Multiliteracies, pedagogy and identities

Giampapa, F. (2010). Multiliteracies, pedagogy and identities: Teacher and student voices from a Toronto elementary school. Canadian Journal of Education, 33(2), 407-431.

Background

The effects of globalisation are evident in the educational landscape, where cultural and linguistic diversity and the demands of economic and technological change have presented both educational opportunities and challenges.

Aims

The study investigated how teachers’ own linguistic and cultural experiences could provide a pedagogical foundation for understanding students’ repertoires of knowledge. It also examined how students’ first language (L1) literacy practices and cultures could be incorporated into the English-medium curriculum using multimodal and multilingual approaches. It also sought to explore how a multiliteracies pedagogy could tap on students’ identity capital to attain literacy engagement and learning. For this study, L1 is defined as the language that a child uses predominantly at home, and not the language of the school.

Sample

The author drew on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary school with students from multi-racial, multilingual and multicultural backgrounds, as part of a Canadian-wide action research project. The main participants were a Grade 4 teacher, Perminder, and 29 students.

Method

Data included digital and video recordings of classroom observations, photographic data of the inside and outside spaces of the school, and artefacts of students’ work.

Findings

The students’ personal life stories reflected a spectrum of their feelings around linguistic and cultural differences and marginalization. While the students highlighted the importance of their L1 in enhancing familiar relationships and their self-esteem, they were apprehensive about bringing their L1 and cultures into the school. Results indicated that these students’ voices were hardly audible when teachers reproduced dominant discourses of schooling as English-only spaces. Perminder’s own experiences as a second language learner resulted in her constantly creating in her classroom pedagogical opportunities that were multimodal, multilingual, and multicultural. These opportunities aimed to engage her students’ diverse cultural and linguistic identities, so that she could access their academic, social and psychological identities and enhance their critical thinking. For example, art and poetry were used as multimodal platforms to critically discuss issues of race, language and identity, and collaborative work allowed students to self-represent and deconstruct their identities. As a result, students took ownership of their own learning.

Implications

The author highlighted that it is pertinent to invest in students’ multiliteracies and multilingual identities as resources inside classrooms and schools to prepare the students to meet today’s new demands on literacies and the rapid technological developments.

Original article retrieved from Google Scholar