Response to Andrew Yeung: Digital Literacy and Multiliteracies: Post 3

Andrew writes:
“Information becomes knowledge through learning, where educators promote a culture of flexibility,
creativity, innovation and initiative, supporting decentralized governance towards social construction.
Students become active participants and makers of social futures, where learners become actors
over audiences, players over spectators, agents over readers (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009).

I was interested to read your post this week as I have been wondering how really new Cope and
Kalantzis’ (2009) ideas are as they seem on one level to make such common sense. They are,
however, powerful reminders about the purpose of education generally and aims of literacy
pedagogy particularly!

Virtually all educational institutions strive to create a kind of literate person through their
programming. Cope and Kalantzis suggest we need to create “the conditions for learning that
support the growth of this kind of person: a person comfortable with themselves and flexible
enough to collaborate and negotiate with others who are different from themselves in order to
forge a common interest” (p. 174). This is similar to the stated purpose of the BC Curriculum
where teachers are tasked with providing learning experiences that enable learners to think
critically, communicate information from a broad knowledge base, are creative, flexible, make
independent decisions, work cooperatively, are principled and respectful of others, regardless
of differences (P. 2). Cope and Kalantzis, however, add a second important dimension to this
notion of a kind of person by stating that the purpose of literacy learning is to promote “active
citizenship, centred on learners as agents in their own knowledge processes, capable of
contributing their own as well as negotiating the difference between one community and the
next” (p. 172).

Cope and Kalantzis logically then ask an important question, “how do we create a literacy
pedagogy that promotes cultural flexibility, creativity, innovation and initiative” (p. 170)? In
answer, they provide an example of a 3 phase design model for new literacy meaning making.
First this involves students learning about ‘available designs’. These are the “discernable
patterns and conventions of representation”– whether they are linguistic, visual, audio,
gestural, tactile and spatial (p. 175). This also includes learning knowledge about genre and
discourse for these. While students are learning about available designs, they actively engaged
in ‘design’. This is the application of designs to make relevant and personal meanings, which
requires students to “appropriate, revoice and transform” available designs (p. 175). The result
of these first two processes is ‘the redesigned’. This is a transformation that occurs for both the
student designer and the world itself (p. 175).

This is a model that makes sense and is likely not unfamiliar to most teachers – though it is
articulated uniquely. For example, teachers have for many years taught ‘media literacy’ where
the aim is for students to develop their critical thinking/citizenship skills. In these units, they
might study various modes of representation and communication to better understand how
media messages are shaped and how they both influence and are influenced by our culture and
society. They may learn to recognize bias, spin, misinformation, or even lies. They might learn
how to identify or develop manipulation strategies – particularly with the purpose of making
viewers believe in certain ways. They might particularly learn about persuasion techniques.
Typically, after/while studying various modes and their vocabulary, grammar and discourses,
students would apply their media literacy learning by creating their own communications using
a variety of media tools and techniques. All of this is done within an age/developmentally
appropriate framework.

I agree with Cope and Kalantzis’ inspiring goal for literacy instruction to teach students to make
meaning, but not just literal meaning. Rather, we need to “conceive of meaning making as a
form of design or active and dynamic transformation of the social world, and its contemporary
forms increasingly multimodal, with linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, special modes of meaning
becoming increasingly integrated in everyday media and cultural practices” (p. 166).

From Cope and Kalantzis I take away the reminder that students need pedagogy that helps
them become “fully makers and remakers of signs and transformers of meaning” (p. 175). And
in this process, students need to be fully aware of their role as agents of meaning-making. They
need to see themselves as designers of meaning using the contemporary modes available to
them. I’d like to think most teachers consider these higher aims of education and the more
focused aims of their literacy instruction when they are designing lessons, activities and units.
I’d also like to believe that quality teachers focus on teaching literacy skills/competencies not as
ends in themselves or in traditional ways, but as means for helping students become skillful
communicators and meaning makers who use these skills and tools competently to make sense
of their world and to accomplish what they need to do as active citizens/agents in their world.

Citations:
1. Cope, B., Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New Literacies, New Learning,
Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4:3, 164, 195,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15544800903076044
2. Ministry of Education (2015). ‘Introduction to British Columbia’s Redesigned
Curriculum’.
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/sites/curriculum.gov.bc.ca/files/.../curriculum_intro.pdf