A Teacher Candidate Learning About Multiliteracies

Reflecting on the past few weeks of the course, I have been thinking a lot about my high school experiences and how many of them did not engage me in multiliteracies learning beyond Overt Instruction. In many of the classes at my high school, students were taught right from the textbook. The teacher would teach their content, writing notes on the board or projecting them onto a screen from an overhead projector. Students would take notes on what the teacher was saying – usually copying verbatim from the board or projector – and then the class would move on either to worksheets, individual reading, or textbook questions. While some of my teachers would include more creative projects or analysis and application of the lessons through group activities, most of the classes were about taking notes and then completing questions.

Even when my teachers planned interactive activities, like dramatic re-enactments of texts in English, there was not often an opportunity to connect what we were learning in class to our lived experiences. For instance, in grade twelve English, my teacher had us write and perform dramatic Dr. Phil-style skits about the play Hamlet and the family relationship between Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia. The teacher had us write these skits using the text as a guideline, which engaged us in the application of the text’s events to a new context to assess our understanding. This activity was fun, but I did not find much meaning in it, as we were connecting the text to a real-world circumstance that did not have any significance for me. I did not watch Dr. Phil, and so the teacher’s use of Transformed Practice and the context she chose did not help me to learn the content. While this activity reinforced the events that were happening in Hamlet, the connections that my group and I made to the real world did not do any work to develop our understanding. Instead, they acted as another way for us to bolster our rote memory of the text’s events.

In some of my other classes, my teachers aimed to make use of Critical Framing. The critical analysis that teachers asked us to complete inspired text-to-text connections and did not often move beyond the realm of the classroom or the school. My teachers did not usually ask us to interrogate the texts for power dynamics or biases. We critically read and analyzed literature to learn more about characters or themes. For example, when we read To Kill a Mockingbird in grade nine, we discussed its themes surrounding racial justice, but this conversation did not move beyond the classroom and the content of the text. Our whole discussion focused on the text’s world and what occurred in it. We did not interrogate how the racial injustices in To Kill a Mockingbird are still present in today’s society. We also did not discuss the biases inherent in the book due to Harper Lee being a white woman, nor did we discuss its use of the white saviour trope. As Ginette Roberge writes, “To become critically aware readers, students must move beyond simple comprehension of text to a deeper understanding of the underlying meanings, a critical reflection on the text’s purpose and an awareness of the techniques used to influence the reader” (Ontario Ministry of Education, What works, 2013, p. 2). The skills of examining a text’s purpose and the goals an author had when writing it were ones I briefly got to exercise while studying George Orwell’s 1984 in grade eleven, but I did not deeply engage with these ideas and develop these skills until I entered into my postsecondary degree.

As I have made clear, most of my high school experience consisted of Overt Instruction with limited Critical Framing and Transformed Practice. Even when our teachers introduced new topics, they did not often use Situated Practice or draw on students’ funds of knowledge. The teachers related most of the new concepts introduced to previous content we covered. They did not often include student experiences, and there was very little focus on differentiated instruction. The vast majority of my teachers did not make use of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). When we had assignments, there were no choices; everyone had to do the same work. In daily instruction, most of our time was spent taking written notes either from the board or an overhead projector and then completing worksheets or textbook questions. Teachers occasionally showed videos, but for the most part, our learning was text-based and required strong reading and writing skills from all students. Students who did not enjoy this teaching style had to struggle through it.

One notable exception to all of the experiences I discussed above is the French teacher I had for all four years of high school. While we did some note-taking in her class, she also had us reading texts aloud, she would show us videos and have us listen to music, and her final projects always offered a choice of several activities. She focused on two of the key tenets of UDL, which are “universality and equity” and “flexibility and inclusiveness” (Ontario Ministry of Education, Learning for all, 2013, p.14). My French teacher focused on providing multiple forms of engagement, representation, and action and expression for her students (for a further explanation of how teachers can do this, see the CAST chart below). We used to read one French novel each year, and we always had meaningful, critical discussions when we read these texts. We would analyze the textual events, but we would also connect them directly to what we were learning about French society in the class. In grade twelve, we participated in debates about serious issues like animal testing and women’s rights. These debates forced us to critically analyze power structures in society and make use of our spoken French to debate our side of the issue. The students cared about these issues, so we were very involved in the work and learned a lot from it. Due to our teacher’s varied and challenging activities, French class was always engaging, and I had to work hard to succeed. However, I always wanted to put this work in, as I felt that it was meaningful and worthwhile. In some of my other classes, I worked hard, but I was not as engaged and was instead doing the work to finish it and get a good grade.

Overall, my high school experiences offer me a lot of guidance when I think about designing lessons for the students that I will teach. I recognize the importance of making use of Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and Transformed Practice, and I aim to make sure that my lessons regularly make use of all of these types of literacies. Further, I want to make sure that I am regularly thinking about differentiation and aiming to make use of UDL in my lesson designs. I find it helpful to keep the diagrams I included throughout this post in front of me while lesson planning so that I can refer to them and ensure that I am inclusive of all students’ needs.

References

CAST. (2018). Universal design for learning guidelines [Infographic]. http://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (n.d.). The “how” of multiliteracies across the curriculum [Infographic]. https://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies/theory

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2013). Learning for all: A guide to effective assessment and instruction for all students. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/LearningforAll2013.pdf

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2013). What Works? Research into Practice: Promoting critical literacy across the curriculum and fostering safer learning environments. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_PromotingCriticalLiteracy.pdf

Over the past few weeks of the course, we have explored digital and media literacy. A vital concept from these literacies that I would want to emphasize with my students is the idea of confirmation bias and our need to evaluate the (digital) media we consume and its framing. Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to seek out and more readily accept information that confirms their existing worldviews. Confirmation bias occurs when people interact with traditional media, for instance, when people choose to watch a news channel with a particular political leaning that matches their own and only receive their news from this outlet. Confirmation bias is also particularly present in and relevant to our consumption of digital media. In The Mind Online podcast episode three, “Did You Google It?,” Monita Bell had a discussion with Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, a United States agency that monitors and reports on the activity of hate groups. In this discussion, Beirich called attention to the fact that young people regularly interact with propaganda on the Internet; yet, they have no skill base through which to critically evaluate these biased messages. Propaganda is especially prominent on Google, as, now that it is an ad-revenue-based search engine, it aims to show people the results that they want to see and will likely click on, which might not be credible or fact-based (Bell, 2018). Thus, once Google has a sense of what people using the search engine believe, it tailors the results they see to confirm any of their existing biases, perpetuating the spread of information that might not be credible.

If students are not informed, they will believe they are receiving factual information when, in reality, their acceptance of the information Google presents to them could be due to their confirmation bias. Therefore, educators must make students aware of these issues and teach them how to critically reflect on media framing. Further, educators need to ensure that students have the skills to analyze traditional and digital media and consider both the points of view it presents and those that are missing.

While researching media literacy, I came across a video that would be helpful in teaching students about confirmation bias and how it functions. In this video, the interviewer tells people a set of three numbers. He does not frame the numbers with any other information. He then asks the interviewees to figure out what the rule he has for the numbers is, but they can only tell him by repeating their own set of numbers back to the interviewer, who will then confirm whether or not the numbers fit his rule. Watch the video below to see what occurs as these interviews play out.

As this video shows, people can partake in confirmation bias without recognizing that it is even happening. The people in the video came up with their own rule for the numbers and, rather than testing other possibilities, only listed numbers to the interviewer that confirmed the rule they had extrapolated based on the first set of numbers that the interviewer presented. This video would be fantastic for an Intermediate or Senior level lesson on media literacy. It would show students a concrete example of how confirmation bias can work in even the simplest examples of information internalization and how we can participate in confirmation bias without realizing it. I would then discuss with students how this video shows a harmless scenario where the “rules” or beliefs internalized have no real-world consequences. Then, I would ask them to consider how this scenario would be different if the unchallenged rules were about a person’s gender, or a person’s race, culture, sexual orientation, or any other number of traits. I would have students discuss how confirmation bias can result in harmful implicit assumptions that then guide our actions. Facilitating an activity like this one with my students would allow for an engaging introduction to the problem of confirmation bias, and I could offer students a compelling lesson about critical media literacy and the importance of framing after discussing this video.

Educators need to consider how to teach media literacy, and especially digital media literacy, as students are in contact with media in almost every moment of their lives. Educators need to recognize the importance of building critical literacy skills in their students and teaching them about how their biases can affect the way they interact with and internalize information, which then has real-world implications for how they act and what they believe. For me and my practice as an educator, learning about media literacy has emphasized the importance of teaching students to be critical consumers of media. This knowledge has inspired me to ensure that I teach my future students about the issues surrounding finding and accepting information from only one source. Further, this new knowledge has encouraged me to always make sure my students are looking inward and self-reflecting, as the only way to recognize our biases is to think about which ideas we have internalized and then confront them and reframe our knowledge.

References

Bell, M. (Host). (2018, November 6). Did you Google it? (No. 3) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Mind Online. Teaching Tolerance. https://www.tolerance.org/podcasts/the-mind-online/did-you-google-it

The Media Smarts classroom guide about digital literacy in the classroom (2018) inspired me to reflect on our portfolio assignment and how its format integrates many of the guidelines regarding teaching digital literacy. To begin with, we have all been allowed to be the experts in this project. We had the choice to use whichever platform would best suit our needs and allow us to accomplish the task of completing a reflective portfolio. In providing us with this choice, our professor encouraged us to think critically about the affordances of various platforms and to select the one we thought was best for our purposes. Further, this is a very intentional use of technology for our course, as it creates a tangible record of our thoughts as we learn, and it enables us to share these thoughts with our classmates and on a larger public platform. These platforms provide a site of connection for everyone in the course, even as we participate in online learning from home.  

This assignment has encouraged me to reflect on the sorts of assessments I want to assign in my future classroom and, along with this week’s readings, has inspired me to think about digital literacy and its importance in a new way. I have known for a while that it is essential to build digital literacy in our students as the world and our forms of communication are becoming increasingly digitized. However, the idea of deep learning raised in the ResourcEd reading (2017) provides guidelines regarding the sorts of skills teachers need to help their students build. I made the following graphic to display these skills in a visual format. I have placed the skills in individual circles around the deep learning central circle; I made all of the skill circles the same size and colour because I believe that all of these abilities are equally important, and they all influence one another as students develop their knowledge. However, I made the text for each skill a different colour because each one is also singular and significant.

I want to make sure that I am an educator who encourages my students to develop each of these skills through the work they are completing, whether that learning happens online or in a more traditional format. My assignments should enable students to be collaborative and creative, and critical thinking should be a regular occurrence in the classroom. Further, students should learn how to engage in problem-solving regarding critical social issues, should consistently develop their character in and outside of the classroom, and should be able to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively on different platforms and through different media. It is my job as a teacher to facilitate the growth of these skills in my lessons, assignments, and discussions with students. This portfolio assignment and this week’s readings have highlighted the importance of using diverse activities in the classroom that allow students to take the lead in designing and completing their assignments. As this course continues and as I enter into practice teaching, I want to make sure that I remember the importance of developing digital literacy and creating engaging assignments for students that allow them to exercise these skills and demonstrate their knowledge.

References

Media Smarts. (2018). Classroom guide: Integrating digital literacy into your classroom practice, pp. 9-18. https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/guides/classroom_guide_digital_literacy.pdf

As I have delved into an exploration of what multiliteracies pedagogy is over the last few weeks, it has become clear that a lot of the educational issues that are important to me are integral to multiliteracies pedagogy and multimodal meaning-making. Some of the most important thoughts I bring to my educational practice involve how to make lessons accessible to students, how to engage different sorts of learners, and how to make use of diverse resources. Multiliteracies theory acknowledges the importance of all of these issues and places them at the forefront of pedagogical consideration.

Since beginning this course, there have been three main considerations in my mind. The first is a quotation from an article about literacy education by Christianna Alger. She writes, “effective teaching requires a commitment to engage both head and heart” (Alger, 2007, p. 620). This quotation in particular stood out to me because it applies to both students and the educators who design lessons for them. Educators need to engage the heads and hearts of their students in addition to engaging their own heads and hearts in finding resources, lesson planning, and the in-class process of education. As multiliteracies pedagogy points out, it is essential to inspire students by providing them with interesting content, and it is necessary to also engage their hearts so that they have an emotional stake in their education and a desire to succeed. This is a fairly obvious point to educators; we want students to feel engaged in the work they do in the classroom.

However, when I considered this quotation as it applies to educators, how to think through and apply some of the important and more novel aspects of multiliteracies pedagogy became clearer to me. For instance, multiliteracies pedagogy emphasizes educators being able to make purposeful choices from their repertoires of content and knowledge to create multimodal lessons (Kalantzis & Cope, 2019). When I think about this point in relation to Alger’s quotation, it becomes evident that it is and will continue to be essential for me to check in with myself as an educator and ensure that my knowledge (my head) is up to date on the latest pedagogical theories and technologies available to me. In addition, I need to regularly self-reflect to ensure that my heart is in the right place. I must make the right choices for my students when planning lessons. This involves several considerations, including meeting students’ diverse needs, having the compassion to ensure that my lessons will be manageable without placing undue stress on my students’ mental or emotional wellbeing, and making sure that I come to my classroom as an educator committed to anti-racist and inclusive practices.

That last point about inclusivity leads me to the second concern I have been reflecting on, which is equity in multimodal education. Multimodal pedagogy involves teaching using various forms of meaning-making and allowing students to submit assignments that make use of these various modes too. These modes can be text-based, oral, visual, spatial, and/or gestural (Kalantzis & Cope, 2019). This includes digital content like videos, audio recordings, or digital artifacts, spatial or movement-based activities like those often used in drama, and more traditional written artifacts. However, it is essential to consider the fact that students have differential access to and knowledge-bases concerning technology. Many students, especially those from lower-income families, do not have access to a wide variety of technologies in their homes. I am especially cognizant of this fact, as my mother has been a primary/junior educator in a low-income neighbourhood for over thirty years. She always has to consider her assignments carefully, as most of her students do not have access to technology that would enable them to film videos at home, create audio recordings, or even type assignments. This situation became especially clear in March 2020 when all learning suddenly became virtual. Many of my mother’s students did not have the resources to attend synchronous lessons online; some did not even have access to the Internet at home.

Due to my familiarity with these sorts of situations and their prominence even in our increasingly digital world, I recognize that assignments must provide options so that students can not only use the modes of meaning-making that work best for them but can also use the ones that are most accessible to them. This issue of access is just one of the many equity issues that are at the forefront of my mind. I want to ensure that my classroom functions as a safe space for students of all genders, races, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes. I believe in the inherent value and potential of every student and want them all to flourish in my classroom. Teaching using multiliteracies pedagogy, and making use of multimodal pedagogy, will enable me to regularly consider my practices.

Finally, I have been thinking a lot about modes of pedagogy and how to consistently move beyond mere content delivery in my instruction at the secondary level. As Kalantzis and Cope (n.d.) note, there are four approaches to pedagogy. These involve progressive pedagogy, which is about student experiences, traditional pedagogy, which involves overt instruction, critical pedagogy, which is about student analysis of content, and applied learning, which focuses on transformed practice and applying learned concepts to new contexts.

As my main teachable subject is English, I will likely be working in a high school English classroom, which I believe provides myriad opportunities for moving beyond overt instruction. While I recognize that certain topics will require me to deliver a traditional lesson to provide students with the ideas and terminology they need to explore topics in English, I want to focus on critical analysis of texts and the application of ideas to new contexts through discussion in my classes. When I worked as a teaching assistant leading two tutorials on Shakespeare’s Histories and Tragedies, I liked to use multimodal methodologies in my lessons, even though I did not realize at the time that I was using this pedagogical framework. One activity that I found worked extremely well for engaging my small group of post-secondary students was to show them several clips of one scene from different productions of a Shakespearean play. We would then compare these clips to the students’ imaginings of what went on in the scene as they read the plays, and I would record their observations on the board. I had prompting questions prepared to get them talking, but would mostly allow the students to engage with one another and focus on whichever aspects of the production interested them. 

What I found from implementing these lessons was that my students were far more engaged and got a lot more out of the content when they could bring their perspectives to the videos and speak to one another about them. These lessons were very exciting for me and my students. The students told me they liked seeing the videos and were better able to understand the plays by watching scenes, which was something they did not do in the weekly lectures. I enjoyed getting to hear my students’ perspectives on the course content. What this proved to me is that, while overt instruction has its place, students respond very well to activities that ask them to analyze content and apply their knowledge. These multimodal methods of instruction are enjoyable for students while helping them to develop a variety of literacy-related skills. If I get the opportunity in practicum, I would like to try activities like these with my secondary students.

Overall, right from the outset of this course, it is clear to me how important multiliteracies and multimodal pedagogy is for both educators and their students. However, as Alger (2007) notes, expressed commitment to literacy instruction does not always lead to committed action. I plan to keep this idea in mind when I begin my teaching placement in November to ensure that I am thinking about issues of literacy, equity, and engagement, in addition to the development of critical literacy skills in my students as I teach.

References

Alger, C. (2007). Engaging student teachers’ hearts and minds in the struggle to address (il)literacy in content area classrooms. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(8), 620-630. http://www.jstor.com/stable/30139625

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (n.d.). The “how” of multiliteracies: Recruiting four pedagogical traditions [Infographic]. Newlearningonline.com. https://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies/theory

While reflecting on the course readings about multiliteracies and the importance of multimodal teaching in the classroom, I have been thinking about how these pedagogical methods reflect the ethical responsibilities of teachers in Ontario. As a summary of this reflection process, I made this chart that examines how multiliteracies and multimodal teaching will enable me to fulfill the Ontario College of Teachers’ ethical standards for educators.

References