Redesigning for mobile plurilingual futures

Abstract

The New London Group’s 1996 manifesto was a clarion call to educational researchers to fundamentally redesign language and literacy education for the needs of global learners communicating in evolving digital media environments. In this conceptual overview, the “how”, “what” and “why” of multiliteracies are critically re examined from the perspective of mobile digital language learning in posthumanist media ecologies, with attention drawn to paradigm shifts in language, technology, multimodality and context. We argue that Web 3.0 environments, AI and rapidly emerging algorithmic cultures have outpaced earlier critical theorizations of multiliteracies and digitally mediated learning practices as well as meaningful implementation of multiliteracies pedagogies in schools. We then reconsider the affordances and constraints of Web 3.0 tools for multilingual/plurilingual language learning, and sketch pathways for critical and productive engagements with mobile devices and multiliteracies pedagogies that reframe and advance the important critical work of the New London Group.