Changing Basis for and Existing Debate
It should come as no big surprise to hear that the world is changing. Historians will happily tell you that no period of history has been devoid of change and there is no need to sweat it. History has naturally moved from "revolution" to revolution," be it agricultural, industrial, or what have you. However, the changes effecting the world today in what may be termed the Information and Communication Age are having some very far-reaching effects and changing the world at a very swift pace. This change has largely to do with Internet, communication, and media technologies and the ease with which finance and information are moved between groups and individuals. Of course the result is a whole new set of cultural, social, and economic standards that shape our public and private lives (The New London Group 10). Naturally, these changing social, cultural, and economic impacts must affect a change in the education system at many levels--the goals of education must naturally change as social, cultural, and economic realities change if Academia is expected to produce scholars capable of fully comprehending and participating in the act of making meaning in an age of multimedia.
The multiple medias and language systems to which students are exposed everyday though print, visual, and digital mediums are all important to the concept of literacy in this day and age. The New London Group, a devoted group of communication and language scholars, has coined the term "multiliteracies" to describe the literacy of finding and creating meaning in "the multiplicity of communications channels and media," especially in the context of "increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity" (Cope and Kalantzis 5). They recognize the complex interrelatedness between verbal, visual, and audile texts and globally connected diversity. The New London Group continues to pursue multiliteracies studies towards the end of creating composition pedagogies that produce students capable of "see[ing] themselves as active participants in social change; as learners …who can be active designers – makers – of social futures" (Cope and Kalantzis 7). Such a mission statement highlights not only the far-reaching influences of composition education with regard to social, economic, and cultural realities, but also the high degree to which identity is tied to these studies of literacy and technology. At the university, media and information technology permeate all departments; however, the introductory composition course may well be the field effected most by the changing world, as it prepares students to understand how meaning is constructed in multiple texts. Therefore, this multimodal literacy must be integrated into the composition course, which must function as a study of how meaning is created, not just a study of writing.
However, this proves to be a very sophisticated set of ideas to both teach and learn, and it may unsettle some educators. Gunther Kress touches on this sentiment in his article "Multimodality":
…the linguist and the applied linguist(the language teacher, let us say) would maintain that their business was language, after all, and these other things were someone else’s to look after.
It is time to unsettle this commonsense notion. It is now impossible to make sense of texts, even of their linguistic parts alone, without having a clear idea of what these other features might be contributing to the meaning of the text. In fact, it is now no longer possible to understand language and its uses without understanding the effect of all modes of communication that are copresent in any text. (337)
Kress’s observations are true of language in any age, but it is the saturation of multiple medias in our daily lives that makes it all the more important for composition studies to address the way that this media effects meaning.
Although "Introduction to Composition Studies" may well be regarded as the class that prepares most students for both an academic career with meaningful connection to social, cultural, and economic realities, it is certainly not regarded the same way by all educators and theorists. It is a field of continued debate with regard to ideas of proper scope and procedure. This makes it both an ideal arena in which to affect change, as well as an area of stubborn adhesion to traditional ideas. There is a constant debate that may be somewhat oversimplified as a struggle between traditional practices and contemporary theories. Changing composition to meet the needs of Information and Communication Age students feeds into this existing dilemma—for some as an additional source of distress, widening the rift between accepted traditional conventions, and for others as further proof of the need to reform pedagogical practices.
Allan Luke makes note of this as a natural social/historical phenomenon in the introduction to Literacy in the Information Age: "With 19th and 20th century industrialization and urbanization, people faced new economies, new cultures, and new life pathways. In response, they sought simple truths, literal readings, and new moral and epistemological anchors, often in the form of millenarian religions" (viii). Luke likens this to the new social, cultural, and economic realities of the Information and Communication age: "heterogeneous student bodies," "new public pedagogies of mass media and mass culture," and "new life pathways to and from communities to school to work and back, linked closely to volatile employment markets" (viii). These current social, cultural, and economic realities subsequently fuel the same concern Luke highlights in the example of 19th and 20th century revolutions, identifying a sentiment that views the growing importance of digital technologies, specifically among the younger generations, as a troubling departure from traditional foundations of education. This line of thinking therefore calls for a return to a "’back to basics’ [pedagogy] of phonics, moral education, and so forth (Luke viii). This existing debate has been argued back and forth for some time now with limited reconciliation: Tired issues such as pitting the "back to basics" movement against viewing grammar as lower-level thinking continue to divide scholars. Such a divide stands as a monument to stubbornness on the part of some educators, each side unwilling to concede much to the other. One is tied up entirely in the "new theory" and the other in structured practice. Neither can truly stand apart on its own, which raises another feature of the debate that relates to pedagogical reform: theory and practice. The essentials of this debate have to do with student performance versus student understanding, as these do not necessarily go hand in hand without the right pedagogical guidance. It is a balance of the two that produces a better student, and striking this balance can be achieved through a reconsideration of traditional material with respect to the changing social, cultural, and economic climates of the age.
However, on the surface, one must admit that a pedagogy of multiliteracies certainly seems to lack the simplicity of teaching grammar and mechanics with the "back to basics" approach, but there is no need for a radical restructuring of the classroom. It is more a matter of shifting the perspective of existing methods and assignments to pay more consideration to real life contexts. It is simply a matter of being candid with the student and asking him or her to consider the context of the surround "real world." This can be achieved through employing a process pedagogy and approaching things like grammar and mechanics from a rhetorical standpoint. Additionally, traditional literary analysis assignments can be supplemented with analyses of more contemporary texts or medias, and naturally, connections between analysis of the traditional and the contemporary can be encouraged. Adjusting composition studies to meet the changing needs of the students of the Information and Communication Age must be considered a realistic priority if students are expected to be able to truly make and comprehend meaning in the wider spectrum of "texts" and if we ever expect to reconcile some of the debates in the field of composition studies.
Works Cited
U.S. Census Bureau. "Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2003." U.S. Census Bureau. 8 May 2007. <>.
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. "Multiliteracies: The Beginnings of an Idea." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 3-8.
Crowely, Sharon. "The Emergence of Process Pedagogy." Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. 187-214.
Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. New York: Routledge, 2003.
---. "Multimodality: Challenges to Thinking About Language." TESOL Quarterly. 38.2 (2000): 337-340. Jstor. Rhorbach Lib., Kutztown U. 10 Mar. 2007.
Luke, Allan. Foreword to Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries into Meaning Making with New Technologies. Ed. Bertram C. Bruce. Newark: International Reading Assoc., 2003. viii-xi.
Micciche, Laura R. "Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar." CCC. (2004) 55.4: 716-737.
New London Group. "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 9-37.
Schuster, Charlse I. "Theory and Practice." An Introduction to Composition Stduies.
