Appropriation of affordances of multiliteracies for Chinese literacy teaching in Canada

Over the past two decades, global connectedness and technological changes have prompted a reconsideration of the traditional literacy curricula and pedagogy, and the roles both teachers and students play (Kalantzis and Cope 2012; Author 2013, 2018). According to a National Household Survey 2011, the largest source of immigrants in Canada is Asia and the most common language spoken, besides English and French which are the two official languages, is Chinese. Apart from the current significance of Chinese language which triggers governments to encourage their citizens to learn it, many Chinese immigrants in Canada are looking to have their children learn their language by establishing Chinese schools where interested locals can attend as well. At present, Canada has 30 Confucius institutes and classrooms across the country to help familiarize people with Chinese culture and language (Hanban 2015) which is a substantial growth compared to 1899 when the first Chinese school was established by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association to help children learn Chinese (Liu and Bebbington 2012).

Students from English-speaking countries are working hard to improve their Chinese literacy, but the literacy teaching methods their Chinese educators are using are lagging behind (Li 2013). One problem is that Chinese teachers have less experience in providing innovative teaching practices and resources for students. For example, Jin and Cortazzi (1998) noted that Chinese teachers have “very little creativity” (p. 756) in teaching young students and are faced with “limitations on resources” (p. 743) they can use for teaching Chinese literacy. This is in line with Albert’s (2011) findings that many Chinese teachers followed traditional Chinese literacy teaching methods, which pay more attention to reading and writing skills. Also, the study stated that they rely mainly on a written textbook in classrooms and lack the awareness needed to utilize multimodal resources such as technology tools, movies, or arts into their teaching.

However, to successfully function in the twenty-first century, students need to become multiliterate using multiple communication channels (Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Kalantzis and Cope 2017). Thus, it is important for teachers, in particular teachers of young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children, to help engage them in multimodal literacy practices (Kuby and Vaughn 2015). Relying solely on textual resources (e.g., printed materials) limits the ways students communicate and creatively make meaning. Further, although technological resources have been an essential part of literacy teaching, Chinese teachers of young CLD children do not have appropriate and relevant examples of innovative literacy teaching methods within a similar context from which they can learn and enhance their own classrooms (Li et al. 2012; Li et al. 2011). To respond to these challenges, in this paper, we present narratives of two in-service Chinese teachers of young CLD children in their journey with the use multiliteracies that they learned through their master program in Canada. This study was guided by this research question: What are Chinese teachers’ lived experiences in implementing multiliteracies in teaching Chinese literacy to young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children in Canada?

By examining existing literature on multiliteracies, we review the importance and effectiveness of implementing multiliteracies to support young CLD children’s literacy development.

We adopted a qualitative case study methodology (Yin 2014) to deeply understand how Chinese teachers who have experienced multiliteracies and multimodality perceive and apply a pedagogy of multiliteracies in teaching young CLD children Chinese literacy in Canada. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2005), “qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (p. 2). Moreover, a qualitative research “involves highly detailed rich descriptions of human behaviors and opinions” (Savenye and Robinson 2004, p. 1046) which enabled us to understand and interpret Chinese teachers’ perceptions and experiences of multiliteracies in teaching young children Chinese literacy in Canada.

According to Robson (2002), a case study “is a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context using multiple sources of evidence” (p. 178). Therefore, considering the definition of case study as well as our aim to deeply understand Chinese teachers’ perceptions and implementations of multiliteracies in teaching young children Chinese literacy in a Canadian teaching context, a case study provides a “unique example of real people in real situations” (Cohen et al. 2013, p. 289).

In order to obtain rich information for the research, purposeful sampling was employed (Patton 2002) which calls for the researcher to select participants based on the particular aims of the study (Coyne 1997). Therefore, according to our research goals of finding Chinese teachers who have experienced multiliteracies education and are teaching young children Chinese in Canada, the following selection criteria were made to look for ideal participants for our research: (a) Chinese teachers who are teaching young CLD children Chinese literacy in Canada, (b) Chinese teachers who have relevant education or training on multiliteracies theory and pedagogy, and (c) Chinese teachers who are interested in sharing their experiences and suggestions of applying multiliteracies in literacy teaching. After receiving the ethics approval, we started to contact Chinese schools in Canada to look for possible Chinese teachers who could fulfill the selection criteria. Finally, we recruited two Chinese teachers, Susan and Jane (pseudonyms) who fulfilled the three criteria and agreed to participate in our research. They studied multiliteracies and multimodality in their master programs in Canada and had more than 5 years of teaching experiences both in China and Canada.

When we specially asked about when and how Susan and Jane started to learn about multiliteracies, Susan responded in her first interview, “I started to learn about multiliteracies in my graduate studies in which I had classes that were about multiliteracies theory and pedagogy” (December 5, 2016). Susan also noted that she was teaching young children Chinese during her master’s program: “the classes I had about multiliteracies were mainly in the ECE (early childhood education) area, which was helpful to my practical teaching experiences” (December 5, 2016). In her interview, Jane also acknowledged the importance of her learning experiences of multiliteracies: “From my master study in Canada I started to know multiliteracies and multimodality” (December 6, 2016). While doing her master studies, Jane got a chance to teach young children Chinese in a local Chinese school, so she shared, “I found it benefits me a lot when I can apply what I learned from classes into my teaching environments as I was able to better understand how I can put multiliteracies theory and pedagogy into my own teaching setting” (Reflective Writing, January 12, 2017). Hence, it was revealed that the two Chinese teachers were able to access multiliteracies theories and pedagogies due to their Professional Master’s program in Canada.

Further, it was acknowledged that learning from the Professional Master’s program allowed Susan and Jane to recognize and understand affordances of multiliteracies in Chinese literacy teaching contexts in Canada. Susan admitted that she started to pay more attention to the issue of diversity in the early multiliteracies practices of young CLD children. For example, she shared in her first interview, “multiliteracies are developed to deal with the diversity trend in our society. One important reason is that multiliteracies provides creative ideas to facilitate teacher’s teaching methods and ways in their own classrooms upon students’ needs and interests” (December 5, 2016). Similarly, in her reflective writing, Susan confirmed her views about multiliteracies, “[m]y students came from different culture and language backgrounds, which brought so many differences and challenges in my teaching. Multiliteracies inspired me to come up with diverse ways to catch their different learning interests and needs” (January 6, 2017).

Jane explored and utilized technological and cultural resources that her students could draw upon. For example, she brought her laptop to her class and recommended every Wednesday as their Chinese Cartoon Day. On that day, drawing upon her students’ interests, experiences, and needs, Jane played a famous Chinese cartoon called XI YANG YANG YU HUI TAI LANG meaning Sheep Xi with Wolf Gray which had more than 500 episodes happening between sheep and wolf groups. Susan also used online videos to teach Chinese poems. The videos guided her students to watch, listen, comprehend, and make sense of poems which extended the literacy learning possibilities beyond traditional print-based texts.

Drawing upon multiliteracies pedagogies, Susan and Jane often put their effort in connecting Overt Instruction with Situated Practice. For instance, Susan tried to connect students’ prior experiences and knowledge with Chinese literacy learning so that during the Mid-Autumn Chinese Festival, she designed the activity of making a paper lantern to situate her students in participating in authentic cultural activities. Also, she encouraged her students to write their wishes on their lanterns and draw Chinese written couplets that they could stick on their house doors during the festival. Her Overt Instructions helped her students understand what tasks they needed to complete. Susan reported in her reflective writing that “many students were happily involved in these activities, and many of them made incredible lanterns or created amazing written couplets by themselves.” Instead of focusing mainly on Overt Instruction, therefore, her literacy teaching demonstrated her understanding of the complementary role of Overt Instruction in Situated Practice (Mills 2006).

Most importantly, interviews with Susan and Jane including their reflective writings and curriculum materials also confirmed that both Susan and Jane paid attention to higher order thinking (e.g., comprehension, critical thinking) beyond teaching the technical skills of reading and writing. In other words, they started to recognize and understand the complex phenomena of young CLD children’s multiliteracies practices. This is similar to what The New London Group (1996) stated that literacy teaching needed to be viewed holistically as a multiple, interconnected, continuous, dynamic, and emergent process.

Susan’s reflective writing reveals that “after I learned about multiliteracies, I held the belief that reading and writing should not be regarded as the dominant aspects of literacy teaching, students need to develop other literacy abilities such as comprehension and expression skills as well” (January 6, 2017). Jane shared in her reflective writing that “[m]ultiliteracies also teach me to realize a wide scope of literacy teaching and learning. Besides reading the textbooks and writing characters, teachers should pay attention to develop students’ different literacy abilities, such as critical thinking abilities, meaning-making and expressing” (January 12, 2017). For instance, Jane designed a poetic role-play practice to help her students apply the knowledge they learned to solve new problems in their studies. She also aimed to teach her students critical thinking about the four seasons in Beijing as indicated in her lesson plan (see Fig. 1). Jane started her class with an inquiry time to reflect on their favorite seasons. Then she used an iPad to allow her students to access pictures and videos about the scenery of four seasons in Beijing. In addition, Jane designed a drawing activity for her students to encourage them to represent and communicate their favorite seasons and activities they liked to do. Further, Jane proposed a speaking activity to allow students to speak about their favorite season in Chinese and the reasons why they chose a particular season.

Jane also noted that reading a series of stories was effective in helping her students systematically develop their critical thinking abilities. For example, she provided a series of eight story books about a group of rats living in a beautiful village. The stories were connected with each other and were gradually developed “to develop students’ critical thinking abilities” (Reflective Writing, January 12, 2017). Figure 2 shows two stories from this series, which talked about a mysterious staircase and an adventure in the mountains. By reading the first two books to students, she enabled her students to, as the New London Group stated, “gain the necessary personal and theoretical distance from what they have learned” (p. 87). Then, by showing students the pictures/images in the story books, she facilitated her students to “constructively critique it, account for its cultural location, creatively extend and apply it,” and “eventually innovate on their own” (The New London Group 1996, p. 87) by coming up with their diverse thoughts to predict what happened next in the story.

According to Susan’s first interview, “students were engaged in different Chinese literacy practices and focused more on my teaching” (December 5, 2016). In a similar manner, Jane also reported in her first interview that by implementing multiliteracies, her students “get motivated and can build confidence in literacy learning” (December 6, 2016). Their experiences of multiliteracies pedagogies revealed that they were able to provide young CLD children with diverse learning experiences and engage them actively in Chinese literacy learning.

Susan and Jane’s interviews, curriculum materials, and reflective writings reveal that Susan and Jane appropriated affordances of multiliteracies theories and pedagogies that they learned in their 2-year Professional Master’s program in Canada for young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. They both expressed the importance and positive outcomes of implementing multiliteracies in their Chinese literacy teaching contexts. By designing meaningful literacy activities discussed in the previous session, Susan and Jane revealed that they were strongly motivated to facilitate their students to recognize, value, and promote the multiplicity of cultures and meaning-making channels. In particular, Susan focused more on multiliteracies in dealing with the multiplicity of cultures in her class, while Jane paid more attention to the multiplicity of meaning-making channels/resources/modes for her young CLD students.

Taken together, their stories allow us to understand two affordances of multiliteracies in Chinese literacy teaching in Canada: (1) perceiving and designing the multiplicity of cultures and meaning-making channels, and (2) perceiving and designing the interconnectedness of multiliteracies pedagogies. Examining the four dimensions of multiliteracies pedagogies of two Chinese teachers’ literacy practices provides us with a better understanding of their perception and implementation of multiliteracies practices. In particular, using digital technologies, Susan and Jane made an effort to connect Situated Practice with Overt Instruction by incorporating students’ interests and life experiences outside the classroom.

For this, our findings highlighted how they actively perceived and appropriated available semiotic resources (as Available Designs, The New London Group 1996) including digital devices (e.g., iPads, on-line videos) in a purposeful and integrated manner to incorporate their students’ cultures, interests, and needs. In other words, by meaningfully connecting their students’ out-of-school experiences with classroom literacy learning, Susan and Jane demonstrated their efforts to design multiliteracies practices that were relevant and authentic to situate their young CLD children in meaningful literacy activities. Thus, in keeping with recent studies by Flewitt et al. (2015), they did not focus on teaching how to operate iPad, videos, or other digital devices which are increasingly available to young children in their homes. Rather, Susan and Jane acknowledged the importance of student agency in participating in the process of Design; this is a transformation process where their students became active co-designers who could appropriate their own cultures and semiotic tools (as Available Designs) to co-design meaningful multiliteracies activity resulting in constructing multimodal artifacts.

As such, Susan and Jane valued students’ diversity and engaged them in different Chinese literacy activities, which made it possible for their students to become, as Kalantzis and Cope (2005) also said, active meaning makers or designers in their literacy learning and construct multimodal artifacts. In this process of “designing” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009), Susan and Jane were not just consumers and users of pre-determined literacy curricula, but designers and co-creators of literacy curricula through orchestrating available multiple semiotic resources and appropriating the affordances of multiliteracies.

Rather than relying mainly on written textbooks, they started to use multiple semiotic resources. This also shows that teachers’ understanding of multiliteracies is improved as a result of pursuing multiliteracies graduate studies as teacher professional development. The way of what they used as semiotic resources and how they used semiotic resources changed. For example, as their teaching practices, Susan and Jane took their students’ diverse learning interests (e.g., making crafts) and learning needs (e.g., becoming active meaning makers, maximizing diverse communication and identity options) into consideration when they designed multiliteracies practices.

However, we found that most of their multiliteracies practices focused on the Situated Practice and Overt Instruction dimensions of the multiliteracies pedagogies with a few instances of the Critical Framing and Transformed Practice dimensions. This finding can relate to their challenges that Susan and Jane both encountered in their multiliteracies teaching. It is argued that merely being exposed to innovative instructional strategies and pedagogies does not necessarily lead to the acquisition of innovative instructional strategies and pedagogies. The process of “designing” in multiliteracies needs to be a transformative process. This transformation as noted by Rowsell et al. (2008) allows teachers to become active agents as they make choices about their own learning to impact student learning.

Jane also expressed in her reflective writing that school boards need to provide teachers with an opportunity to attend professional workshops or training programs to help them learn more about the implementations of multiliteracies and multimodality. In light of this, it is also recommended for teacher educators and policy makers to provide ongoing learning opportunities (Kayi-Aydar 2015; Kosnik et al. 2013; Rowsell, Kosnik, and Beck 2008) with teachers who could become multiliteracies designers in understanding, designing, and implementing multiliteracies practices working with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children through digital technologies.