Browsing by Subject "monilukutaidon pedagogiikka"

Multiliteracies is a part of the newest Finnish national curriculum (2014). In the changing world of today, where more and more information is available in various forms, there is a need for the knowledge to work with a variety of texts. Thus, the purpose of teaching multiliteracies is to respond to these new challenges and to support children’s growth to become active members of the society. The aim of this study is to gain knowledge of teaching multiliteracies at the beginning of primary education. The idea rose from the need to understand the wide concept of multiliteracies and to improve my own knowledge and understanding of how the concept is being taught. The study gathers information on how teachers define multiliteracies at the beginning of primary education and how they improve the development of their students’ multiliteracies. There is very little prior research on this topic. This study is a qualitative research and the data was collected through semi-structured interviews, which were done in pairs. The participants comprised of three first grade and three second grade primary school teachers, who worked at schools that participated in The Joy of Learning Multiliteracies -development program, supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. The data was analysed with Atlas.ti 8.0 program as data-driven content analysis. Four main categories rose from the data: the notion of multiliteracies, how the participants taught multiliteracies in class and the development and restrictions of teaching multiliteracies. The teachers defined multiliteracies merely as interpretation of texts. Furthermore, the emphasis of their teaching of multiliteracies focused on producing and interpreting written and spoken texts. Moreover, the concept was not a part of their overall teaching. That said, the participants’ definition of multiliteracies was narrow, which further reflected to their narrow way of teaching. Overall, the study shows that multiliteracies is a difficult concept and highlights that the education of teachers has an important role in securing high quality teaching of multiliteracies.