Embracing multiliteracy for teaching and learning in higher education

Embracing multiliteracy for teaching and learning in higher education Ansurie Pillay School of Language, Literacies and Media Education University of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Through a review of the literature, this article argues that it is imperative that lecturers at institutions of higher education not just embrace multiliteracy for teaching and learning, but accept, incorporate and affirm the many literacies that students bring with them to the lecture room. Multiliteracy in the lecture room supplements traditional literacy pedagogy but focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone and uses pedagogies that extend beyond traditional face-to-face teaching environments. This article argues that active learning strategies that embrace and affirm multiliteracies, cultural and linguistic diversity, and multimodal textual practices could create dynamic learning environments that will arm students with the skills required to face a rapidly changing world.

Traditionally, literacy has centred on language only, with the emphasis on reading and writing. The concept ‘literacy’ assumes that language is stable with established, enduring rules, and with a single notion about the correct usage of language. Multiliteracy, in contrast, acknowledges three important aspects that influence our thinking about literacies: the need to recognise multiple lifeworlds and language forms as well as cultural and linguistic diversity; the escalating use of technology, the multiplicity and multimodality of communication channels and the strong presence of multimedia texts; and the need for critical literacy (Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Bull 2006). Through a review of the literature, this article argues that it is imperative that lecturers at institutions of higher education not just embrace multiliteracy for teaching and learning, but accept, incorporate and affirm the many literacies that students bring with them to the lecture room. Multiliteracy in the lecture room supplements traditional literacy pedagogy but focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone and uses pedagogies that extend beyond traditional face-to-face teaching environments. To argue my contention that it is imperative that lecturers at institutions of higher education embrace multiliteracy for teaching and learning, I intend considering four questions: © Unisa Press ISSN 1011-3487

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What happens in lecture rooms? What literacies do our students bring with them? How do we embrace and affirm multiliteracies? Why is it important to embrace multiliteracies for teaching and learning in higher education?

WHAT HAPPENS IN LECTURE ROOMS?

Hooks (1994) reminds us of something we are all very aware of: teaching and learning relationships are infused with power, dominance and authority. KoroLjungberg (2007) makes it clear that students see lecturers as representatives of control and power, and this hierarchical structure ensures that the lecturer’s social values are reinforced and legitimated by her dominant discourse (McKenna 2004). In schools, learners are socialised and controlled into accepting certain behaviours and routines, and often work out what the ‘correct’ answers are supposed to be. When these learners move to universities, they struggle to ascertain what it is that different lecturers want (Anstey and Bull 2006). Anstey and Bull (2006) rightly indicate that students can be disadvantaged by the social interactions in a lecture room because of the acculturing function and pedagogies used in their former schools. Heap (1985) and Baker (1991) point out that lecture room discourse as an acculturing factor transmits knowledge and communicates how the university and community operate. Thus, if a student comes from a social and cultural group that is not the same as the dominant university group, then that student does not know the rules of engagement, cannot participate in the lecture setting, can feel deficient, and lack confidence in engaging in the teaching and learning process going on around him (Anstey and Bull 2006). The student’s silence or non-participation is then seen as disobedience, lack of co-operation or even lack of intelligence. Boler (2004) asks a very important question: How do we recognise the complexity of silence as a dynamic element of dialogue; how can silence be heard? In her study on the intersection between academic literacies and student identities, McKenna (2004) found that students were considered, by their lecturers, to lack commitment if they did not outwardly show what lecturers considered indicators of successful learning – interacting with lecturers, visiting the library, and even, as one lecturer respondent indicated, how they walk along the corridor. As the lecturer noted, ‘You can tell which ones are motivated . . . you can tell as they walk along the corridor’. Thus, a fixed understanding of what a student should be remains in our minds. However, it is, of course, ludicrous to have a fixed notion of what a student should be especially when considering the vastly different literacy practices that students bring with them. Even more important is that some students come to university having gained access to the practices and nuances of academic conventions and some have not. Universities, Boler (2004) points out, generally function as ‘white men’s clubs’ – only certain individuals, who know the rules of behaviour, are 772

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welcomed, and they thrive in the familiar environment – and thus the ‘white men’s clubs’ ethos empowers those who already hold privileged positions within society. To reinforce the existing hierarchy, different voices carry different weight. Some voices are heard better than others. Some students, Hooks (1994) notes, come with the power to coerce, dominate and silence other voices. Some voices are silenced before they even start speaking. So, what happens to these silenced voices? McKenna (2004) observes that when students cannot read and write using the discourse and thus the literacy of the dominant voices, these students are seen as a problem. As university lecturers, we want our students to use our knowledge and our literacy norms, even if we have not made them explicit, and when students fail to reach our expectations, we use these norms to maintain the social order based on differences of home literacy and access to, what we see as, superior, dominant secondary literacies. Fairclough (1989) points out that once a discourse is superior and dominant, it becomes ‘obvious’ and seems to operate without political or ideological insinuations, what McKenna (2004) calls ‘common sense’. When our literacy practices become obvious, common sense and normal, anything different or alternate seems very wrong. Many questions have been asked about whose voices and whose knowledge count and whose voices and knowledge are discarded (Ladson-Billings 2000; Bernal 2002). Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) answer those questions by pointing out that knowledges of the upper and middle classes are knowledges that count, and to get those knowledges, you are either born with it or learn it at school, and in this way, society reproduces itself. At institutions of higher education, lecturers’ aims are often to fill up students with forms of cultural knowledge considered valuable by the dominant society, what Freire (1973) calls banking education. Thus, when institutions of higher learning claim to want to help disadvantaged students, they implement various programmes, without considering whose knowledge counts and what students bring to the process, and these programmes are subsequently often met with little success. Solorzano (1998) and Valenzuela (1999) point out that since race, gender, class, surnames, accents and sexuality help to determine how society functions, such programmes need to consider these factors, as well as consider the valuable literacies that students bring with them, literacies that are often ignored. WHAT LITERACIES DO OUR STUDENTS BRING WITH THEM?

I have already alluded to the fact that literacy practices are linked to social and cultural life and experiences (Anstey and Bull 2006). Barton, Hamilton and Ivanic (2000) found that life experiences provide a repertoire of resources about literacy and literacy practices, which contribute to who we are, contribute to our identity. Like our identities, such literacy practices are dynamic and changing (Tusting 2000). Anstey and Bull (2004) note that our literacies come from our prior knowledge of texts, including multimedia texts, from our knowledge about texts, from cultural knowledge and experiences, from social knowledge and experiences, and from 773

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technical knowledge and experiences, all of which come from the social, cultural and recreational life-worlds as well as the school world of pedagogies and disciplines. McKenna (2004) goes further by noting that in South Africa our literacy practices are historically constructed where class divides determine access to privileged literacies. Wells (1986) shows that students’ early literacy events seem to be a major determinant of their later academic success and Heath (1983) notes that students from middle class backgrounds are more likely to use interaction patterns with texts that are similar to those expected at higher education institutions. Auerbach (2001), Orellana (2003) and Yosso (2005), citing various studies, urge educators to recognise six forms of cultural capital or wealth that students possess, capital that informs the literacies students bring to classrooms. These forms of capital include aspirational capital which refers to the capacity by students to sustain hopes and dreams for the future, a culture of possibility that would break the links between parents’ status of not having the means and opportunities to attend institutions of higher learning and their children’s future academic attainment. In many South African universities, students reveal that they are the first in a family, community or village to participate in tertiary education, and thus their aspirational capital is a driving force in their determination to succeed. When lecturers ignore or undermine aspirational capital, they overlook a potential indicator of the literacies that students bring with them. A second form of cultural capital is linguistic capital which refers to the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style and in the literacies associated with a strong storytelling tradition of listening to and recounting oral histories and stories (Yosso 2005), a vibrant South African tradition that is often ignored. Storytelling skills may include memorisation, dramatic pauses, facial expressions, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme. Linguistic capital also refers to the ability to communicate via visual art, music or poetry. Students use linguistic capital to develop and draw on various language registers to communicate with different audiences. Bilingual students are often called upon to translate for their parents or other adults and develop multiple social tools of vocabulary, audience awareness, cross-cultural awareness, teaching and tutoring skills, civic and familial responsibility, and social maturity. The skills integrated into linguistic capital are skills of huge import in South African and global environments and should be embraced. A third form of cultural capital, familial capital, refers to knowledge nurtured among families that carry a sense of community history and memory (Yosso 2005). This form of cultural wealth engages a commitment to community well being. While De Kadt and Mathonsi (2003) found that a literacy practice amongst African communities included a strong concern with social issues, McKenna (2004), in her study on academic literacies and student identities, found that lecturers found this concern with social issues to be an unacceptable literacy practice. By lecturers negating familial capital, then, they are negating the building blocks of nation774


building and ubuntu, a truly South African concept that recognises and respects our common history, memory and humanity (Hewitt 2004). Social capital, the fourth form of cultural capital, can be understood as networks of people and community resources to help navigate through society’s institutions, a form of capital students often turn to but which is disregarded by lecturers (Yosso 2005). A fifth form of cultural capital, navigational capital, refers to skills of manoeuvring through social institutions not created with all communities in mind (Yosso 2005). Examples include strategies to navigate through racially-hostile university campuses, or students’ ability to sustain high levels of achievement, despite the presence of stressful events and conditions that place them at risk of doing poorly at university. Resistant capital, the sixth form of cultural capital, refers to the knowledge and skills encouraged through resistance behaviour that challenge inequality (Yosso 2005). Here, parents and/or communities consciously instruct their children to engage in behaviours and maintain attitudes that challenge an oppressive status quo. This form of capital is not just ignored, it is often vigorously suppressed. These forms of cultural capital that inform the literacies students bring to lecture rooms are changing, dynamic, and build on one another. These literacies are not just rich, they are ever-present, but we choose to ignore them. Heath (1983) rightly notes that the literacy practices in students’ homes and those expected of them in higher education institutions are very different. McKenna (2004), too, stresses that ways of knowing that stem from students’ literacy practices outside the lecture room are not valued inside the lecture room. Students also are usually thoroughly au fait with multimodal textual practices which are rarely reflected or acknowledged as part of academic literacies (Unsworth 2001). Irrespective of backgrounds, most students possess cellphones and with such technology come communication, filming, photography, texting, downloading, and sharing of information, amongst others. Bangert-Drowns and Pyke (2001) and Lankshear and Knoble (2003) indicate that university literacies are rendered irrelevant because they, to a large extent, ignore the digitization of students’ technically advanced every-day lives. The point being made is that we rarely utilise an integral part of our students’ technological repertoire, and often ignore the multiplicity and multimodality of other communication channels when teaching and learning in higher education. Boughey (2005) makes the point very clearly that students draw on different backgrounds to that of their lecturer because of differences in cultural contexts. When students’ backgrounds are different to that of their lecturer, then students’ literacies will probably not be the literacies that the lecturer possesses or values. Yet the students’ literacies are present, will not go away, are legitimate and of value and thus should be embraced and affirmed. HOW DO WE EMBRACE AND AFFIRM MULTILITERACIES?

Before we try to embrace and affirm multiliteracies, we must be aware of the various 775

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literacy practices in our classes. Students come from culturally and linguistically diverse groups and with various literacy practices. We need to ascertain what these are. To do this, Anstey and Bull (2006) urge us to be aware of what happens during interactions in lecture rooms and to ascertain who is excluded throughout these interactions. We also must become aware of how our own literacy practices influence how we conduct our classes. The lecture room is ultimately a social environment and talk and social interactions happen in specific, planned ways where, it is hoped, meanings and understandings are shared. But, these assumptions will advantage some students and disadvantage others because of the diversity in cultures, languages and learning styles that students bring with them. To rectify inequality in lecture rooms, Hooks (1994) encourages engaged pedagogy which requires that lecturers become aware of themselves not just as practitioners, but also as human beings. Hooks urges all educators to teach in a nonthreatening, anti-discriminatory way to ensure that self-actualisation becomes the goal of both lecturers and students. To do this, Hooks asks that lecturers acknowledge their authority and the limitations of it, and then work out how lecturers and students can learn together so that no one gains the kind of power to use the lecture room as a space of domination. When hierarchy is diffused, a sense of community can prevail. Next, Yosso, (2005) asks that we acknowledge and recognise the six forms of cultural capital that inform our students’ literacies, a practice that can transform the process of education. Yosso also stresses the need for lecturers to acknowledge and recognise students’ experiential knowledge as legitimate, appropriate and critical to lecturers’ teaching and students’ understanding, and analysing. Cope and Kalantzis (2000) urge lecturers to allow students to become active participants in lecture rooms so that they learn to become active participants in social change and dynamic designers of their social futures. To this end Cope and Kalantzis ask that we embrace multiliteracies and become open to and flexible towards functional grammar use in the lecture room. This would mean assisting students to describe language differences in terms of different cultures, subcultures, regions, and nationalities, amongst others. Lecturers would also need to recognise, acknowledge and utilise the multimodal channels of meaning, so integral to students’ lives. This means that we need to re-conceptualise our ideas of literacy and teaching and learning in the light of students’ easy access to, and sense of comfort, with technology (Reinking et al. 1998; Watts Pailliotet and Mosenthal 2000; Abbott 2001; Snyder and Bulfin 2006). Boughey (2005) reminds us that epistemological access involves much more than providing a set of rules, skills and strategies to swim through this process called academic learning. When students are given such strategies without bridging the gap between the lecturers’ worlds and students’ worlds, the process fails. Bullard and Claunchy (1988) suggest talking, negotiating, mediation, active engagement and making the strategies overt as ways into helping all parties recognise knowledge and what counts as knowledge. Boughey does recognise that such a process takes time, but it is time well spent. 776


Another way to embrace and affirm students’ various literacies is through the use of interactive, participatory, collaborative learning strategies. This could prove a huge leap for lecturers who will need to see themselves less as expert transmitters of knowledge and more as expert designers of intellectual experiences for students to discover knowledge (Smith and McGregor 1992). To discover knowledge, students need to work actively in purposeful ways, integrating new information with prior knowledge. Working as a class, in groups or pairs, students bring multiple perspectives and diverse backgrounds, learning styles, experiences and aspirations to the lecture-room. We immediately can ascertain how students are learning and what literacies they bring to the situation. Above all, Smith and McGregor (1992) ask that we do not assume a one size fits all approach. Strategies that Smith and McGregor (1992) suggest include classroom discussions, problem centred instruction, research groups, reading and responding to each others’ work, collaborative meaning-making of concepts, case studies, simulations, writing groups, drama strategies and peer teaching, amongst others. Collaborative learning represents a significant shift away from the typical teacher-centred or lecture-centred milieu in university lecture rooms. In collaborative classrooms, the face to face, lecturing/ listening/note-taking process does not disappear entirely, but it lives alongside other processes that are based in students’ discussion and active work with the course material. The collaborative strategies mentioned demand that students talk to each other to achieve an end or to produce a product. Golub (1988) points out that it is in the talking that much of the learning occurs. During this talking, students are directly involved in the learning process, co-operation and teamwork become paramount, and there is a responsibility for results. Thus, Smith and McGregor show us that co-operative learning tasks have both academic as well as social skills objectives. In other words, effective teaching and learning take place. Effective teaching and learning occur when students move closer to an insight of the subject being discussed. When the insight occurs by using strategies that actively involve students in acts of cognition, their understanding is made easier. With such environments, educators and students are partners involved in meaningful communication which benefit both students and teachers as they work in a cooperative relationship. In this type of environment, the teacher is attuned to the students’ emerging skills and abilities. This approach to education starts with what students know, and they are seen as active subjects who participate in the lecture, not objects to be worked on and fed information. Using a cycle of reflection and action, this process activates critical thinking and critical awareness in students. Besides such strategies, Anstey and Bull (2006) urge lecturers to encourage students to ask questions, and to show them how to become self-aware. Boler (2004) takes the lecturers’ responsibility further by asking that lecturers create a lecture rooms that provide a public space for marginalised and silenced voices to participate safely and with respect, a place where such voices can respond to, and challenge literacies rooted in privilege, supremacy and dominance. Anstey and Bull also ask that all players in this process – lecturers and students – ask questions about who 777

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is participating, what perspectives participants have, how their involvement affects the students’ positions, and what students need to do. Above all, students must gain necessary skills to become discriminatory in their choices, to examine texts -- paper, electronic and live – with authenticity and authority, to take a critical perspective, and ultimately to take control of their social futures. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO EMBRACE MULTILITERACIES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION?

Before answering this question, let’s focus on one assumption about institutions of higher education. Yosso (2005) points out that lecturers often assume that such institutions work, and that students, parents and communities need to change to conform to this already effective and equitable system. As mentioned earlier, Boler (2004) very brutally notes that universities, in the main, function as ‘white men’s clubs’ by further empowering those already in privileged positions in the world. If this is the thinking, it needs to be re-examined as we face our own prejudices and biases and confront some of our long held views of who our students are and the literacies that they bring with them, valuable resources which we choose to ignore. If the literacies that students bring with them have the power to empower and nurture these students, we need to ask why we choose to suppress such literacies. Yosso (2005) rightly asks us to realise and accept that higher education institutions are not spaces of objectivity, meritocracy, colourblindness, race neutrality and equal opportunity for our students. Cope and Kalantzis (2000) remind us that our students live in a world of local diversity and global connectedness, and that we need to equip students with skills to negotiate differences locally and globally. Commercial and labour markets are rapidly globalised and language diversity is becoming increasingly necessary. While English as a world language is used for commerce, media and politics, there is a strong recognition that there are many Englishes based on accent, style, origin, and professional and technical communication channels required for its use. Increasing migration, multiculturalism and global economic integration must be factored into our teaching so that our students are equipped to enter the world of work. Unsworth (2001) makes the point that a purely language based literacy pedagogy is insufficient for the rapidly evolving information age. If university lecture rooms are microcosms reflective of society’s hierarchies of race, gender, class and homophobia that shape and mould our world, then we have a responsibility to talk about these issues and allow marginalised literacies to be part of these discussions. We have to teach students how to think and analyse critically and be accountable for their opinions (Boler 2004), we have to expose students to experiences that will make them question their views and respect difference (Knight and Pearl 2000), and we have to re-evaluate our own pedagogy so that it leads to new questions and new ways of dealing with a changing material and social environment (Simon 1992). 778


McLaren (2003, 92) tells us ‘teaching and learning should be a process of inquiry, of critique; it should also be a process of constructing, of building a social imagination that works within a language of hope’. It is my contention that to achieve an effective teaching and learning environment and process, it is imperative that lecturers at institutions of higher education not just embrace multiliteracy for teaching and learning, but embrace and affirm the many literacies that their students bring with them to the lecture room. This article re-asserts its belief that active learning strategies that embrace and affirm multiliteracies, cultural and linguistic diversity, and multimodal textual practices could create dynamic learning environments that will arm students with the skills required to face a rapidly changing world. REFERENCES Abbott, C. 2001. ICT: Changing education. Cornwall: Routledge. Anstey, M. and G. Bull. 2006. Teaching and learning multiliteracies: Changing times, changing literacies. Newark: International Reading Association. ------. 2004. The literacy labyrinth. Australia: Pearson. Auerbach, S. 2001. Under co-construction: Parent roles in promoting college access for students of color. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Baker, C. 1999. Ethnomethodological studies of talk in educational settings. In Oral discourse and education, eds. B. Davies and P. Corson. New York: Springer. Ballard, B. and J. Clanchy. 1988. Literacy in the university: an ‘anthropological approach’. In Literacy by degrees, ed. G. Taylor. Milton Keynes: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Bangert-Drowns, R. L. and C. Pyke. 2001. A taxonomy of student engagement with educational software: An exploration of literate thinking with electronic text. Journal of Educational Computing Research 24 (3): 213–234. Barton, D., M. Hamilton and R. Ivanic. 2000. Situated literacies: Theorising reading and writing in context. London: Routledge. Bernal, D. 2002. Critical race theory and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry 8 (1): 105–126. Boler, M. 2004. Democratic dialogue in education: Troubling speech, disturbing silence. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Boughey, C. 2005. Epistemological access to the university: an alternative perspective. SAJHE 19 (3): 230–242. Bourdieu, P. and J. Passeron. 1977. Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage. Bull, G. 2006. Children’s literature: Using text to construct reality. In Children’s literature critical concepts in literary and cultural studies, ed. P. Hunt, 60–70. London: Routledge. Cope, B. and M. Kalantzis. 2000. Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Melbourne: Macmillan Publishers. De Kadt, E., and N. Mathonsi. 2003. Writing in English with an ‘African voice’: Ownership, identity and learning. Journal for Language Teaching 37 (1): 92--103. 779

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New York: SUNY Press. Watts Pailliotel, A. and P. Mosenthal. (Eds.). 2000. Reconceptualising literacy in the media age. Stamford: JAI Press. Wells, G. 1986. The meaning makers: Children learning language and using language to learn. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Yosso, T. J. 2005. Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education 8 (1): 69–91.

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