Multiliteracies

When I think about multiliteracies as referring to the “multimodal ways of communicating through linguistic visual, auditory, gestural, and spatial forms” (Hill, 2007, p. 56) I think about how this can accommodate the different ways that children engage and express themselves and the meanings that they make about the world around them.  To understand literacy as something that is beyond the practice and skill of reading and writing is significant because children do have literacy practices that are not limited to these two traditional skills. “Children in early childhood have always used construction, drawing or illustrations, movement and sound to represent meaning.  The newer multimodal technologies add to children’s choice of medium to represent ideas and to comprehend the meanings in a range of texts” (p. 60).  In my work with younger children who are pre-readers and pre-writers, I have seen them express themselves within such an array of actions (dancing, gestures, oral storytelling, etc.) and creations (arts and scribbles, constructions, etc.) and to have to limit them to express themselves or make meaning of their surroundings with a small set or specific set of methods seems unethical and harmful for the possibilities of their potentialities.  Also, children are increasingly being exposed to digital literacies at home or even in the communities (in libraries, stores, even in centres and schools) that the literacy practices that they are learning from the exposure and engagement with varying digitized mediums cannot be ignored.

Reflecting on the modality of movement, I think about the children whom I’ve worked with who are more comfortable expressing themselves and exploring their space (and the people and things within it) in a more physical sense.  These children “use their bodies to make meanings that are sometimes difficult to represent accurately in written form” (Makin & Whiteman, 2007, p. 171) and even in verbal form and to restrict them to express themselves in these ways often becomes problematic for them.  In many situations, when these children are limited (or ‘encouraged’) to simply say what they are feeling or thinking but they don’t know how to verbally articulate it, they get confused and frustrated and as a result, ‘act out’.  Makin and Whiteman (2007) articulates that,

Throughout movement, it is possible to explore feelings, expression relationships and configurations that occur in everyday life in quite different ways than in using written words

…

[movement] extends the resources at their disposal to use oral and written language and to develop multimodal ways of communicating (p. 172).

They provide a possible way of seeing movement as a means for children to “communicate” and educators, adults altogether need to recognize the merits of physical actions in revealing what children are trying to express or how they are understanding themselves and their environment.  Young (n.d.) emphasizes this further and states that with movement such as dance, it is “to enter another world of language and literacy” (p. 15); a “non-language way of making meaning” (p. 5), all of which acknowledging movements as important modes of expression and exploration and fostering learning and enhancing literacy skills as a whole.

Overall, Hill (2007) also encourages us to take a balanced approach when we are teaching children literacy skills but also emphasizes the importance of learning and understanding the literacy strengths that each child has so that s/he is not left feeling frustrated because they cannot express her-/himself.

References:

Hill, S.  (2007).  Multiliteracies: towards the future.  –

Makin L. & Whiteman, P. (2007).  Multiliteracies and the arts.  In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz, & C. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice (2^nd ed.).  Marrickville, NSW: Maclennan & Petty – Elsevier. 

Young, P.  (n.d.).  Dancing from the inside out: lessons in the body as text.