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Situated practice, and overt instruction, are two important components of multiliteracies pedagogy, however, critical framing is where students are able to construct their own meaning, through reflection, analysis, comprehension, and application of their learning. (New London Group, 2006). Mills (2006), articulates that “critical framing enables students to critically analyse and interpret the social and cultural context and the political, ideological, and value-centered purposes of texts.” (Mills, 2006)
Critical framing, is one of the areas, where there is a drastic change in moving from traditional literacy practices to multiliteracies pedagogy, especially when it comes to reading and creating texts. Students are no longer asked to read a monomodal text, and answer simple comprehension questions, with specific answers. In futuristic multiliteracies practice, students need to be able to use their critical thinking abilities to develop their own meaning (New London Group, 1996). This is an imperative skill for students to learn in order to be successful in a new capitalistic society upon leaving school. In order for students to be successful, they need to apply critical framing skills in all aspects of their life, Biswas (2014) suggest that “different prospects of critical framing are crucial for 21st century students to include their pleasure and experience from family, friends, popular culture, social media, and language in the process of making text. Teachers can encourage students to notice and analyze practices of communicating meaningful ideas in schools and communities.” (Biswas, 2014) To create students who are ready for an unknown future, a multiliteracies pedagogy needs to be in place, which supports, and engages students to think critically, and independently, about what they are reading, and interacting with. A media literacy curriculum, also needs to be in place in order to help students navigate through information. Students should be asking “why?” when engaging with multimodal texts, and using problem solving strategies to search for answers. Through critical framing “students step back from what they have learned, critique their learning, and extend and apply their learning in new contexts.” (Angay-Crowder, Choi, & Yi, 2013, p. 38) |