Multiliteracies

The Concept of Multiliteracies

The NLG argues that reading and writing cannot be taught authoritatively as the coding and decoding of a stable print-based language system. Rather, they maintain that the acts of interpreting and producing texts are increasingly becoming multimodal processes in which people use multiple languages, print, images, and sounds to communicate using computer-mediated means and drawing on their resources as members of diverse communities. The NLG's discussion predated the use of wikis, blogs, and social networking tools such as Facebook but prophetically advanced the idea that when technologies change rapidly, schools should not be committed to teaching one national language and print-based set of skills. Rather, they maintain that schools should incorporate a much broader range of meaning-making practices into the curriculum because the traditional emphasis on print and a single national language, as opposed to multimodal texts and multiple languages, is not just outdated but detrimental to the growth of equitable and vital economic and political systems. They propose that a multiliteracies approach to pedagogy can provide students with both access and a critical apprenticeship to using new literacies that will enable them to play a more active role in constructing their social futures in a changing economy and social order.

Available Designs

To support a multiliteracies approach to teaching and learning, the NLG developed the metaphor of available designs. This metaphor captures how members of diverse linguistic and cultural communities draw on representational resources in communicating within and across cultural boundaries to construct meanings and participate in designing their social futures. Available designs include the various meaning-making systems at a learner's disposal. These systems are the conventions of home and school languages, images, sounds, and physical spaces, which can be configured as design elements to accomplish particular purposes for targeted audiences in specific contexts. For example, design elements include noticing patterns regarding how information is presented (e.g., rhetorical structures, screen formats, spatial positioning of objects, angles of perception) and use of styles or voices (e.g., dialects, colors, and sound effects). The NLG writes that in designing communicative practices, people are both inheritors of patterns and conventions and at the same time active designers of new meanings. They maintain that as designers, people can participate in constructing their social futures because they can actively participate in creating new social practices and learning communities through their use of new multimodal resources.

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