A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures

In this article, the New London Group presents a theoretical overview of the connections between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies." The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches. Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment.

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In this article, the New London Group presents a theoretical overview of the connections between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies." The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches. Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment.

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a theoretical overview of the connections between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies."

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increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches

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Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment.
(pp. 60-92)

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negotiating

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the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches

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Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students.

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negotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students

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creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment.

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fostering the critical engagement

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creating access

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If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, one could say that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life.

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the mission of education

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ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life

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extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment, such as visual images and their relationship to the written word

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First, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment, such as visual images and their relationship to the written word - for instance, visual design in desktop publishing or the interface of visual and linguistic meaning in multimedia. Indeed, this second point relates closely back to the first; the proliferation of communications channels and media supports and extends cultural and subcultural diversity. As soon as our sights are set on the objective of creating the learning conditions for full social participation, the issue of differences becomes critically important. How do we ensure that differences of culture, language, and gender are not barriers to educational success? And what are the implications of these differences for literacy pedagogy?

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extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate.

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account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies

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literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment, such as visual images and their relationship to the written word - for instance, visual design in desktop publishing or the interface of visual and linguistic meaning in multimedia.

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account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies

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What is appropriate for all in the context of the ever more critical factors of local diversity and global connectedness? As educators attempt to address the context of cultural and linguistic diversity through literacy pedagogy, we hear shrill claims and counterclaims about political correctness, the canon of great literature, grammar, and back-to-basics.

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there are still vast disparities in life chances - disparities that today seem to be widening still further

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what new learning needs literacy pedagogy might now address.

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A strong sense of citizenship seems to be giving way to local fragmentation, and communities are breaking into ever more diverse and subculturally defined groupings

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The changing technological and organizational shape of working life provides some with access to lifestyles of unprecedented affluence, while excluding others in ways that are increasingly related to the outcomes of education and training. It may well be that we have to rethink what we are teaching, and, in particular, what new learning needs literacy pedagogy might now address.

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he main areas of common or complementary concern included the pedagogical tension between immersion and explicit models of teaching; the challenge of cultural and linguistic diversity; the newly prominent modes and technologies of communication; and changing text usage in restructured workplaces.

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the question of life chances as it relates to the broader moral and cultural order of literacy pedagogy.

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ten distinctly different people

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multiliteracies - a word we chose to describe two important arguments we might have with the emerging cultural, institutional, and global order: the multiplicity of communications channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity

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the fundamental problem - that is, that the disparities in educational outcomes did not seem to be improving

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the broad question of the social outcomes of language learning

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multiliteracies - a word we chose to describe two important arguments we might have with the emerging cultural, institutional, and global order: the multiplicity of communications channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity.

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A pedagogy of multiliteracies, by contrast, focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone.

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These differ according to culture and context, and have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects. In some cultural contexts - in an Aboriginal community or in a multimedia environment, for instance - the visual mode of representation may be much more powerful and closely related to language than "mere literacy" would ever be able to allow. Multiliteracies also creates a different kind of pedagogy, 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.

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a programmatic manifesto

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Design, in which we are both inheritors of patterns and conventions of meaning and at the same time active designers of meaning. And, as designers of meaning, we are designers of social futures - workplace futures, public futures, and community futures.

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When technologies of meaning are changing so rapidly, there cannot be one set of standards or skills that constitute the ends of literacy learning, however taught.

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multiliteracies

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the multiplicity of communications channels and media

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increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity

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multiliteracies

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mere literacy

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the multiplicity of communications channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity. The notion of multiliteracies supplements traditional literacy pedagogy by addressing these two related aspects of textual multiplicity. What we might term "mere literacy" remains centered on language only, and usually on a singular national form of language at that, which is conceived as a stable system based on rules such as mastering sound-letter correspondence.

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Effective citizenship and productive work now require that we interact effectively using multiple languages, multiple Englishes, and communication patterns that more frequently cross cultural, community, and national boundaries.

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A pedagogy of multiliteracies, by contrast, focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone. These differ according to culture and context, and have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects. In some cultural contexts - in an Aboriginal community or in a multimedia environment, for instance - the visual mode of representation may be much more powerful and closely related to language than "mere literacy" would ever be able to allow. Multiliteracies also creates a different kind of pedagogy, 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.

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dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users

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increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making

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textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioral

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focus on the realities of increasing local diversity and global connectedness

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Dealing with linguistic differences and cultural differences has now become central to the pragmatics of our working, civic, and private lives. Effective citizenship and productive work now require that we interact effectively using multiple languages, multiple Englishes, and communication patterns that more frequently cross cultural, community, and national boundaries.

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When the proximity of cultural and linguistic diversity is one of the key facts of our time, the very nature of language learning has changed.

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shape of social change

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What do these changes mean for literacy pedagogy?

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The key concept we introduce is that of Design, in which we are both inheritors of patterns and conventions of meaning and at the same time active designers of meaning.

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Linguistic Meaning, Visual Meaning, Audio Meaning, Gestural Meaning, Spatial Meaning, and the Multimodal patterns of meaning

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as designers of meaning, we are designers of social futures

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Four components of pedagogy are suggested: Situated Practice

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Four components of pedagogy are suggested: Situated Practice, which draws on the experience of meaning-making in lifeworlds, the public realm, and workplaces; Overt Instruction, through 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. In the International Multiliteracies Project upon which we are now embarking, we hope to set up collaborative research relationships and programs of curriculum development that test, exemplify, extend, and rework the ideas tentatively suggested in this article.

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Critical Framing

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Overt Instruction

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Transformed Practice

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three realms of our existence: our working lives, our public lives (citizenship), and our private lives (lifeworld).

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stress competition and markets centered around change, flexibility, quality, and distinctive niches - not the mass products of the "old" capitalism

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A whole new terminology crosses and re-crosses the borders between these new business and management discourses, on the one hand, and discourses concerned with education, educational reform, and cognitive science, on the other

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The new management theory uses words that are very familiar to educators, such as knowledge (as in "knowledge worker"), learning (as in "learning organization"), collaboration, alternative assessments, communities of practice, networks,

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PostFordism

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postFordism

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fast capitalism

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workplace culture in which the members of an organization identify with its vision, mission, and corporate values

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Commitment, responsibility, and motivation are won by developing a workplace culture in which the members of an organization identify with its vision, mission, and corporate values. The old vertical chains of command are replaced by the horizontal relationships of teamwork. A division of labor into its minute, deskilled components is replaced by "multiskilled," well-rounded workers who are flexible enough to be able to do complex and integrated work

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flattened hierarchy

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teamwork

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relationships of pedagogy: mentoring, training, and the learning organization

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new worklife comes a new language

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Whereas the old Fordist organization depended upon clear, precise, and formal systems of command, such as written memos and the supervisor's orders, effective teamwork depends to a much greater extent on informal, oral, and interpersonal discourse. This informality also translates into hybrid and interpersonally sensitive informal written forms, such as electronic mail

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informal, oral, and interpersonal discourse

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more rigorously exclusive

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fast capitalism is also a nightmare

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demands assimilation

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. Replication of corporate culture demands assimilation to mainstream norms that only really works if one already speaks the language of the mainstream

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harder to get into networks that operate informally than it was to enter into the old discourses of formality.

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driven by the barely restrained market

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This is a crucial factor in producing the phenomenon of the glass ceiling, the point at which employment and promotion opportunities come to an abrupt stop. And fast capitalism, notwithstanding its discourse of collaboration, culture, and shared values, is also a vicious world driven by the barely restrained market.

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be aware of the danger that our words become co-opted by economically and market-driven discourses

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opening new educational and social possibilities, or as new systems of mind control or exploitation

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learning how to learn

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These new workplace discourses can be taken in two very different ways - as opening new educational and social possibilities, or as new systems of mind control or exploitation.

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An authentically democratic view of schools must include a vision of meaningful success for all, a vision of success that is not defined exclusively in economic terms and that has embedded within it a critique of hierarchy and economic injustice.

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in a system that still values vastly disparate social outcomes, there will never be enough room "at the top."

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our role is not simply to be technocrats. Our job is not to produce docile, compliant workers. Students need to develop the capacity to speak up, to negotiate, and to be able to engage critically with the conditions of their working lives.

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Students need to develop the capacity to speak up, to negotiate, and to be able to engage critically with the conditions of their working lives.

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productive diversity

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productive diversity, the idea that what seems to be a problem - the multiplicity of cultures, experiences, ways of making meaning, and ways of thinking - can be harnessed as an asset

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Cross-cultural communication and the negotiated dialogue of different languages and discourses can be a basis for worker participation, access, and creativity, for the formation of locally sensitive and globally extensive networks that closely relate organizations to their clients or suppliers, and structures of motivation in which people feel that their different backgrounds and experiences are genuinely valued. Rather ironically, perhaps, democratic pluralism is possible in workplaces for the toughest of business reasons, and economic efficiency may be an ally of social justice, though not always a staunch or reliable one.

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argument about the role of the state in society

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liberalism that eschews the state

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In some parts of the world, once strong centralizing and homogenizing states have all but collapsed, and states everywhere are diminished in their roles and responsibilities. This has left space for a new politics of difference. In worst case scenarios - in Los Angeles, Sarajevo, Kabul, Belfast, Beirut - the absence of a working, arbitrating state has left governance in the hands of gangs, bands, paramilitary organizations, and ethnonationalist political factions.

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a new politics of difference

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Schooling in general and literacy teaching in particular were a central part of the old order. The expanding, interventionary states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used schooling as a way of standardizing national languages. In the Old World, this meant imposing national standards over dialect differences. In the New World, it meant assimilating immigrants and indigenous peoples to the standardized "proper" language of the colonizer

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Schooling in general and literacy teaching in particular were a central part of the old order

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Cultural and linguistic diversity are now central and critical issues.

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Local diversity and global connectedness mean not only that there can be no standard; they also mean that the most important skill students need to learn is to negotiate regional, ethnic, or class-based dialects; variations in register that occur according to social context; hybrid cross-cultural discourses; the code switching often to be found within a text among different languages, dialects, or registers; different visual and iconic meanings; and variations in the gestural relationships among people, language, and material objects.

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the most important skill students need to learn is to negotiate regional, ethnic, or class-based dialects; variations in register that occur according to social context; hybrid cross-cultural discourses; the code switching often to be found within a text among different languages, dialects, or registers; different visual and iconic meanings; and variations in the gestural relationships among people, language, and material objects

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civic pluralism.

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Access to wealth, power, and symbols must be possible no matter what one's identity markers - such as language, dialect, and register - happen to be. States must be strong again, but not to impose standards: they must be strong as neutral arbiters of difference. So must schools. And so must literacy pedagogy. This is the basis for a cohesive sociality, a new civility in which differences are used as a productive resource and in which differences are the norm. It is the basis for the postnationalist sense of common purpose that is now essential to a peaceful and productive global order

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we need states that arbitrate differences

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civic pluralism

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as neutral arbiters of difference

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When learners juxtapose different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches, they gain substantively in meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic abilities and in their ability to reflect critically on complex systems and their interactions

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Transforming schools and schooled literacy is both a very broad and a narrowly specific issue, a critical part of a larger social project. Yet there is a limit to what schools alone can achieve. The broad question is, what will count for success in the world of the imminent future, a world that can be imagined and achieved? The narrower question is, how do we transform incrementally the achievable and apt outcomes of schooling? How do we supplement what schools already do? We cannot remake the world through schooling, but we can instantiate a vision through pedagogy that creates in microcosm a transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures, a vision that is lived in schools. This might involve activities such as simulating work relations of collaboration, commitment, and creative involvement; using the school as a site for mass media access and learning; reclaiming the public space of school citizenship for diverse communities and discourses; and creating communities of learners that are diverse and respectful of the autonomy of lifeworlds.

In the remainder of this article, we develop the notion of pedagogy as design.

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We live in an environment where subcultural differences - differences of identity and affiliation - are becoming more and more significant. Gender, ethnicity, generation, and sexual orientation are just a few of the markers of these differences. To those who yearn for "standards," such differences appear as evidence of distressing fragmentation of the social fabric.

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undermine the concept of collective audience and common culture

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This spells the definitive end of "the public"

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one of the paradoxes of less regulated, multi-channel media systems is that they undermine the concept of collective audience and common culture

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the definitive end of "the public"

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the increasing invasion of private spaces by mass media culture, global commodity culture, and communications and information networks.

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increasing invasion of private spaces

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Just how do we negotiate these invasive global texts? In some senses, the invasion of the mass media and consumerism makes a mockery of the diversity of its media and channels. Despite all the subcultural differentiation of niche markets, not much space is offered in the marketplace of childhood that reflects genuine diversity among children and adolescents.

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private lives are being made more public as everything becomes a potential subject of media discussion, resulting in what we refer to as a "conversationalization" of public language. Discourses that were once the domain of the private - the intricacies of the sexual lives of public figures, discussion of repressed memories of child abuse - are now made unashamedly public

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Much of this can be regarded as cynical, manipulative, invasive, and exploitative, as discourses of private life and community are appropriated to serve commercial and institutional ends. This is a process, in other words, that in part destroys the autonomy of private and community lifeworlds.

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The challenge is to make space available so that different

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spaces for community life where local and specific meanings can be made - can flourish. The new multimedia and hypermedia channels can and sometimes do provide members of subcultures with the opportunity to find their own voices.

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These technologies have the potential to enable greater autonomy for different lifeworlds, for example, multilingual television or the creation of virtual communities through access to the Internet.

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different lifeworlds

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Yet, the more diverse and vibrant these lifeworlds become and the greater the range of the differences, the less clearly bounded the different lifeworlds appear to be.

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the resources for Design - include the "grammars" of various semiotic systems: the grammars of languages, and the grammars of other semiotic systems such as film, photography, or gesture.

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The increasing divergence of lifeworlds and the growing importance of differences is the blurring of their boundaries.

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As people are simultaneously members of multiple lifeworlds, so their identities have multiple layers that are in complex relation to each other. No person is a member of a singular community. Rather, they are members of multiple and overlapping communities-communities of work, of interest and affiliation, of ethnicity, of sexual identity, and so on

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Language, discourse, and register differences are markers of lifeworld differences

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This creates a new challenge for literacy pedagogy. In sum, this is the world that literacy pedagogy now needs to address:

	Changing Realities		Designing Social Futures
Working Lives:	Fast Capitalism/PostFordism	>	Productive Diversity
Public Lives:	Decline of Public Pluralism	>	Civic Pluralism
Private Lives:	Invasion of Private Space	>	Multilayered Lifeworlds

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Schools regulate access to orders of discourse

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to symbolic capital - symbolic meanings that have currency in access to employment, political power, and cultural recognition. They provide access to a hierarchically ordered world of work; they shape citizenries

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provide a supplement to the discourses and activities of communities and private lifeworlds

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Institutionalized schooling traditionally performed the function of disciplining and skilling people for regimented industrial workplaces, assisting in the making of the melting pot of homogenous national citizenries, and smoothing over inherited differences between lifeworlds.

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To be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities - interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes - students bring to learning. Curriculum now needs to mesh with different subjectivities, and with their attendant languages, discourses, and registers, and use these as a resource for learning.

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he role of pedagogy is to develop an epistemology of pluralism that provides access without people having to erase or leave behind different subjectivities.

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reclaiming the public space of school citizenship for diverse communities and discourses; and creating communities of learners that are diverse and respectful of the autonomy of lifeworlds.

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