Production 4: Critical Essay
The New London Group’s article, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,” challenged the pre-existing educational paradigms which had the teacher as the expert and the student as a blank slate ready to retain knowledge. The concept of Multiliteracies connects to new educational paradigms relating to technology in the articles, “Digital Media Literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet” by David Buckingham and “A Review of the ‘Digital Turn’ in the New Literacy Studies” by K.A Mills.
One of the New London Group’s main themes is multiliteracy based on design and multimodal meanings. They propose that, “Design has become central…to school reforms for the contemporary world…educational research should become a design science (New London Group).” They recognize available designs and resources for meaning, and the ‘Redesigned’ which are the “resources that are reproduced and transformed (New London Group).” In the design, there are also many multimodal ways of making meaning. They note that, “a school project can and should properly be evaluated on the basis of visual as well as linguistic design and their multimodal relationships.” In addition, “spoken language is a matter of audio design as much as it is a matter of linguistic design understood as grammatical relationships.” This is articulated in Buckingham’s article where he discusses media literacy online. Media literacy encapsulates the concepts of multiliteracy and multimodal meanings. He says that an individual who is “truly literate…is able not only to use language but also to understand how it works. This is party a matter of understanding the ‘grammar’ of particular forms of communication (Buckingham, 48).” Perfecting these ‘grammars’ means knowing how to use “the use of visual and verbal ‘rhetorics’ in the design of websites (Buckingham, 49). He uses the example of young children creating digital media and the new challenges they face in terms of writing the text, reading it, creating multimedia texts, which all strengthen media education and multiliteracies (Buckingham, 49). Overall this theme is leading to the idea that giving students the agency to create and design, especially on a multimedia platform, can help students gain multiliteracy and knowing how to make multimodal meaning.
The New London Group also poses a key concept for describing multimodal meanings: hybridity (New London Group). They describe hybridity as “mechanisms of creativity and of culture-as-process…in contemporary society (New London Group).” This concept of hybridity was modelled in Mill’s article reviewing the Digital Turn in New Literacy Studies. The “culture-as-process” concept is seen in Mill’s example of hybridization of literacy practices as usually in places where participants decide to contribute voluntarily (Mills, 256). He used the example of females who contributed to fan fiction sites online, they were in a way creating their own version of pre-existing genres and text forms (Mills, 256). Mills notices that these hybridity practices are often involuntary and they are used in engaging new literacies in digital media (Mils, 256).
Another central theme in the New London Group’s article is the theory of pedagogy and how the human mind works in teaching, learning and in society and classrooms (New London Group). They list four factors as complex integration for pedagogy: Situated practice Overt instruction, Critical framing, and Transformed practice. The idea of situated practice is, “immersion in a community of learners engaged in authentic versions [of the practice we wish to masters] (New London Group)” One problem they found with this factor is that the limitations of situated practice do not create learners who question the surroundings they were brought up in (New London Group). This brings them to another factor that should happen for pedagogy practices: critical framing. When defining literacy and the limits of competence, Buckingham notes that multiliteracies cannot be defined by “the acquisition of skills of the mastery of a particular practice (45). What he also believes is important in media literacy is a type of critical framing where the learner can “take a theoretical distance from what they have learned, to account for its social and cultural location, and to critique it… (Buckingham, 45).” He does note that there is a challenge between a natural immersion in social environments meanwhile keeping a critical distance. He furthers this argument that web users need to be “hyperreaders” who can critically analyze sources online, and assess the authority of sites (Buckingham, 47). In the same way that the New London Group was concerned about situated practice not teaching learners what they should critique, Buckingham’s article gives a perspective of ‘cyberliteracy’ where “users must understand the economic and political forces that are shaping information technologies (47).” This is to be critical of the seemingly “neutral” or “credible” websites and how this speaks to the political environment they are in.
The New London Group’s concepts of multiliteracies relate to Buckingham and Mills’ articles on Digital Media Literacies and New Literacy Studies because they discuss a changing relationship between technology and pedagogy, and new understandings of literacy practices. These changing relationships use production pedagogies, connecting with digital media to utilize the concepts of multiliteracy on a multimedia platform. Mills’ article does give valuable models for redesigning present educational forms. There are multiple examples following an analysis of the type of literacy practice. It lacks practical designs and resources for other learning contexts, which also speaks to the idea that literacy is culturally relevant and cannot be universally defined. In the Buckingham article, there are more available designs and understandings of how internet literacy, competence, creating digital media, access, and the role of the school are all involved in media education for any context. It also provides us with important warnings of how to use technology for educational purposes and building multiliteracies and not how to use educational technology. In this way, both articles have succeeded in providing ways for understanding pedagogical practices today and how they can be revised and understood through new literacies and digital media.