by Raúl A. Mora, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín (Colombia)

While there has been research related to reading and writing in language teacher education in Colombia, research on 21st century literacies (Morrell, 2012) is a rather new field. Presentations related to topics such as multimodality (Kress, 2010), new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011), or multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009) are still scarce. That has been my main motivation to pursue this particular line of inquiry about the new ways to understand literacy (Mora, 2011), both in English (Mora, 2009) and Spanish (Mora, 2012).  Since I returned home in 2010, I have been working with my students at the undergraduate and graduate levels to develop lines of inquiry related to 21st century literacies. At present, there are a number of initiatives related to this area, which I would like to share with other colleagues and scholars.

Second Language Literacies in Medellín – Physical, Cultural, and Virtual Spaces as Language Interplay

 

The Literacy research line of the Student Research Group on Second Languages (Twitter: @srg_l2_upb), which I currently chair, intends to inquire how people in Medellín are appropriating and playing with second languages (Mora, 2013) in diverse spaces. To do this, we are relying on a framework we call “City as Literacy” (Mora, Castaño, Gómez, & Pulgarín, 2013), which draws from New Literacy Studies (Hamilton, 2000; Street, 2013), multimodality (Kress, 2010), polylanguaging (Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen & Møller, 2011), and metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010). With this framework, we are looking at, in this case, English, as a resource that emerges in different spaces in the city.

In our first research study, we have been exploring how people in physical (i.e. related to actual edifices, such as restaurants) and cultural (i.e. related to social interactions, such as the culture of tattoos) spaces (Edwards & Usher, 2008) are using English and what kind of messages emerge. Our findings (Mora, Castaño, Gómez, Pulgarín, Mejía-Vélez, & Ramírez, 2013; Mora, Gómez, Castaño, Pulgarín, Ramírez, & Mejía-Velez, 2013; Mora, Ramírez, Pulgarín, Mejía-Vélez, Castaño & Gómez, forthcoming are showing that people are playing with English as a way to promote their own identity as members of the city, as a space to break taboo norms in language use, and as a way to affirm certain personal stories and narratives. We have also discovered that use transcends the traditional use of English in names of establishments (Velez-Rendon, 2003) to offer more complex messages ranging from inspiration to irony, to name two.

We are at present on the early stages of a second study, where we will look at English literacies in the context of video games. In this study, the affiliated researchers are exploring both how other youth use English as a resource in these gaming communities and how they themselves rely on gaming to enhance their appropriation experience (Mora, Peláez, Jaramillo, Rojas-Echeverri, Castaño, & Zuluaga, forthcoming).

Multimodal Texts as Interplay of Academic and Colloquial Discourses

 

The notion of multimodality (Kress, 2010; Serafini, 2011; Vasudevan & Reilly, 2013) and its intent to integrate modes as communication resources (synaesthesia, Kalantzis & Cope, 2012) creates a space for the development of very interesting texts, full of more complex meanings. Both my preservice teachers and master’s students have been exploring the development of multimodal texts to describe different issues related to education.

With my graduate students, in the context of my graduate-level seminar on “literacies in second language contexts”, one of their assignments is the creation of multimodal essays to describe how they begin to see literacy practices and multimodal messages in a different light in their own teaching and their schools. With my undergraduate students, in one of my courses we introduced the development of multimodal texts first to discuss how they begin to create their identity as teachers. This semester, some of my students will create multimodal texts to present their first version of a philosophy of teaching statement whereas others have been playing with multimodal texts to create their performances of slam poetry they composed.

These are just two examples of some of our efforts to introduce 21st century literacies in our teacher education programs. Our early successes give us hope that we are in the right direction. I am optimistic that we will be able to engage in larger conversations about this topic and be active participants in the worldwide debates and directions for the field of 21st century literacies. This short text, then, is a solid first step in that direction.

 

References

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164-195. doi:10.1080/15544800903076044

Hamilton, M. (2000). Expanding the New Literacy Studies: Using photographs to explore literacy as social practice. En D. Barton, M. Hamilton & R. Ivanič (Eds.), Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context (pp. 15-32). Londres: Routledge.

Jørgensen, J. N., Karrebæk, M.S., Madsen, L. M. & Møller, J. S. (2011). Polylanguaging in superdiversity. Diversities, 13(2), 23-38.

Kalantzis, M. & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London, UK: Routledge.

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2011). New literacies: Everyday practices and social learning (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Open University Press.

Mora, R. A. (2009). It’s not how literate we are, but how we are literate. ASOCOPI Newsletter, August, 2-4.

Mora R. A. (2011, September).  Understanding what literacy is and where it comes from: lessons and Implications from a study of teachers and teacher educators.  Keynote Presentation at the 14th National ELT Conference, Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Mora, R. A. (2012b). Literacidad y el aprendizaje de lenguas: nuevas formas de entender los mundos y las palabras de nuestros estudiantes (Literacy and language learning: new ways to understand our students’ words and worlds). Revista Internacional Magisterio, 58, 52-56.

Mora, R. A. (2013). The notion of second languages: Responding to today’s linguistic ecologies. The Journal for ESL Teachers and Learners, Vol. II, 53-61.

Mora R. A., Castaño, M., Gómez, N., & Pulgarín C. (2013, May). The City as Literacy: A Study of English Practices in Medellín's Urban Spaces. Paper presented at the Ninth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mora, R. A., Castaño, M., Gómez, N., Pulgarín C., Mejía-Vélez, M. C., & Ramírez, N. (2013, August). Repensando las lenguas y lenguajes en la ciudad: Un análisis de prácticas en segundas lenguas en espacios urbanos en Medellín (Rethinking language and languages in the city: An analysis of second language practices in urban spaces in Medellín). Paper presented at the XXX Social Science Symposium – International Seminar, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín, Colombia.

Mora, R. A., Gómez, N., Castaño, M., Pulgarín, C., Ramírez, N., & Mejía-Velez, M. C. (2013, November). Urban Englishes in the (still?) Expanding Circle: An analysis of English literacy practices in urban spaces in Medellín. Paper presented at the 19th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes, Arizona State University, USA.

Mora, R. A., Peláez, S., Jaramillo, M., Rojas-Echeverri, B. E., Castaño, S. & Zuluaga, A. (forthcoming). English literacies and video game communities: A digital ethnography. Forthcoming paper presentation at the Tenth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Mora, R. A., Ramírez, N., Pulgarín, C., Mejía-Velez, M. C., Castaño, M., & Gómez, N. (forthcoming). An ethnography of English literacies in the city: Discoveries and pedagogical implications. Forthcoming paper presentation at the Tenth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Morrell, E. (2012). 21st-century literacies, critical media pedagogies, and language arts. The Reading Teacher, 66(4), 300-302. doi:10.1002/TRTR.01125

Otsuji, E. & Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(3), 240-254. doi:10.1080/14790710903414331

Serafini, F. (2011). Expanding perspectives for comprehending visual images in multimodal texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(5), 342-350. doi:10.1598/JAAL.54.5.4

Street, B. (2013). New Literacy Studies. In M. Grenfell, D. Bloome, C. Hardy, K. Pahl, J. Rowsell, & B. Street (Eds.), Language, Ethnography, and Education: Bridging New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu. New York, NY: Routledge.

Vasudevan, L. & Reilly, M. A. (2013). In the middle of something: Reflections on multimodal inquiry as artful bricolage. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(6), 455-459. doi:10.1002/JAAL.165

For examples of our current projects related to multimodal texts, visit:

 

http://ml2secondlanguageliteracies.wordpress.com/

http://communicativecompetencefive.wordpress.com/

http://contentareaenglishupb.wordpress.com/ (Examples coming in May)

by Amy Piotrowski

Marc Prensky (2001) refers to students who have grown up in the early 21st Century as “digital natives,” claiming that, “students today are all ‘native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet” (1).  Digital natives are now in teacher education programs, seeking to become the next generation of classroom teachers.  Do digital native preservice teachers come to teacher education programs fluent in technology?  Do digital natives already know how to use technology tools and know how to integrate technology tools into their teaching practices?  Have digital natives made educational technology coursework obsolete?

No, a review of the research literature suggests.

I conducted a review of 12 empirical studies examining the perceptions and beliefs of preservice teachers regarding technology integration.  I was interested in how preservice teachers learn about technology tools and how to use these tools in the classroom with students.  Since several studies use the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework as a theoretical basis (Jordan, 2011; Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2007; Koh & Divaharan, 2011; Schmidt, et al., 2009), I included in the review Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) and Koehler and Mishra’s (2009) explanations of the TPACK framework.

The research shows that preservice teachers benefit from instruction in technology tools and technology integration.  Jing (2009) as well as Kumar and Vigil (2011) found that preservice teachers spend lots of time using social networking tools, but that preservice teachers have little experience with other Web 2.0 tools.  In other words, many preservice teachers report using Facebook, but few preservice teachers have used potentially useful tools such as Wikispaces, Wordpress, or Diigo.  Anderson and Maninger (2007) concluded that teacher education coursework that included instruction in technology tools and technology integration raised preservice teachers’ measures of self-efficacy and confidence in using technology in their future classrooms.  Jordan (2011) found that preservice teachers were concerned about solving technical problems in their classrooms, suggesting that education technology courses should prepare students to troubleshoot issues with technology when they arise.  Pasternak (2007) reports that her preservice teachers “want to be comfortable with the technology with which they intend to practice” (p. 151).  Preservice teachers report a need for experience using technology tools before using these tools in the classroom.

The findings of Mishra and Koehler (2006) and Schmidt, et al. (2009) suggest that technology integration should be taught in content area education courses, not stand alone educational technology courses.  Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue, “Quality teaching requires developing a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content, and pedagogy, and using this understanding to develop appropriate, context-specific strategies and representations” (p. 1029).  In other words, technology integration is “context bound” and depends on the content being taught (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1032).  Young and Bush (2004) argue from the viewpoint of English Education that technology integration should be purposeful, based on the pedagogical goals of English Language Arts courses and that English Language Arts teachers should critically think about which technologies will enable their students to develop needed literacies. 

It would certainly be problematic for teacher educators to assume that preservice teachers already know technology tools and how to teach with them.  Knowing how to teach effectively with technology is not something preservice teachers are born with or pick up from today’s digital culture – it’s something preservice teachers need to learn in teacher education programs.

References

Anderson, S. & Maninger, R. (2007).  Preservice teachers’ abilities, beliefs, and intentions regarding technology integration.  Journal of Educational Computing Research, 37(2), 151-172.

Beach, R., & Doering, A. (2002).  Preservice English teachers acquiring literacy practices through technology tools. Language, Learning, and Technology, 6(3), 127-146.

Jing, L. (2009). Digital natives as preservice teachers: What technology preparation is needed? Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 25(3), 87-97.

Jordan, K. (2011). Beginning teacher knowledge: Results from a self-assessed TPACK survey. Australian Educational Computing, 26(1), 16-26.

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE Journal), 9(1), 60-70.

Koehler, M. J., Mishra, P., & Yahya, K. (2007). Tracing the development of teacher knowledge in a design seminar: Integrating content, pedagogy and technology. Computers & Education, 49(3), 740-762.

Koh, J. H., & Divaharan, S. (2011). Developing pre-service teachers' technology integration expertise through the TPACK-developing instructional model. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 44(1), 35-58. 

Kumar, S., & Vigil, K. (2011). The net generation as preservice teachers: Transferring familiarity with new technologies to educational environments. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 27(4), 144-153.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J.  (2006).  Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teacher knowledge.  Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

National Council of Teachers of English.  (2008).  Position statement: The NCTE definition of 21st century literacies.  Retrieved November 27, 2012, from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition

Pasternak, D.L. (2007).  Is technology used as practice?  A survey analysis of preservice English teachers’ perceptions and classroom practices.  Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 7(3), 140-157.

Prensky, M. (2001).  Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Schmidt, D., Baran, E., Thompson, A., Mishra, P., Koehler, M., & Shin, T.  Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): The development and validation of an assessment instrument for preservice teachers.  Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(2), 123-149.

Young, C.A., & Bush, J. (2004).  Teaching the English language arts with technology: A critical approach and pedagogical framework.  Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. 4(1), 1-22.