Multiliteracies pedagogy: teachers’ interactive and reflexive positionings in EAL classrooms

Abstract The increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse nature of the educational landscape in Australia requires teachers to implement classroom practice that responds to the changes, demands and challenges of a diverse and highly technologised world. In this study, it is suggested that implementing multiliteracies classroom practice is a relational and situated process in which English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers draw on their perspective of EAL students and themselves. Informed by positioning theory and the personal interpretive framework, the study examined the positioning that EAL teachers ascribed to EAL students (interactive positioning) and to themselves (reflexive positioning) in relation to the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy. Analysis of data from individual interviews with six EAL teachers shows that the teachers positioned EAL learners as having diverse learning styles and needs and as users of technology. Subsequently, their self-positioning as multiliteracies teachers involved a range of pedagogical strategies for catering for diverse learners and leveraging learners’ multiliteracies skills. The findings suggest that multiliteracies classroom practice can be promoted by teachers’ understanding of learners’ diverse needs and development of responsive pedagogies.