Exploring practices of multiliteracies pedagogy through digital technologies: a narrative inquiry

Abstract

Digital technologies have fast become integral withinliteracy learning and teaching across contexts as stu-dents engage with a variety of digital and multimodaltexts. While teachers in New Zealand schools have ahigh degree of autonomy in the design and planningof literacy programs, little is currently known abouthow they understand and enact multiliteracies peda-gogy (MLP). Using data gathered via interviews andclassroom observations in an intermediate school inNew Zealand, this article adopts a narrative inquiryapproach to explore one teacher’s approaches to usingdigital technologies and texts within literacy instruc-tion. We explore in particular the ways in which MLPmay be enactedimplicitlyrather than explicitly, withinthe complex matrix of teachers’personal beliefs andlearning experiences, the perceived learning needs ofstudents, and the school curriculum. We conclude witha call for the conscious and purposeful teaching ofMLP, focusing on synaesthesia and the semiotic func-tions of texts.