Dynmanic changes of social, economic, cultural and technological realities in the 21st century have resulted in visible demands for new literacies which include multiple representational forms of meaning such as visual, aural, sign/gestural, print-based, and electronic forms. The blossoming of information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the past decades has dramatically changed our ways of thinking, communicating, schooling, and presenting information through new forms of media including hypertexts, multimedia, the Internet, and all other web-based resources. Such technological change has drawn the attention of many school leaders who require teachers to do more than simply how to operate new machines. Many literacy teachers, however, are baffled by the "intrusion" of new technologies into their customary teaching methods and prescribed syllabus, and are struggling with "he questions of how, when and where they should be using computers in the classroom" (Brown, 1999:4). It is therefore necessary for literacy teachers to understand the role and functions of new technologies in the classroom and learn how to make use of them to enhance literacy skills and academic development of their students. The concept of multiliteracies constructed by the New London Group (1996), which openly welcomes multiple forms of literacy associated ICTs and all cultural forms of literacy associated with complex multicultural societies, arises at the right time to extend the scope of traditional literacy to broaden educational curriculum and enhance formal teaching methods to foster language learners' cognitive engagement for academic and social success.
To explore a new literacy teaching approach relevant to the globalized economy, this case study is intended to investigate how second language (L2) learners may benefit from the adoption of multiliteracies practices intellectually and academically, and how the implementation of such an instructional approach may offer new insights for Second Language Education. This Sister-class Project is a computer-mediated project aiming to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to bring their cultural and linguistic knowledge to literacy learning in school and to work collaboratively with their peers on an academic project. The specific purposes of this study are to: 1) document innovative literacy practices that language teachers may implement to strengthen the L2 literacy skills and deepen the academic understanding of their students; 2) examine the educational impact of the integration of new literacy practices with traditional instructional methods on students' literacy learning; and 3) discuss the role of new technologies in language classrooms and the effective ways of using computer-assisted instructional tools to provide reinforcement for students' literacy practices.
The Sister-class Project extends the scope of the larger Multiliteracies Project from the Canadian context to an international context. It links up a school in Canada and a school in Hong Kong by creating a collaborative learning environment through a project website to enhance cultural and academic exchange as well as new knowledge generation among distant learners. The project connects a language arts class of Grade 7 students from Canada with an English language class of Secondary 1 students from Hong Kong. The students from the two schools were divided into various groups according to their topic preferences and worked together on a cultural newsletter project. The teachers and the students came up with a list of cultural topics that they believed would fit their curriculum goals and the interests of most students. The cultural topics covered a wide range of interests including festivals and food, travel, nature and environment, pop culture, sports and games, and so forth. Each group of students co-authored a cultural newsletter with their sister-class partners highlighting the important issues of their topic. To show appreciation to the students' native language and culture, the students were also asked to produce bilingual texts by translating their cultural texts into their L1. Stressing the positive effects of parental involvement in literacy education, the students were strongly encouraged to ask their parents to proofread or comment on their translations. At the end of the project, the students presented their cultural products in a newsletter exhibition in class. The students' final works have been published on the project website and displayed in the schools' showcases to demonstrate good models of collaborative projects and to allow their parents and the community to share and celebrate their academic accomplishments.
The noticeable increased motivation of the student participants to learn L2 through the global learning network, the impressive academic products they have jointly produced, and their overall positive feedback to the Sister-class Project have proved that L2 learners can benefit educationally from a) well-designed collaborative learning activities; b) effective use of new technologies and innovative literacy practices in the classroom; c) L1 reinforcement and cultural appreciation in school; and d) strong parental support in their education.
This case study attempts to discuss the effectiveness of multiliteracies pedagogy, which highlights the significance of activation of prior experiences (situated practice), explicit teaching of theories and concepts (overt instruction), development of critical thinking skills (critical framing), and application of taught knowledge in real life situations (transformed practice) (New London Group, 2000). This is done by addressing the following issues: 1) How do multiple forms of literacy (e.g. cultural literacy, multimodal literacy, out-of-school literacy) affect L2 students' literacy learning process? 2) How can multiliteracies be integrated with print-based curriculum to develop optimal L2 pedagogy? 3) How can online collaborative projects facilitate students' L2 learning, cognitive and intellectual development, and identity formation in order to fully participate in the globalized world? 4) What educational purposes do new technologies serve in literacy classrooms? How can the computer-based teaching approach adopted in the Sister-class Project assist students to develop the necessary literacy skills in the increasingly digitalized society? How can schools prepare both teachers and students for the technological challenges in the new century?
This study is developed based on the orientations and principals of the Multiliteracies Framework (New London Group, 2000) and the Academic Expertise Framework (Cummins, 2001) which jointly advocate the importance of educators' affirmation and appreciation of all students' native language and culture in school to promote their literacy learning, cognitive development, educational achievement, and identity construction. The Multiliteracies Framework, which stresses the growing impact of cultural and linguistic diversity and technological power in literacy education, is a good starting point to help us cross the boundaries among different cultural groups and investigate the pedagogical role of ICTs in the Information Age. The Academic Expertise Framework considers the interactions between teachers and students as the most immediate determinant of students' academic success and failure in school. To provide positive interactions for students to enhance their academic learning, the framework suggests that, within the teacher-students interpersonal space, teachers must affirm students' cultural and linguistic knowledge and personal value to maximize their identity investment in the learning process. For example, in a culturally diversified school setting, teachers need to show respect to all students' L1 and cultural values so as to motivate them to develop identities in academic learning and actively participate in school. Equally important is the activation of students' prior knowledge and learning experiences that may allow them to maximize their cognitive engagement to help them better understand the instructional content and function both linguistically and academically in school (Cummins, 2001).
The orientations of both the Multiliteracies Framework and the Academic Expertise Framework are corroborated by the positive outcome of the Sister-class Project which provides evidence for the following claims:
1) ICTs and new literacy practices can be integrated with and complement traditional teaching methods to help students learn functionally in academic settings.
2) ICTs allow students to acquire authentic L2 input and increase their motivation to develop L2 literacy skills.
3) Collaborative learning helps students remove learning anxieties and build up confidence to share academic ideas to co-construct new knowledge.
4) Collaborative learning promotes positive teacher-student interactions and collaborative power relations. In traditional classrooms, teachers normally take control of all learning procedures, lesson planning and class activities. Such a teacher-centered approach is offset by the sharing of cultural experiences and the co-construction of knowledge among teachers and students in the online collaborative project.
5)Multiliteracies pedagogy, which encourages students to bring their prior experiences and cultural knowledge into academic learning, proves the effectiveness of the student-centered teaching approach allowing students to take ownership of the learning process, invest their personal identities and develop deep understanding of the subject.
6) L1 knowledge functions as cultural capital to maximize L2 learners' identity investment and cognitive development in L1-supportive learning contexts.
7) Parental support and involvement in the production of bilingual texts makes students proud of their native language and culture which in turn enhance their academic learning in school.
The two research sites, Ashton Meadows Public School in Markham of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Our Lady's College in Wong Tai Sin of Hong Kong, provide the Sister-class Project with optimal opportunities to explore the effectiveness of multiliteracies practices in formal school settings because these two schools are advocating the use of new technologies by installing new desktops and laptops in the multi-media labs and in all classrooms, using high-speed Internet cable services, setting up school and class websites, investing in practical computer software, and buying new equipment or digital devices such as digital camcorders and digital cameras that the students may borrow to work on their academic projects.
Ashton Meadows Public School was officially opened in 1997. The school belongs to the York Region District School Board has about 800 students from Grade 1 to Grade 8. The overall educational goals of the school are to prepare and empower its students to achieve both in character development and academic growth, and to value students' cultural differences and linguistic backgrounds. The socio-economic backgrounds of the students vary from government-subsidized families, who are receiving housing welfare, to middle-upper class families, who own large houses around the school area. Many parents of the middle-upper class families are working in professional fields, whereas some parents of the working class families are single parents who have to financially support the whole family. There is a high degree of cultural and linguistic diversity in the school. The majority of the students are South-East Asians (e.g. Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese who constitute the highest population), Indians, and Africans. Most of the students come from immigrant families and hence ESL (English-as-a-second-language) backgrounds.
The school principal and most teachers find that their students normally speak their L1 outside the classroom (e.g. in the hallway, cafeteria, or playground) and have limited exposure to English learning materials at home. This is also true for those ESL students who were born in Canada. It is not surprising to find that most ESL students have difficulties in developing English vocabularies because they have little chance to practice English at home. Most of the ESL students may have competent English speaking skills, but are experiencing difficulties in meeting the minimum writing standard required by the curriculum. As a result, the school expects that this project may help its students improve their writing skills by investing in all potential computer-mediated instructional tools and adopting innovative teaching methods in the classroom. Meanwhile, the school leaders are paying equal attention to the students' identity development by affirming every student's native language and culture because they believe that L1 reinforcement may foster L2 learning in some constructive ways.
Our Lady's College is a well-established Catholic girls school in Hong Kong. Its class size (40-45 students in average) is much bigger than that of Ashton Meadows Public School (22-32 students in average). Although most of the students are native Cantonese-speakers, the medium of instruction is English for most subjects (except for Chinese Language, Chinese Literature, and Chinese History). The socio-economic backgrounds of the students vary from working class families to middle-upper families. Almost all of the parents are working full time. Most of the families are small in size, usually composed of the parents and 1-2 kid(s). Since all of the students speak English as their second language and their exposure to English input outside the school is very limited, the English proficiency of the students is not as high as that of the Canadian group. The students are able to meet the minimum English standard required by the school, but there is still a lot of work for the language teachers to do in order to improve the English literacy skills of the students.
The language arts teacher at Ashton Meadows Public School, Mrs. Annie Wu, is a highly professional and experienced teacher who has been teaching in the school since it opened. Her competent bilingual skills, strong teaching background and deep cultural knowledge enabled her to work effectively with her ESL students and evaluate the students' cultural works. The English literacy teacher at Our Lady's College, Sister Amy Lim, is also an enthusiastic educator who has shown strong interest and consistent support in this project. She has been serving in the school for more than 10 years. Both of the teachers have been trying their best to fit this project into their curriculum, help their students understand the project goals and producing their cultural newsletters, and facilitate the online discussions of their students. Their great motivation to learn multimedia literacy, devotion of additional time in this project, careful supervision of their students' works, positive interactions with the students and the parents, and the great contribution of innovative ideas and practical suggestions have made this project successful and rewarding.
Similar to the Canadian school system which consists of 8 elementary levels (Grade 1-8) and 4 secondary levels (Grade 9-12), the Hong Kong school system is composed of 6 primary levels (P.1-6) and 7 secondary levels (S.1-7). The reason for choosing a group of students from Canada and a group from Hong Kong as the project participants is that both of the Canadian government and the Hong Kong government are attempting to incorporate new technologies into formal school contexts to enable all students to learn literacy skills and academic subjects through effective ICT-mediated tools.
The target subjects of this project are Grade 7 students who are expected to have basic computer literacy skills to communicate with their peers online to work on an academic project. The reason for inviting a group of S.1 students from Hong Kong is that this learning group is undergoing a critical period during their transition from primary to secondary level. All P.6 students in Hong Kong are required to pass a standardized test developed by the Education and Manpower Bureau of Hong Kong in order to enter into the secondary program offered by their own schools or to be admitted by high-ranking (Band 1) secondary schools[1]. It is found (e.g. Man, Coniam & Lee 2003) that a large number of S.1 students are constantly experiencing educational difficulties when learning entirely new subjects and curriculum in a new environment. Such challenges are even greater for those students who are transferred from CMI (Chinese as the medium of instruction) primary schools to EMI (English as the medium of instruction) secondary schools. The three-month bridging programs offered to Secondary 1 students, which aim to prepare CMI primary level students to study EMI secondary curriculum, have been criticized as insufficient and ineffective (e.g. Johnson, 1998) because of the lack of eligible bilingual teachers and the inconsistency of program goals and plans. The Sister-class project is intended to offer language teachers some options to improve their existing instructional methods to help S.1 students succeed educationally and intellectually.
To enable the students to work effectively with their sister-class partners, a group of Grade 7 students from Markham of the GTA, who are in the same grade level with the Hong Kong group, was invited to participate in this project. Since the class size of the two groups is different (22 students from the Canada group, and 43 students from the Hong Kong group), the teachers and the researcher tried to match 5 students in one group (i.e. each group was composed of 3 Hong Kong students and 2 Canada students). All students were guaranteed to receive equal attention and academic support online both from the teachers and the researcher throughout the project.
The Sister-class Project has been carried out for two semesters (from Sept 2004 to June 2005). By adopting a qualitative case study approach, the data collection process of this study mainly included regular class observations, video-taping of class activities, online surveys, semi-structured focus group and individual interviews, online discussions, students' academic works, and written reflections.
Regular school visits and class observations took place once a week starting from the fall semester in 2004 (Sept-Oct 2004 and Feb-May 2005 at Ashton Meadows Public School; Nov 2004-Jan 2005 at Our Lady's College). During each class visit, the researcher took extensive notes about the teachers' instructional strategies, the students' responses and learning progress, the interactions between the teacher and the students, and the discussions among the students themselves while participating in class activities or completing certain tasks assigned by the teacher. Other than being an observer in the classroom, the researcher also worked as a co-teacher or a facilitator to help the teachers integrate new technologies with the existing curriculum, coordinate class activities and task-based activities, promote collaborative learning among sister-class partners, and provide multimedia instructions, technological help and academic advice to the students.
Some class activities involving multiliteracies practices were videotaped during school visits. For example, it was interesting to videotape the students' performance on Internet search, in-class discussions, English plays or dramas, as well as newsletter presentations to show their understanding about the cultural topics and their achievement of collaborative work.
Both of the teachers and the students were asked to fill out an online survey at the end of the fall term and the winter term. The survey questions have been developed and posted on the project website, aiming to gather information about the participants' practices, usages, comments and evaluations of the website. The participants were asked some general questions like: How often do you visit the website? What is your main purpose of visiting the website? What information would you expect to obtain from the website? How would you rate the website in terms of its educational effectiveness?
In order to have a full understanding about the participants' thoughts, experiences and reflections on the Sister-class Project and the multiliteracies teaching approach, both of the teachers and the students were invited to participate in either focus group interviews or individual interviews at the end of the project. The students who have Chinese background could choose to be interviewed in Chinese if they thought they could express themselves more clearly in their L1. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured approach suggested by Glesne and Peshkin (1992) to allow the interviewees to freely bring in any discussions that they were concerned about and believed to be important for their literacy teaching or literacy learning. The interviews were audio-taped only for research purposes with the permission from the teacher, the students and the parents.
With the flexible and user-friendly functions of the knowledge forum, which is a standard discussion forum widely used at OISE/UT that has been incorporated to the project website, both the researcher and the teachers were able to observe, monitor, and facilitate the students' online discussions. The students were allowed to participate in their online discussions regularly as both of the two schools were willing to integrate new technologies with their existing curriculum. For example, Our Lady's College offers a multi-media lesson to all students once a cycle. The teacher and the students could make good use of the multi-media lessons in the computer lab to communicate with their distant peers and to report their project progress through the Knowledge Forum. Similarly, Ashton Meadows Public School has recently installed 30 new laptops which were made available for all students in class with the support of high-speed wireless cable service allowing the students to work more efficiently and closely with their sister-class partners. In order to provide full technical support to the students, the researcher was responsible for: a) generating guided questions on the forum; b) maintaining personal profile and individual contact of each participant; c) coordinating and monitoring the students' discussions, providing clear guidelines and instructions at each stage of the project; d) assisting the participants to upload and download relevant materials in the shared directory and the web resources file; and e) providing examples of useful weblinks and critical feedback to the students' messages and writings
The academic writings produced by the students at different stages of the project were collected and evaluated by the teachers. The evaluation criteria were left open to the teachers enabling them to integrate this project into their marking schemes and to avoid minimal interference to their assessment scales. The class presentation of each group was also carefully assessed. All of the presentations were videotaped by a digital video (DV) camcorder. A copy of the DVD was kept in the schools as their own records, and another copy was locked in the research office for data analysis. With the consent of the participants, some of the videotapes will be uploaded on the project website.
The student participants were asked to write their comments on other groups' presentations on a self-evaluation sheet, and write their feedback and suggestions to the Sister-class Project on a reflection sheet at the end of the spring term 2005. Some of the student reflections, which provide evidence for the claims of this study, are recorded in the following section.
In their written reflection on the Sister-class Project and the multiliteracies practices adopted by their teacher, the student participants reported that the project offered them effective ways of gaining authentic English input, improving English writing skills, learning from other cultures, exchanging useful information and ideas with others, and using new technologies to produce creative academic works:
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"From this project, I have learned how to work with other students from another country whom I was not familiar with. I have also improved my English from the discussion and conversation with some English speaking students from a foreign county. The power point presentation was interesting, because I have never worked with a partner in a power point before. This experience was very useful for me." |
(Written reflection, 2005).
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"I have learned many new things about Hong Kong and Canada from the research we have done. Working with the students from overseas was a new experience for me." |
(Written reflection, 2005).
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"By doing this project, I have improved my writing in English because my peers helped me edit and correct my grammatical mistakes. I have also learned more about my own culture and Chinese New Year." |
(Written reflection, 2005).
Similar thoughts were expressed in some of the focus group interviews:
"Comparing to the textbooks and worksheets we have always been using in school, I prefer to learn English through new technologies such as language CD-ROMS, movies, the Internet, online language practices and other web resources. I think these technology-based activities would work better for us." (Student interview, 2005).
"I have never thought that I could work with my classmates and distant peers in a language project through the Internet. It is amazing that we could find all the information and images for our project from the Internet rather than going to the library to search for relevant materials from tones of books. I like this project very much!" (Student interview, 2005).
In a similar vein, the teacher participants showed positive reflections on the Sister-class Project which, as they believed, was successful in motivating the students to learn, fostering their literacy growth, and engaging them actively in literacy tasks and assignments through the innovative teaching approach and collaborative literacy project:
"My students greatly enjoyed working online with their peers, because they could exchange ideas in a very interesting and casual way. They were excited to get to know and collaborate with students from a foreign country to produce an academic project together. They were motivated to do a power-point presentation rather than a hard copy of their work. I think this project effectively helps the students acquire authentic English input from their sister-class partners." (Teacher interview, 2005).
"I think this project is effective in helping students who have learning difficulties complete their writing tasks. A student of mine, who has always been passive in literacy class, appeared to be interested in working with her partners online and started to be engaged more actively in the project. Another student, who has been weak in computer skills, became eager to learn through the project website in order to communicate with his peers." (Teacher interview, 2005).
The study has resulted in visible research outcomes as follows:
The students were motivated to work on an academic project through the Internet that they were all familiar with. They enjoyed the process of learning English vocabularies, grammatical rules, pronunciations, syntactic structures, and reading and writing strategies through some creative online resources, efficient computer software and multiple web-based activities.
In this project, the teachers were not occupying the "top" position in the classroom as they used to be. Similar to their students, they were also participants of the study, being involved in online discussions, sharing their own experiences and thoughts about the cultural topics, generating insightful ideas and suggestions, and giving comments to the cultural texts produced by the students. These balanced relationships greatly enhanced the co-construction of new knowledge and promoted collaborative relations of power between the teacher and the students both in the online learning context and in the classroom.
The project website provided each student with an equal opportunity to participate in group discussions and interact with the teacher to receive academic support and direct feedback. Compared to face-to-face interactions, those students who used to be shy and silent in the classroom appeared to feel more relaxed and comfortable to interact with their teachers through online conversations. Positive teachers-students interactions empowered all students, particularly those who are academically at risk, to develop positive leaning attitudes for productive knowledge construction and educational prosperity.
The teachers have shown respect and affirmation to the students' native language and cultural knowledge as valuable learning capitals to maximize their cognitive engagement and identity investment (Cummins, 2001) in the process of literacy learning. The ESL students no longer felt shameful or guilty to use their L1 in school; rather, they showed pride to their home culture and language which might consequently facilitate their process of identity negotiation. In addition, the project website functioned as a vehicle for the students to introduce themselves, demonstrate creative works that they developed in power-point presentations, scan and upload digital images, and save academic writings, cultural texts, research illustrations and so forth. The students' innovative design of power point presentations of their cultural newsletters enabled them to establish their personal and cultural identity on the web (Wood, 2004).
Through the extensive reading exercises and proper training of textual analysis, the students have learned how to select appropriate materials and information for their cultural topics, synthesize the arguments of various texts, critically analyze the perspectives and standpoints of different writers, and provide practical comments to their sister-class partners' writings. Cognitive engagement of the students was enhanced through their development of higher-order thinking skills and critical literacy skills when they were trained to provide critical feedback to their peers' works and to read their peers' writings between lines rather than reading the surface literal meaning of the text.
Through the effective integration of this computer-mediated project with their language curriculum, the students were motivated to learn through new technologies to interact and collaborate with their distant peers by exchanging cultural perspectives, offering academic help and critical advice, and obtaining authentic, comprehensible input for literacy development.
Instead of imposing a top-down traditional curriculum of examination-oriented syllabus, prescribed print texts, lesson plans, and materials from the teachers or school leaders, the student participants enjoyed learning English literacy in a relatively flexible, open, student-centered pedagogy in which they could freely constitute the curriculum together with the teachers to engage multiple forms of learning materials. (Kellner, 1997).
This Sister-class Project has attempted to encourage all educational practitioners to critically review the current instructional approaches and substantially improve literacy practices in formal school settings. Additional research is needed to document the effectiveness of multiliteracies practices across countries and learning contexts, and to develop more practical multiliteracies pedagogy to represent an appropriate instructional design for the educational and social futures of all students.
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[1] All public schools in Hong Kong are ranked into three bands (band 1 schools are ranked on the top, and band 3 schools are at the bottom of the scale) based on the students' academic outcomes, percentage of student admission into local universities and colle es, teacher-student ratio, school's teaching goals and teaching methods, medium of instruction, subject choices and class size.