Abstract
While our multimedia world, with rapid advances in technologies, now challenges educators to consider new pedagogies that expand cultural and linguistic diversity, the potential for information and communication technologies (ICT) to support literacy learning in the early years remains a seriously under-researched area. There is an urgency to address a range of questions raised by teacher practitioners such as what new literacies will look like in their programs, how ICT can be used to learn in new ways, and which pedagogies of multiliteracies are relevant for early childhood education. This paper explores these questions in relation to knowledge management initiatives and e-learning opportunities. The Willy Wagtail Tale presents a case study of how knowledge management and e-learning is socially constructed to enrich multiliteracies experiences in the early years. The study occurred in a small Western Australian school committed to the Reggio Emilia teaching approach. Implications for educational research are that multiliteracies experiences occur inadvertently through children’s play, are integral to The Hundred Languages of Children, and are dramatically enriched through social constructivist knowledge management and child-centered e-learning.
Highlights
It is argued by Cope and Kalantzis (2000) that 21st century students need to be equipped with skills necessary to meet the challenging and diverse demands of different forms of communication created by new technologies
The use of information and communication technologies in e-learning to provide experiences of multiliteracies in early childhood education (ECE) and accompanying strategies of knowledge management that can support these learning processes remains a seriously underresearched area (Lee, Yelland, O’Rourke, & Harrison, 2003). To help fill this gap, this paper examines how e-learning can enrich multiliteracies in the early years when guided by social constructivist knowledge management
Perhaps the most powerful insight into Whitney’s knowledge management practices and e-learning considerations was provided when she described her pedagogy as fundamentally “social constructivist” and said that the Reggio Emilia teaching approach to ECE provided the best example of its principles in action
Summary
It is argued by Cope and Kalantzis (2000) that 21st century students need to be equipped with skills necessary to meet the challenging and diverse demands of different forms of communication created by new technologies. The Willy Wagtail Tale presents a classroom account of what these processes looked like in a Western Australian independent community school setting in 2005 At this school, the teachers, unfamiliar with the term multiliteracies, recognize young students as multiliterate: readers of the world and learning to become readers of the word. A theoretical construct aligned with this alternative teaching approach is The Hundred Languages of Children: a paradigm in which there is a myriad of symbolic representations that allow children to communicate and advance their thinking in ways that present language in different forms This fee-paying school directs considerable funding to ensure that young students have ready “hands on” access to quality information and communication technologies to support knowledge generation. The relationship of multiliteracies, e-learning, and knowledge management, as depicted in The Willy Wagtail Tale, is explored to show how these three processes were entwined in an early years setting
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