I think Jody Shipka’s “Toward a Composition Made Whole”
(2011) and The New London Group’s “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing
Social Futures: Designing Social Futures” (1996) have a remarkable amount in
common, given that they were published fifteen years apart. Specifically,
having recently been introduced to the subject and importance of multimodality,
I’m somewhat surprised and confused by the fact that, even though the concept
of multimodality has been around for quite some time now (especially with how
quickly academic work seems to become dated), scholars are still having to
justify its role in the classroom, even to their colleagues in English
departments.
Specifically, I think that both
of these pieces make arguments for the role of agency in multimodality: For
Shipka, a multimodal project can’t be complete or relevant unless students take
responsibility over their choices and decisions in the composition process.
This connects to many of the texts we have read so far, especially Selfe’s
urgency for students to have a critical engagement and awareness of the
decisions they make in utilizing technology.
The New
London Group strongly advocates for this level of student involvement as well,
making students Designers, a concept I think fits in well with Shipka’s stance
on multimodal composition—the strongest connection between the two texts I find
is when the New London Group writes, “Furthermore, the primary purpose of
metalanguage should be to identify and explain differences between texts, and
relate these to the contexts of culture and situation in which they seem to
work” (17). I think that the metalanguage argued for in this article could
mirror very well the conscious endeavor Shipka advocates for in multimodal
composition, especially when it is considered in the “larger context” (for the
New London Group, this would occur on the globalized level, for Shipka, I think
it would occur in the larger world outside the classroom that students have to
engage with in order to make their work relevant for the classroom).
I think
both of these texts are interesting to consider in relation to my timeline as
well. I investigated the interaction between remediated technologies entering
the space available in the classroom, and how the spaces are further remediated
because of the presence of technology (I feel like I need the Xzibit meme as a
visual aid on this…). As televisions, computers, cell phones, and the newest
gadgets enter the classroom, the relationship between student and teacher
changes, and therefore the pedagogy must change with it. The New London Group
and Shipka’s work combined seem to address this point, with Shipka
investigating more the presence and role of technology in pedagogy, and the New
London Group investigating more how to update pedagogy to fit this
ever-expansive world and the various cultures (access included) that students
bring into the classroom through experience and practice.
Overall,
both of these texts engage very effectively for me with the overall questions
we have brought up this semester, as well as the issues of multimodality and
how technology should be integrated into the English classroom.
Hi there Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteWell, I must say, your blog is one well-articulated piece of blogging, I commend thee in that regard! Furthermore, I comment to comment on how I totally agree with your connection between the two readings being the metalanguage students are in need of developing—ideally—to best critically analyse differing media. As teachers, it is obvious that tact and precision in conception are helpful to facilitating such a metalanguage learning outcome.
In addition, it is soooooo factually necessary for teachers to have in mind the idea that their students already possess an array of skills that they employ often and easily in their normal daily interactions in the world, so it is vital that a teacher invokes those same skills when trying to encourage the development of the classroom metalanguage. If teachers are able to encourage a sense of transferability and adaptability and applicability with the lessons being taught to the real world, everyday situations students perpetually face then the students are much more likely to embody the lessons as their own understanding. Once students get a sense of that value, or worth, to what they are being taught, then their metalanguage incorporates what is being taught as the ideas and notions that compose their own individual views, beliefs, and ideas.
But to return to my main point, well-articulated synthesis!
Comrade,
Kerry