The New Learning Environments framework: scaffolding the development of multiliterate students

Abstract

Access to information and communications technologies (ICT) by students at home and at school has burgeoned over the past few years. But students' ability to access ICT does not guarantee better learning. Teachers need to adjust their classroom practices to include the scaffolding of skills, understanding and knowledge of an increased range of texts. This requires teachers to plan for learning across a range of texts and learning processes in the electronic medium to assist in the development of a multiliterate individual. Teachers need to model the purposeful use of ICT in order for students to develop their (multi)literacy practices, including creating electronic texts. This paper will explore how the concept of explicit teaching and learning of literacies, including those associated with ICT, can be implemented in the primary (elementary) classroom through the use of the New Learning Environments (NLE) curriculum and pedagogical framework. It will compare and critique the NLE framework with the educational approaches to multiliteracies of Unsworth, The New London Group and Learning by Design. It will highlight the use of the NLE framework as a curriculum planning tool and the relevance of the pedagogical component, particularly the scaffolded and collaborative learning stages, using examples drawn from a year-long trial with two upper primary (10- to 12-years-old) classes in a southern suburb of Sydney, Australia.