of meaning. We are, indeed, designers of our social futures” (36).
Part II of the text is titled “Changing Times: The ‘Why’ of Multiliteracies. In “New People in New Worlds: Networks, the New Capitalism and Schools,” James Paul Gee addresses the “new capitalism” and types of workers that this “new world” will demand. The workers within the “new capitalist” system will not be required to distribute new products so much as they will be required to distribute intelligence. The chapter includes a case study of two teenage girls, examining how they use language to make connections in their social and personal lives. Gee illustrates how one girl will be more prepared than the other girl based on her associations and worldviews. He closes with a Bill of Rights for students that reflects the theory of multiliteracies included in The New London Group’s original document.
In “Cyber-Schooling and Technological Change: Multiliteracies for New Times,” Carmen Luke applies the concepts of critical literacy to “computer-mediated communication and hypertextuality” explaining how principles of intetextuality are applicable to the new modes of digital electronic texts. He writes that in “electronic reading and writing, a sense of intertextual connectivity, relational knowledge, and thinking laterally across associations are fundamental to Internet navigation and information sourcing” (73). He traces the historical changes in literacy based on emergent technologies, stating that “technologies emerge in specific historical contexts, and become part of the diverse social fabric of everyday life where they shape and are shaped by the social practices through which uses are mediated” (77). Essentially, learners must adapt to technologies and place them in the proper social context in order to achieve literacy in their own times. Luke further extrapolates on how the workplace and classrooms will change based on the available technologies, and how pedagogies must adapt accordingly. Being that this chapter was written more than 10 years ago, already some of his predictions have come to pass. He concludes with the idea that students should have access to new technologies, regardless of their location or economic standing. In order for students to be successful in the workplace of the immediate future, they must be given the opportunity to work with the emergent technologies of our times.
In chapter 4, “Multiliteracies and Multilingualism,” Joseph Lo Bianco represents The New London Group’s commitment to address the educational demands that globalization places on our society. Because the world is increasingly connected by digital media and the economic ties of globalization, the workers of the future will need to know how to collaborate across national, cultural, social, and linguistic barriers. Although English has become the lingua mundi of the world, there is still a need to go beyond the standardization of the language and understand what it means to communicate through multiple varieties of World Englishes. Likewise, it is important to incorporate multilingual strategies into our overall pedagogies. It occurred to me while reading that student videos could incorporate multilingual aspects to the composition course by providing subtitles to text and by opening the class discussion to shared as well as differing cultural values and traditions. Chapters 5 and 6 continue with the theme of diversity and multilinguistic approaches to pedagogy in “History, Cultural Diversity and English Language Teaching” by Martin Nakata and “Changing the Role of Schools” by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope.
In part III entitled, “Designs of Meaning: The ‘What’ of Multiliteracies,” Gunther Kress takes on theories of “Design and Transformation: New Theories of Meaning.” He introduces the concept of “synesthesia” in semiotics in which there is “the transduction of meaning from one semiotic mode to another semiotic mode.” The theory of synaesthesia is a “theory of semiosis which incorporates the facts of multimodality” and “is seen as an entirely usual and productive process, essential equally for the understanding of semiosis in a multimodal semiotic landscape as for the possibilities of real innovation” (159).
Norman Fairclough further examines the changing function of language and the concept of designing in “Multiliteracies and Language: Orders of Discourse and Intertextuality.” And Gunther Kress continues his theory of multiliteracies in the chapter entitled, “Multimodality” in which he outlines the “revolution” that “has taken place in the area of communication which forces us to rethink the social and the semiotic landscape of ‘Western’ ‘developed societies” (182). In “Designs for Social Futures,” Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis further expand the concepts of multiliteracies as a function of responsible citizens by explaining the various modes of meaning and methods of design available through multimedia. Here they provide “a case for multimedia” and provide useful and elaborate definition and explanation of multimedia and its potential impacts on education and literacy (224).
Part V is devoted to the practice of multiliteracy pedagogies in the classroom. The introduction, “A Multiliteracies Pedagogy: A Pedagogical Supplement,” by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, provides further explanation of The New London Group’s pedagogical approach to multiliteracies. The chapters that follow offer narratives, case studies, and analysis of various approaches to multiliteracies in members of The New London Group’s classrooms.
Multiliteracies is an essential text in my research and it supports my pedagogical practices in the composition classroom. The New London Group has provided a historical and theoretical foundation to the changes that should be taking place in the world’s educational system. Because the world is changing, so must education change in order to keep up with the social, political, and workforce demands of educated citizens. This book provides a solid theoretical basis for the pedagogy of multimedia in the composition classroom.
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