Teacher Professional Learning in Multiliteracies Pedagogy: Exploring the Lived Curriculum of Preservice and In-service Educators
Abstract
The purpose of this exploratory case study is to examine the lived curriculum (Aoki, 1993) of preservice teachers enrolled in a Bachelor of Education language arts course and in-service teachers enrolled in an online graduate program, both with a focus on multiliteracies pedagogy. Through this study, the rationale is to understand how these formal professional learning experiences shape teachers’ perceptions of their literacy pedagogy. Specifically, the aim is to gain insight into how to promote multiliteracies pedagogy in preservice and in-service professional learning. This dissertation research builds upon two qualitative exploratory case studies (Stake, 2010; Yin, 2012) rooted in a theory of literacy learning and pedagogy called multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kalantzis and Cope, 2016) and two theories of curriculum: lived curriculum (Aoki, 1993) and curricular commonplaces (Schwab, 1973). I collected in-depth interviews and artifacts from six focal participants, three preservice and three in-service educators. For triangulation of data, other data sources included curriculum and program documents and interviews with the graduate program manager, the language arts program coordinator, and instructors from both programs. Through a reflexive iterative approach to data analysis the findings show that the preservice educators struggle in their coming-to-know multiliteracies through the language arts course as they simultaneously strive to build their foundational knowledge in a variety of content areas. There are also limited ways of seeing the pedagogy used in practice during preservice candidate practicums. However, preservice candidates did develop a disposition towards using multiliteracies in their perceptions of their developing literacy pedagogy. The in-service educators in the graduate program, having built foundational knowledge through their careers, such as lesson planning and assessment and evaluation of students, perceived a change in their literacy pedagogy to include multiliteracies. In-service educators engaged in plentiful opportunities to make meaning multimodally through their online courses. Conclusions suggest that immersion in teachers’ professional learning in multiliteracies, with opportunities to create a diversity of multimodal texts and to see and use the pedagogy in practice, is key to developing more than just a disposition to use multiliteracies. Further research on ways to create meaningful opportunities for preservice teachers within a pedagogy of multiliteracies is important.