1. Multiliteracies
Complex Simplicity
By Sheri Leeder
EDUC 5436
October 11, 2013

2. From Literacy to Multiliteracies

Singular literacy implies an autonomous skill set but has been
pluralized as multiliteracies to allow for the consideration of
historical, social and cultural differences.

Multiliteracies go beyond standard writing and speaking to include
nonlinguistic representations and ways of communicating that
include, but are not limited to the use of technology.
(adapted from Jewitt, 2008)

While it may appear that this pluralization necessitates major
changes for today’s teachers, slight changes to traditional teaching
combined with a genuine interest in the students’ interests and
abilities may be all that are needed to embrace a multiliteracies
approach.

3. Communication and Literacies

Whether you consider communication from a behaviourist, cognitive
or humanistic perspective, learning to communicate comes
naturally.

Even the earliest cries and coos of a new born baby carry meaning.

Becoming literate, on the other hand, has traditionally been
understood as the ability to read and write. While some societies
such as Yoruba in South Africa, never did embrace such a narrow
view (Thompson, p. 12), today’s technological developments are
helping us see that even reading and writing are not isolated skills.

Communication, on paper, on screen, or by any medium, may
actually be far more complex than we realize.

4. Teaching New Literacies

In order for students to internalize new learning (through overt
instruction) teachings must, at least in part, be connected to
something a student already knows about (situated practice).

One of the key elements of a multiliteracies approach is that
students are able to realize new abilities and freedoms through a
critical framing perspective.

5. The Multiliterate Learner

As complex beings with emotional, physical, spiritual, and
intellectual needs and strengths, the need to balance a variety of
strategies and techniques is essential.

What is required is,
a comprehensive approach…[that] acknowledges the importance of
both forms (phonemic awareness, phonics, mechanics, etc.) and
function (comprehension, purpose, meaning) of the literacy processes
and recognizes that learning occurs most effectively in a whole-partwhole context. (Morrow & Dougherty, 2007, p. 9)

6. All Kinds of Minds

To help teachers better understand the complexities of
each learner, Mel Levine, author of A Mind at a Time,
has identified over 70 different areas in which students
can display strengths or weaknesses:







Attention Control (which consists of 17 subskills)
Memory System (which consists of 3 subskills)
Language System (which consists of 6 subskills)
Motor System (which consists of 5 subskills)
Higher Thinking System (which consists of 26 subskills)
Sequential and Spacial Ordering Systems (which consists
of 5 subskills)
Social Thinking System (which consists of 10 subskills).

7. The Learning System

Combining Levine’s approach with current research, an examination
of various learning therapy programs, and my own experiences as
a resource teacher, I have created my own interpretation of the
learning system.

The map I have created is my artifact. Each area of learning, I think,
is intricately involved in literacy development, especially in light of
the pluralization of literacy toward a multiliteracies approach.

Feel free to explore the different branches of the map, and then click
the star in the lower right corner to continue the presentation.

8. * Click on the small stars to learn how each
component relates to literacy and the new
multiliteracies approach.
*
When you are finished exploring
these links, click this star to
continue the presentation:

9. Seeing

Vision is one way we perceive input. Skills such as visual acuity,
visual tracking and visual discrimination can all impact a students’
literacy development.

In terms of multiliteracies, teachers must be cognisant of the need
for students to be able to visually navigate and take in the
elements of visual modes of communication. For example, “[t]he
structure of many digital texts opens up options about where to
start reading a text—what reading path to take” (Jewitt, 2008, p.
259).
Back to Map

10. Hearing

Auditory acuity and perception is one way receive input. Not being
able to hear instructions or distinguish between sounds in a word
can have a tremendous impact on one’s literacy development.

With respect to multiliteracies in particular, even everyday speech is,
“intrinsically multimodal…. Spoken language is closely associated
with the audio mode in the use of intonation, inflection, pitch, tempo
and pause” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 179).
Back to Map

11. Smell/Taste

Despite ongoing neuropsychological research into the relationship
between our olfactory senses and learning (Verbeek, van Campen
& Cretien, 2013), I don’t think smell and taste have received much
attention as of yet in the field of education.
Back to Map

12. Touch/Feel

In order to benefit from the spacial, gestural and tactile modalities of
learning students must be able to receive the appropriate
proprioceptive and vestibular inputs (awareness of their position,
orientation, movement and balance).
Back to Map

13. Short term Memory

In order to be able to manipulate or think about something, the mind
must be able to hold onto what is being perceived long enough to
make any sense of it. Otherwise our perceptions are, as the
expression goes, going in one ear and out the other.

Any mode of communication requires being able to remember what
you would like to communicate or what someone else is sharing/has
communicated during an exchange.
Back to Map

14. Visual Memory

One reason the multimodal approach to literacy is essential is
because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. For
some students, being able to engage with a visual representation
may make learning and/or literacy development easier.

From a multiliteracies perspective, the expression, “a picture is
worth a thousand words,” has never rung so true.
Back to Map

15. Kinesthetic Memory

One reason the multimodal literacies approach is essential is
because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. From
basic kinesthetic learning styles to concentrated Brain Gym
activities, movement has long been associated with greater brain
activity and enhanced memory ability. (Kaplan et al., 2012)

From a multiliteracies perspective, movements such as gestures
and body language are important modes of communicating.
Back to Map

16. Auditory Memory

One reason multimodality is essential is because everyone has
different strengths and weaknesses. For some students, being able
to sequentially and spatially grasp sounds can provide greater
opportunities for receiving and responding to audio representations
of meaning.

Jewitt references van Leeuwen’s (1999) work on the materiality of
the resources of sound (e.g., pitch, volume, breathing, rhythm, and
so on) in explaining new potentials within multiliteracies (Jewitt, p.
246).
Back to Map

17. Working Memory

Working memory, as Levine explains, is the ability to, “retain the
beginning of an explanation while listening to the rest of it…[and]
hold multiple immediate plans and intentions” (2002, p. 100).

Research continues to show, “high working memory capacity
students are very good at acquiring, processing and integrating all
types of new information before moving it to storage (Learning
Disabilities Association of Minnesota 2007) and are thus very
capable learners” (Kyndt, Cascallar & Dochy, 2011, p. 293)”
Back to Map

18. Long term Memory

In order to engage in the creating and reconsidering of ideas, long
term memory is essential. In order to construct, deconstruct and
reconstruct meaning within multiliteracies, learners need to be able
to efficiently and effectively file and retrieve layers of ideas,
experiences and ways of thinking.
Back to Map

19. Manipulating Ideas and Thoughts

Put simply, this is our thinking ability.

Some people prefer making sense of things in a linear way while
others engage in more divergent or dynamic ways, all of which
involve an ability to make sense of things through our own individual
experiences.

“Consequently, any given mode is contingent on fluid and dynamic
resources of meaning” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 247).
Back to Map

20. Linear Thinking

Linear thinking is similar to what Mel Levine calls, “rule-guided
thinking” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 207). This type of thinking is typically
taught through overt instruction. It includes being able to do things
like multiplication or long division.

The idea of checking your thinking can be interpreted as a type of a
linear critical thinking step in which the learner checks their answer
against the rule or pattern that they have learned.

The false concept of common sense is also included in this area of
thinking. Unfortunately, when an idea or thought is checked against
one’s social and cultural experiences, a common sense exists only
among those within your social or cultural community making the
inclusion of a more global perspective key to the multiliteracies
approach.
Back to Map

21. DynamicThinking

This area of the learning and/or literacy process could be
considered conceptualizing.

The great question: Where do our thoughts come from?

Dynamic thinking is very much realized within multiliteracies in
several ways. For one, following hyperlinks and creating our own
paths of thought are a materialization of our dynamic thinking.
Back to Map

22. Experience: Funds of Knowledge

The thinking process is unequivocately linked to our experiences.

Regardless of the nature versus nurture debate, a learner’s funds of
knowledge makes a tremendous impact within multiliteracies.

“The ways in which people use language and make sense is
inextricably linked to the beliefs and values of particular
communities and the sense of self” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 260).
Back to Map

23. Selecting Meanings

In the process of thinking, I believe students must assign value to
ideas and make choices about which to select and which to
disregard. I think this is where the concept of semiotics, or the
construction of meaning happens. In the process of
“matching…target knowledges with particular modal affordances,”
meanings are made and remade (designed)… when students engage with
them for the purposes of making their own meanings in lesson
practices….Learning increasingly involves students in working across
different sites of expression, negotiating and creating new flexible spaces
for planning, thinking, hypothesizing, testing, designing, and realizing
ideas….In such a view, students need to learn how to recognize what is
salient in a complex multimodal text, how to read across the modal
elements in a textbook or IWB, how to move from the representation of a
phenomenon in an animation to a static image or written paragraph, and
how to navigate through the multiple paths of a text. (Jewitt, 2008, pp.
258-9)
Back to Map

24. Responding

From a Special education perspective, methods and abilities to
respond can often dependent on balance, strength, such as having
the fine motor skills to use a pencil or mouse or the large motor
skills to simply wave hello.

From a multiliteracies approach, far more modes of expression can
be encouraged and taught.

Further, the multiliteracies view presents the idea that through the
process of representing meanings, this “redesigning” can transform
the world and the person. (Cope & Kalantzis, p. 10)
Back to Map

25. Multimodalities
of multiliteracies, I
In light recognize the manyhave added this to my map to
explicitly
expressive modes beyond alphabetic
print or speech and behavioural materializations of learning.
For example, “a digital novel can be a multimodal configuration
of music and songs, voices, sketches, maps and photographs,
video clips, and written prose” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 259).
Back to Map

26. Written Response

Traditional focus of school literacy and dominant mode of evaluating
learning in school.

However according to Boulter (1999), “the representational and
communicational environment is changing in highly significant ways
that can be described as a shift from print as the primary medium of
dissemination toward digital media” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 243).
Back to Map

27. Verbal Response

Traditional modality of literacy included in the oral strand of The
Ontario Curriculum and realized through activities in school from
play-based learning through to formal presentations in class.

However, in light of muliliteracies, speech is considered to have only
limited “affordances” or possibilities because “sounds of speech
occur in time, and this temporal context and location shape what
can be subsequently done with (speech) sounds” (Jewitt, 2008, p.
247).
Back to Map

28. Behavioural Response

Gestural, spacial and physical expressions, particularly
kinaesthesia, physical contact expressions could be considered
behavioral modes of response.

According to Cope & Kalantzis, tactile Representations within
multiliteracies includes, “touch, smell and taste, the representation
to oneself of bodily sensations and feelings or representations to
others which ‘touch’ them bodily” (2009, pp. 12-13).
Back to Map

29. Phonemes

While Cope & Kalantzis (2009) acknowledge that “[t]here’s
something in sound-to-letter correspondence” (p. 16), a
multiliteracies perspective argues that there is, “not enough to
warrant its fetishisation by the back-to-basics people as one of the
keys to literacy” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 247).

However, “all modes, including the linguistic modes of writing and
speech, contribute to the construction of meaning in different ways”
(Jewitt, p. 247).
Back to Map

30. Morphemes

While Cope & Kalantzis (2009) acknowledge that “There’s
something in sound-to-letter correspondence” (p. 16), a
multiliteracies perspective argues that there is, “not enough to
warrant its fetishisation by the back-to-basics people as one of the
keys to literacy” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 247).

However, “all modes, including the linguistic modes of writing and
speech, contribute to the construction of meaning in different ways”
(Jewitt, p. 247).
Back to Map

31. Syntax

Syntax is the arrangement of words in a sentence but in a
multliteracies context, as cited by Cope and Kalantzis (2009),
Action expressed by verbs in sentences may be expressed by vectors in
images. Locative prepositions in language are like foregrounding or
backgrounding in images. Comparatives in language are like sizing and
placement in images. The given and the new of English clause structures
are like left/right placement in images (in the cultures of left to right,
viewing, at least), and the real/ideal in language is like top/down
placement in images (Kress, 2000b; Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). (p.
13)
Back to Map

32. Semantics - Written

Written semantics are the meanings expressed through written
symbols.

In the context of mulitiliteracies, this goes beyond traditional texts
to include newer technologies such as wikis, blogs, texts, etc.
Back to Map

33. Metalinguistics

In the context of multiliteracies, it may be even more important to
provide overt instruction regarding the metalinguistics of different
languages and cultures whether this be written, oral, or any other
mode of communication.
Back to Map

34. Oral Syntax

Difficulties with written syntax can sometimes indicate underlying
oral syntax difficulties. I can still remember being taught grammar
by being told to read both sentences and choose which one sounds
better but for those with oral syntax difficulty, “We are running” and
“We running” may sound equally viable.

Oral syntax is extremely important for success in traditional written
and spoken communications, but possibly less significant when
communicating in other modes.
Back to Map

35. Oral Semantics

Oral semantics are the meanings expressed through verbal
communication.

Oral semantics are remarkably tied to the multimodality of literacy,
learning and communication.

In resource, breaking tasks down into simpler tasks has been done
in terms of oral semantics by using robots to help autistic children
learn better communication and social skills. What an excellent
example of using new methods and modes to improve literacy skills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm3vE7YFsGM
Back to Map

36. Metalinguistics

In the context of multiliteracies, it may be even more important to
provide overt instruction regarding the metalinguistics of different
languages and cultures whether this be written, oral, or any mode of
communication.
Back to Map

37. Environment

This area of the learning system is really only a reinforcement of the
significance experience as it relates to social and physical
awareness of one’s surroundings and audiences in shaping one’s
response.
Back to Map

38. Emotional Awareness

This area is the metalinguistics of facial expression, body language
and social context.

This impacts the ability to respond or express and communicate
effectively.

From a special education perspective, just as phonics can be taught
explicitly, emotional awareness also has a linear component which
can be explicitly taught especially for children who are diagnosed
with autism.
Back to Map

39. Complexity of Multiliteracies

As so eloquently summed by Cope and Kalantzis, the parallellism
within the pedagogy of mulitliteracies,
means that the starting point for meaning in one mode may be a way of
extending one’s representational repertoire by shifting from favoured
modes to less comfortable ones. If the words don’t make sense, the
diagram might, and then the words start to make sense. But the
incommensurability of modes works pedagogically, too. The words make
sense because the picture conveys meaning that words could never (quite
or in a completely satisfactorily way) do. Conscious mode switching makes
for more powerful learning. (2009, p. 14)

This can also mean the difference, for some learners, between
learning and not learning.
Could the simple act of sharing a story possibly encompass
all of this?

40. Multiliteracies and Storytime

The following video of a kindergarten class engaged in Robert
Munch’s book, Love you Forever, combined with the lesson plan link
for a follow up computer drawing activity constitute, what I believe,
to be a traditional approach which encompasses the essence of the
multiliteracies pedagogy.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST59_-2ysFc
LESSON PLAN: http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~mwnyutu/paintlesson.html

41. Reading and Listening

As the children joined with the teacher in a choral reading of
repetitious words and phrases many of the learning/literacy
processes are engaged as illustrated below.

42. Viewing and Speaking

As the children shared about what they were seeing and hearing the
following learning/literacy processes seem also to be being
developed and enhanced.

43. Representing and Writing

As the children imitate the teacher’s gestures, respond to her body
language and gaze, and are provided with the opportunity to share
their responses to the story in picture and word, the richness of the
simple act of reading a storybook as multiliterate, multimodal
experience is realized.

44. Complex Simplicity

No matter your approach – skills, or experiential – learning and
literacy happens as we interact and engage with with each other in
both traditional and more modern multimodal ways. In doing so, a
plethora of opportunities are realized within the multiliteracies
perspective.

45. References
AldebaranRobotics. (2013, April 29). Robots teach communication to kids with autism. [Youtube video] Retrieved
October 18, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm3vE7YFsGM
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal. 4,
pp. 164-195. Retrieved October 19, 2013 from
http://newlearningonline.com/~newlearn/wpcontent/blogs.dir/35/files/2009/03/M-litsPaper13Apr08.pdf
Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Review of Research in Education 2008. 32(241)
Retrieved October 19 2013 from http://rre.sagepub.com/cgi/content/full/32/1/241
Kaplan R., Doeller C.F., Barnes G.R., Litvak V., Düzel E., Bandettini P.A., Burgess N. (2012). Movement-related theta
rhythm in humans: coordinating self-directed hippocampal learning. PLos Biol, 10(2). Retrieved October 18, 2013
from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1342967/1/1342967.pdf
Kyndt, E., Cascallar, E., Dochy, F. (2011, December 6). Individual differences in working memory capacity and
attention, and their relationship with students’ approaches to learning. Higher Education. 64, pp. 285-297. doi:
10.1007/s10734-011-9493-0

46. References
Levine, M. A Mind at a Time. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 2002.
Lynch, J. (2011). A Obsevational Study of Print Literacy in Canadian Preschool Classrooms. Early Childhood
Educational Journal. 38, pp. 329-338.
Morrow, L. M. & Doughterty, S. (2011, Spring/Summer). Early Literacy Development: Merging Perspectives That
Influence Practice. Journal of Reading Education. 36(3).
Nyutu, M., Learning With Technology & Literature Lesson Plan. Retrieved October 18, 2013 from
http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~mwnyutu/paintlesson.html
Traxler, K.. (2013, February 24). I’ll love you forever – Kindergarten Music Class [Youtube video] Retrieved October 18,
2013 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST59_-2ysFc
Verbeek, C. & van Campen, C. (2013, July). Inhaling Memories: Smell and taste memories in art, science and practice.
Bloomsbury Journals. 8(2), pp. 133-148.