Literacies across the curriculum

David R Cole

What is the traditional notion of literacy?• Reading• Writing• Speaking & Listening• Spelling• Phonics• Grammar

• This represents a ‘skills based’ approach to literacy

The English languageThe English language is a hybrid language…it is made up of Celtic – Latin – Saxon – French – and other elements.

English is phonetically irregular

English has many dialects (e.g. Australian-English)

English is a global lingua franca

What does a skills based approach mean for your subject area?

maths• How do you remember key

mathematical terms?• What text do you have to read to

understand the maths problem?• How do you explain your maths

answer in words?• What is the correct pronunciation

of maths terms?

history• What is the most important

historical terminology?• How do we write good essays in

history?• What are the reading

requirements for history?• How do you construct good oral

language sessions in history?

What are the problems with the ‘skills based’ approach?• Everything is in English: i.e. it promotes monolingualism• Language issues become paramount: e.g. understanding terminology

or representing ideas in language…• The curriculum becomes comparable to a language test• Textual analysis is consequently the most important aspect of

schooling• Learners with high English language support in their homes are

unfairly advantaged• Learners who struggle with English skills are disadvantaged…

What are the alternatives to a ‘skills based’ approach to literacy?

1) Multi l i terac ies2) New l i terac ies

3) Multi ple L i terac ies

• These approaches recognise a diversity of means to express and communicate knowledge; including through different languages and the electronic mediation of language through ICT. • Multiliteracies, new literacies and multiple literacies support the continued ‘skills

based’ development in literacy skills…

1) MultiliteraciesOriginally coined by the ‘New London Group’ in 1996.

Multiliteracies was a response to changing work conditions and the needs of education to catch up with new literacy skills that were being produced by developments in ICT

Multiliteracies used the notion of multimodality as being fundamental to the development of literacy skills.

The pedagogy of multiliteracies

• Situated practice: draws on progressive pedagogies such as whole language and process writing and engages and immerses students in literate practices and topics that form part of their community context• Overt instruction: explicit and focused learning episodes which draw

upon teacher-centred transmission pedagogies such as traditional grammar and direct instruction• Critical framing: pedagogy that draws upon the paradigm of critical

literacy• Transformed practice: pedagogy that focuses upon the transfer of

strategies from one context to another.Cope & Kalantzis (2000)

4 resource model of literacy

• This is useful in the preparation and delivery of multiliteracies units of work…

1. Code breaker: what do the pupils have to do in order to ‘break the code’ of the text?

2. Meaning maker: what are the meanings that the pupils will get from the text and how will they make meaning?

3. Text user: what are the real life applications of the text and how well do the pupils understand this use?

4. Text analyst: what modes of questioning will the text inspire and add to your classroom?

Luke & Freebody (1999)

Multiliteracies in MotionMultiliteracies must now take account of new social media such as Facebook and mobile technology devices

Multiliteracies can be used as a framing method and approach for every knowledge area and interdisciplinarity

Questions about language should be asked in all knowledge areas and not only as English but as multilingualism

Multiliteracies is a flexible approach that shows how literacy skills continue to change under pressure from technology Cole, DR & Pullen, DL, Multiliteracies

in Motion: Current Theory and Practice, Routledge (2010)

Multiliteracies and technology enhanced educationAccess to technology can be an equity issue for educationalists to address

Multiliteracies helps us to produce new models of education and teaching and learning as technology continues to develop

Teachers can become out of touch with students needs if they do not keep up with developments in learning technology

Technology redefines the ‘classroom’

Pullen, DL & Cole, DR, Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom, IGI Global Publications (2010)

Critical Literacy

• Examining meaning within texts

• Considering the purpose for the text and the composer’s motives

• Understanding that texts are not neutral, that they represent particular views, that they may silence other points of view and influence people’s ideas

• Questioning and challenging the ways in which texts have been constructed

• Analysing the power of language in contemporary society

• Emphasising multiple readings of texts. (Because people interpret texts in the light of their own beliefs and values, texts will have different meanings to different people.)

• Having students take a stance on issues

• Providing students with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values

• Providing students with opportunities to take social action.

Unit of work on critical literacy

• You may use these headings to divide up the process of planning your unit of work using critical literacy:• Immersion• Prediction• Deconstruction• Reconstruction• Taking social action

Adapted from: Millard & Adams (1998).

• One of the most famous commentators on critical literacy, Allan Luke said:

• “The single most important theoretical and practical classroom effect (of critical literacy) is its shift in emphasis from the traditional view of literacy as skills, knowledges and cognitions inside the human subject – quite literally as something in students’ heads – to a vision of literacy as visible social practices with language, text and discourse”.

Luke (2000), p. 450

How does multiliteracies affect your practice?

science• How can science concepts be

represented in ICT?• What are the design elements

involved with science?• What is the meaning making and

multimodality of science? • How does ICT change my

understanding and implementation of experiments?

pdhpe• What pdhpe programs are there

that are represented through ICT or on the internet?• What ICT can we use to improve

learning in pdhpe?• What is the relationship between

ICTs and health?• How can pdhpe be a ‘transformed

practice’?

New Literacies

• Socio-cultural theory of literacy• New literacies are about more than ICT and literacy• Importantly the new literacies include questions about identity,

society and change• Development from and complementary to multiliteracies• Opens up textual practice in terms of questioning and representing

everyday life• Political and social consequences of education can be explored and

negotiated through literacies…

• First, new technologies (such as the internet) and the novel literacy tasks that pertain to these new technologies require new skills and strategies to effectively use them. Second, new literacies are a critical component of full participation—civic, economic, and personal—in our increasingly global society. A third component to this approach is new literacies are deictic—that is, they change regularly as new technology emerges and older technologies fade away. With this in mind, “what may be important in reading instruction and literacy education is not to teach any single set of new literacies, but rather to teach students how to learn continuously new literacies that will appear during their lifetime.” Finally, new literacies are “multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted,” and as such, multiple points of view will be most beneficial in attempting to comprehensively analyze them (Leu et al., 2007, p.43).

New literacies and knowledge areas

geography• How is space represented in the

media and in contemporary society?• What challenges our viewpoint

about an urban or rural landscape?• What is human geography in post-

industrial society?• How is space managed and

controlled in our everyday lives?

arts• What can we do with digital

technologies in the arts?• How does art practice expose and

relate to various assumptions about society?• How is the figure of the human

changing?• How do the arts contribute to

learning?

Multiple Literacies

• Literacies as fully multiple and not under the rubrics of the new literacies or multiliteracies• Complementary approach to literacies across the curriculum that

includes all aspects of the learners functioning in the classroom: i.e. sociological and psychological• The curriculum consists of many complex and inter-related minor

literacies: i.e. statistical literacy, economics literacy, visual literacy, bodily literacy, historical literacy, etc…• Everything is not text

• Literacies are actualized according to a particular context in time and in space in which they operate. Given the nomadic tendencies of literacies; they are not wed to a context, but are taken up in unpredictable ways across various contexts. Reading is both intensive (disruptive) and immanent. Literacies involve constant movement in the process of becoming other. There is potentiality in releasing literacy from its privileged position as the printed word by not allowing it to govern all other literacies. In this way, literacies open themselves to what is not already given. In short, literacies are about reading, reading the world, and self as texts (Masny, n.p.).

Multiple Literacies TheoryA complex practice of literacies

Do not assume that literacy is fixed or understandable as a linear process of improvement

Literacy relates to non human objects and things in the world, e.g. computers, artforms, music

Literacy is a political ‘micro’ practice that can make subjects areas and knowledge ‘take on life’

Literacies are akin to organic life…

Masny, D & Cole, DR, Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective, Sense Publishers (2009)

Mapping Multiple LiteraciesTeachers and students can map literacies

The mapping of literacies should take account of: affect, power, group dynamics, digital technology, etc…

Multiple literacies will increase the affordances and opportunities that the subject areas represent

The mapping of multiple literacies is cross-disciplinary, e.g. using mathematics to understand music.

Masny, D & Cole, DR, Mapping Multiple Literacies: An Introduction to Deleuzian Literacy Studies, Continuum (2012)

Multiple literacies and the secondary subjects

tas• What are the ways in which technical

drawing can represent a complex figure; e.g. a Möbius strip?

• What are the technological solutions to social problems, e.g. global warming?

• What are the limitations and consequences of technological progression?

• How does the application of technology affect belief?

languages• How do more than one language

relate to one another, e.g. Chinese and English?• What are the sociological

assumptions in language learning?• How is the language being learnt in

a formal and non formal way?• How can the native learner learn

from the non-native learner?

Affective literacy

• Definition: The term affective literacy locates a broad range of somatic, emotive responses to reading a text. Affective literacy seeks out the life principle, messy and complex, threading through reading activities and gestures toward bodily economies of reading and transacting texts

Amsler (2004) online.

Communication skillsLiteracies across the curriculum should help students to become better communicators

This means affecting the private and public self of the learners

We want our students to be able to articulate knowledge problems in all the subject areas.

Literacies across the curriculum should not cause more stress or pressure on the teacher, but help to open up the curriculum for learning.

References

• Amsler, M. (2004). Affective literacy: Gestures of reading in the Later Middle Ages. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, retrieved October 11, 2005, from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ essays_in_medieval_studies/v018/18.1amsler.html

• Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Macmillan.

• Leu et al. (2007). What is new about the new literacies of online reading comprehension? In L.S. Rush, A.J. Eakle & A. Berger (Eds.), Secondary School Literacy (pp. 32-50). Urbana, Il: NCTE.

• Luke, A. (2000). Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 43, 448-461.

• Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes on the Four Resource Model. Online at: http://www.readingonline.org/research/lukefreebody.html

• Millard, C., & Adams, P. (Eds.) (1998). Texts: The Heart of the English Curriculum (Series 2). Adelaide: Department of Education, Training and Employment.