The notion of ‘multiliteracies’ describes the suite of essential skills students should possess in this globalized and digital age - Language magazine
Significance of Multiliteracies Today’s K–12 classrooms are brimming with the use of technology. Students use computers and websites to access digital materials, work on projects and produce presentation materials, and take assessments, to cite a few examples. Alongside this widespread technological adoption, the growing linguistic and cultural diversity in classrooms has broadened the essential literacy skills required for students. Literacy skills extend beyond reading and writing printed texts and increasingly involve navigating varied communication styles in diverse contexts.
The notion of “multiliteracies” more aptly describes the suite of essential skills students should possess in this globalized and digital age. Multiliteracies emphasize two main facets of language use: The first relates to various meaning-making patterns in different social and cultural contexts. The second has to do with multimodality—with the advancement of technology, where the written mode of meaning interfaces with various modes of meaning including audio, gestural, oral, spatial, tactile, and visual (Cope and Kalantzis, 2015).
In fact, multiliteracies have already been integrated into current academic standards designed to prepare all students for college and careers. Let’s take a sixth-grade reading standard for informational text as an example: “Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010, p. 39). This standard explicitly calls for students to demonstrate understanding and to integrate meanings from multiple formats and channels.