Abstract
Globalization and technological advancement in recent decades have led to a re- conceptualization of literacy as well as calls for the development of new literacy pedagogies. Concerns over whether school literacy instruction and practices best prepare learners for the 21st century have resulted to a growing body of research on academic efficacy (Mills 2010), although the issue might have been examined more in theory than in practice (Miller and McVee 2012).Grounded in socio-cultural theories and literature on research-informed pedagogic approaches, this dissertation examines how technology-mediated learning in a multimodal workshop setting influences junior secondary students’ multiliteracies development in Hong Kong. The study is aimed to address the research gap of examining new literacy pedagogies from a teacher’s perspective, and seeks to examine the challenges of promoting multiliteracies while developing new literacy pedagogies.
This study took the form of ten after-school multimodal workshops with twenty-one Year-Six students in a bilingual school in Hong Kong. Multiple data including the student participants’ multimodal texts, field notes, workshop journals, and post-workshop interviews were collected. Textual and semiotic analyses were conducted on the students’ multimodal texts to provide a nuanced understanding of their multiliteracies. A thematic analysis was conducted on the rest of the data for an identification of the influences that might have affected literacy development during the workshops.
The findings suggest that workshop tasks, socio-semiotic mediation, learner subjectivity, as well as challenges of technology-mediated learning, helped shape the context, process, and outcomes of learning. Insights gained from this study suggest that a critical re-framing of technology-mediated learning founded upon students’ prior learning, foregrounding multimodality, connecting school-based learning to learners’ lifeworld, and addressing tensions between school practices and multiliteracies development might help facilitate coherent, sustainable multiliteracies development in schools.
| Date of Award | 6 Nov 2018 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Sue Timmis (Supervisor) |