Designing Learning for Multimodal Literacy: Teaching Viewing and Representing

Designing Learning for Multimodal Literacy addresses the need to design learning for multimodal literacy in a world that is increasingly saturated with print and digital media.

In the current age, communication and interactions on social media are seldom made with language alone but are often accompanied with emojis, images, and videos, making meanings multimodally. Young people, including children, are also increasingly active in making videos of themselves, their ideas, and their experiences as part of their out-of-school literacy activities. In particular, for language teachers, the present shifts in our world require that teachers re-examine what they teach and how they can meaningfully and effectively teach the students in their classes today. At 8 years old, Alden created his own rap music video and shared it with the world. He wrote his own lyrics and set it against the music he remixed and meshed from a music download site. Alden is in your classroom today. As his teacher, what would you teach him? How would you engage him? Alden, and children like him, is the inspiration for why the authors have written this book. The changing times and changing learners place a demand on educators to continually reflect on what and how teachers are teaching their students – to ensure that learning in school remains relevant, relatable, and prepares them for the world of the future. Lim’s book outlines how teachers can design learning for multimodal literacy. It is a result of a collaboration between an educational researcher and a curriculum developer, and offers practical resources for practitioners but also design principles and considerations based on practice with a range of students to inform and inspire academics and postgraduate students.

It is poised to contribute to the global conversation and interest on how educators can reflect on the zeitgeist of the digital age and design learning for multimodal literacy.

Fei Victor Lim is Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is interested in how and what we should teach learners in today’s digital age. As an educator and education researcher, he researches and teaches on multiliteracies, multimodal discourse analyses, and digital learning. He is an editor of Multimodality and Society and an associate editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Designs for Learning. He is also author of the book Designing Learning with Embodied Teaching: Perspectives from Multimodality published in the Routledge Studies in Multimodality in 2021. He was previously Lead Specialist III and Deputy Director, Technologies for Learning, at the Singapore Ministry of Education, where he has experience in translational research, policy formulation, and programme development, with a focus on how educational technology can improve teaching and learning. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3046-1011

Lydia Tan-Chia retired as Lead Specialist II after 35 years of proudly serving the Singapore Ministry of Education in the areas of curriculum design, curriculum development, curriculum implementation, and the design of assessment for English Language as a subject in every school and year level. She had the propitious opportunity of collaborating with the co-author as a research fellow in his research on Multimodal Literacy which has since become an area of compelling interest and growing fascination. In the course of the collaboration, she saw how the research schools worked with the concept and practice and brought it to life in their classrooms, weaving the teaching of multiliteracies with thought and integrity into their English curriculum.