Abstract

This study explores what happens when teachers, using the principles of Multiliteracies (New London Group) cross traditional boundaries between disciplines and schools, between schools and the communities within which they are situated, and utilise multiple literacies. The study explores how working in groups across curriculum, literacies and community impacts on the social, attitudinal and cognitive aspects of learning. The Grade 9 English classroom at Midrand High School (a well-resourced school) was used to teach the role of media in the dissemination of knowledge. The Science classroom at Mondeor High (a less well resourced school) was used to teach the science behind the environmental impact of electrical pylons. The Computer Literacy classroom was called in to assist learners from the two schools to communicate their specific 'subject-based' knowledge to one another. (Some problems were encountered when computers were not readily available to learners in the less well resourced school.) Learners were taught skills on a 'need-to-know' basis in an 'apprenticeship' model. The breaking of boundaries between the three subjects was highly successful as learners began to see the relationship between the three learning areas and the rationale for integrating them. In the Computer Literacy class learners were now learning with a purpose, in the Science class learners understood the need for disseminating important scientific findings that were pertinent, for example, to the wellbeing of poor people in 'informal settlements' ( previously called 'squatter camps') who were building their dwellings under pylons, ignorant of the fact that this could cause death through leukaemia, electrocution or fire. Learners not only took agency, but became potential activists who would take their campaign out of the school into the community. The project, which developed in a fluid and dynamic way, involved the four stages of a 'pedagogy of Multiliteracies' (New London Group), namely, situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice.

Bionote

Tony Antoniou Tony Antoniou is a teacher of Natural Sciences at a high school in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is interested in the application of Multiliteracies pedagogy to the teaching and learning of Science. He has a Masters degree in Science, but is interested in developing Science education in accordance with Multiliteracies principles, such as that the human mind is embodied, situated and social, and that literacies and modes can work together fruitfully to promote learning.

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Presentation Type
30min. Paper

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Country
South Africa