Abstract: Some 15 years ago, the 10 people who had been brought together—assembled as much for their distinctly different views as for their broadly shared pedagogical and political outlook—set to discussing at least two distinct concerns embedded in the project and in the term multiliteracies. One such concern focused on theoretical frames and the other focused on domains of application. One frame was that of an apt pedagogy for the times: in my case, a frame with a central focus on sign making rather than sign use; on design rather than on critique; and on the multiplicity of resources for representation. The multi- of multiliteracies lay in differing aspects: the multiplicity of modes; of socially distinct (uses and forms of) language; or in the multiplicities of factors that constitute the social domain itself—culturally, linguistically, in terms of class, of gender, of age as generation. Since then, the members of the group have taken those aspects in different and yet connected directions. For me, the focus has remained on communication, representation, learning, seen as aspects of a more general process. When that is turned into an approach to learning and teaching, the learner as interpreter is central; the learner's interest (re-)shapes the materials presented by a teacher as the (curricular) prompt and transforms them in line with her or his interests. The teacher's role becomes that of providing the “ground” which the interpreter transforms into a prompt. Two terms are central in my approach: design and rhetoric. Design is “prospective” and makes the agency of the designer crucial. Assessment—the major device for social/pedagogic regulation—needs to fit that position: contrasting metrics aligned to power with metrics attuned to the learner's interpretations and principles evident in her or his signs of learning. Apt assessment requires means of recognition of signs of learning, of the semiotic work, of the agency of the interpreters/learners.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-08-06
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 13
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