Multiliteracies Practice in Educational Contexts

Multiliteracies practice recognises that contemporary communication extends far beyond traditional print literacy to encompass a rich interplay of modes, media and cultural contexts. Originating from a critique of one-dimensional approaches, it foregrounds linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial semiotic resources, urging educators to embrace digital technologies, global interconnectedness and linguistic diversity. In educational settings, multiliteracies frameworks champion pedagogies that engage learners as active meaning-makers, co-constructing texts across diverse platforms, from touchscreen devices to embodied performance. This perspective connects literacy to social justice, emphasising the importance of cultural repertoires, identity and equity in learning. It invites teachers to design inquiry-based, collaborative tasks that mobilise students’ everyday literacies, foster critical reflection on power relations and nurture participatory citizenship. By attending to the materiality of text, the relational dynamics of classroom communities and the evolving demands of a networked world, multiliteracies practice offers a holistic model for twenty-first-century education.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

Multiliteracies Practice in Educational Contexts publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in multiliteracies practice in educational contexts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Multiliteracies: An approach to literacy that recognises multiple modes of meaning-making (linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial) across diverse cultural and digital contexts.

Multimodality: The integration of different semiotic resources—such as images, sound, movement and speech—into cohesive communicative artefacts.

Distributed authorship: A conceptual model describing collaborative and technology-mediated composition in which authorial agency is shared across human and non-human actors over time.

Assemblage: A theoretical lens that frames classroom practices as emergent configurations of heterogeneous elements, including people, policies, materials and discourses, interacting dynamically.

References

1. Boxed In and-and Busting Out: Playing in the Borderlands of Literacy Education. Language and Literacy (2024).
2. Rethinking the contributions of young people with learning disabilities to iPad storymaking: a new model of distributed authorship. Literacy (2023).
3. Unfolding joy in young children’s literacy practices in a Finnish early years classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy (2021).