New literacies in two Singapore classrooms

Tan, L., Bopry, J., & Guo, L. (2010). Portraits of new literacies in two Singapore classrooms. RELC Journal, 41(1), 5-17.

Background

The impact of the digital age has brought about the need to broaden the notion of literacy. However, teachers and students seem to lack the support needed to incorporate new literacies into the language classroom.

Aims

The aim of this study was to document the shift in a teacher’s pedagogical practices during the intervention process where support was given to expand the teacher’s notion of literacy.

Sample

This study involved a teacher from a Singapore high school and her two Secondary 2 English language classes (with 14 year-olds).

Method

This study adopted a case study approach. Data collected in the study included transcripts and field notes from classroom observations, curricular documents and syllabi, as well as transcripts from in-depth interviews with the teacher participant.

Findings

In the initial stage, the observed teaching resembled what the authors felt to be ‘standard English comprehension lessons’, where print-based multimodal texts (e.g., advertisements) were employed as a source of motivation to introduce the lesson topic. In the later stages however, there was a visible shift in the teacher’s instructional practices. Some of the observed changes included a shift in the roles of the student-participants from text participants (e.g., drawing on students’ prior knowledge to construct meaning from texts) to text users (e.g., knowing the purpose of the text) and analysts (e.g., reading the texts critically). Multimodal texts were no longer used as lesson triggers, but as main texts for class discussions. The use of technology was also observed to be more critical and generative (i.e., greater attention paid to multimodal designs, new ways of textual construction of knowledge). However, more timewas still set aside to prepare students for the literacy demands of sitting for the national examination than for students to engage in classroom interactions about multimodal texts.

Implications

Findings underlined the key role of the teacher in equipping students with critical multimedia literacy skills and in positioning students as text analysts. However, there seemed to be a tension between the new pedagogical approach and the old mode of assessment. In order for new literacies to take hold in English classrooms, the authors urged for an alignment between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Teachers should also receive professional training that could help them better appropriate the practice of new literacies in their English Language classrooms.

Original article retrieved from Sage Journals.