"A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies" By The New London Group

Based on my understanding, the New London Group (NLG) places emphasis on the links between ‘multiliteracies’, a new approach to literacy, and the changing social setting facing both teachers and students. According to them, the contemporary world calls for a much wider view of literacy due to the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity and multiplicity of communications channels. Therefore, instead of the traditional language-based approaches, multiliteracies is adopted to highlight how negotiating the multiple linguistic and cultural differences in our society is essential to the pragmatics of the working, public and personal lives of students. Through this approach, students will be able to achieve two key facets of multiplicity: creating access to the changing language of work, power, and community, and promoting the vital engagement needed in designing their social futures and achieving success through fulfilling employment.

In addition, the NLG proposed the concept of ‘Design’ as a metalanguage of multiliteracies in addressing the question of the ‘what’ of literacy pedagogy. In other words, the ‘what’ of literacy pedagogy simply refers to what students are required to learn. The term, ‘Design’ is also used to describe the forms of meaning. Subsequently, they went on to put forward the notion of treating any semiotic activity as a matter of Design, which comprises of three components, namely, Available Designs, Designing, and The Redesigned.

Available Designs are simply resources for meanings that include the ‘grammar of various semiotic systems’ and ‘orders of discourse’. The latter is a structure set of conventions associated with semiotic activity in a given social space. There are certain Design conventions within orders of discourse that take the form of discourses, styles, genres, dialects and voices. For instance, students in class may encounter text as a type of Available Designs.

Designing is a process that involves the transformation of Available Designs into The Redesigned, which is the product of Designing. Drawing upon their past experiences and understanding of the world, students make new meaning to the text they have received in the form of Available Design into a new meaning-making resource or a new Available Design, unique to the meaning-makers themselves. Therefore, Available Designs can never be simply reproduced or repeated. Some examples of Designing are speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Having walked the path of a student before, I’m aware of the fact that project work is gaining its importance as a form of assessment in the local education scene. Students often rely heavily on the internet as their main source of information. Therefore, I feel that it is crucial to teach and equip students with skills that allow them to evaluate websites critically. Hands-on experience in creating a webpage can also be incorporated as group project. For example, students are required to publish their webpage, containing research on real world problems such as global warming on free internet sites for public viewing and feedback. Through these activities, students will not only learn how to apply multiliteracy skills, besides technological skills, but also how to construct knowledge instead of treating it as mere information.