A new book co-edited by professor Heather Lotherington examines multimodal approaches to teaching. Teaching Young Learners in a Superdiverse World: Multimodal Approaches and Perspectives, documents a collaborative action research project in one school where researchers and practitioners worked together to develop multimodal literacies and pedagogies for diverse, multilingual elementary classrooms. Following chronologically from Lotherington’s Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (2011), this volume picks up after teachers and researchers have learned how to work efficiently as a learning community to offer project-based learning approaches. This edited collection relates how teachers and students of different grade levels, language backgrounds, and abilities developed a shared agenda and created a framework for effective and inclusive practices. Contributors demonstrate that collaboration, creative pedagogical solutions and innovative project-based learning are all essential parts of learning and teaching socially appropriate and responsive literacies in a multimodal, superdiverse world.
The volume was put together by teachers, graduate students, researchers, and community members who were involved in the decade-long award-winning SSHRC-funded collaborative action research at Joyce Public School, guided by Heather Lotherington and Jennifer Jenson of the Faculty of Education and Cheryl Paige, past Principal of Joyce Public School. A number of current and past York University graduate students are also featured in this volume.