Bayview Beach Resort, Batu Ferringhi Beach, Penang, Malaysia

27-30 September 1999

Designing a Decentring of Domination: Multiliteracies-in-action in a South African high school

Frank Rumboll

Saint Stithians College, Randburg , South Africa

Abstract

I propose to analyse a case study at a private boys' school in Johannesburg dedicated to the teaching of English through a multiliteracies theoretical framework. My paper will explore the impact of multiliteracies theorists' thinking on the St, Stithians College department of 8 English teachers and the 850 boys whom they teach. It will illustrate how a creatively transformative curriculum design was introduced into the school's system of English teaching and learning; it will then examine the nature of the resultant shifts in pedagogy and learning that were exemplified by teachers and by students. I will suggest that, through a multiliteracies approach to South African English teaching at the high school level, dominant discourses are able to be decentred, thereby allowing for a more representative presence of other discourses which traditional English teaching has been so successful in silencing. Examples of multiliteracies English teaching materials will be distributed; these will be used to demonstrate how, on a practical level, English educators are able to effect a "culture of innovation" in the context of which "social futures", powerfully linked to the literacy demands of the new millenium, can begin to be developed.

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Presentations by the South African Multiliteracies Group:

Each member of the group will present his or her own paper on how she or he is implementing Multiliteracies in a specific site.