The responsibility for teachers to develop their students‘ multiliteracy skills including
digital literacies has grown significantly in the 21st century. As the whole world becomes
even more digitally connected, students need to be informed about the possibilities and risks
that simultaneously occur in the digital world. More importantly, there is currently a
challenge that is affecting all the lives on this planet, and multiliteracies might be a teacher‘s
answer to the economic problems that all students also have to face. Therefore, teaching
students about multiliteracies and creative writing could be a way to solve these problems
creatively.
First and foremost, it is enormously important to understand economics as a teacher in
order to ensure that we can also teach the next generations about sustainability effectively. As
Kate Raworth mentions in one of her videos called “Doughnut Economics“, society’s goal
should be to “thrive in balance“ instead of “endless growth.“ We as future teachers are
capable of guaranteeing that by realizing what an “economy in service to life“ is. That is one
of the reasons why we have to acquire a certain amount of a basic academic background
knowledge as it is of great significance that we secure quality education for a sustainable
development and future generations.
Furthermore, we have to set the foundations so that our students can think of
appropriate and creative solutions for our planet’s biggest challenges. Eventually, they will
become the next generation of teachers and pass their knowledge to their students, which is
why it is even more important that we are able to equip them with the necessary societal,
cultural and technological instruments so that they can act as designers of the future, improve
our environment and overcome climate change as well as multiple other problems.
In addition, it is beneficial and meaningful in that specific context to support the
development of the students’ critical literacy and multilingual awareness regardless of their
gender, culture or native language because as future scientists they might have to
communicate via digital communication channels with different scientists all over the world,
who speak different languages, in order to produce creative ideas and solutions together.
Besides, multimodal teaching methods assist the students in learning a topic more intensely as
more senses are involved in the learning process, which will prepare them even further for
economic difficulties. For instance, there is a quote by the Chinese philosopher Xunzi that
translates to: “Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is
not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as
good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops
because to put it into practice is to understand it [.]” (Hutton 64) An interpretable meaning of
this quote is the fact that involving multiple senses during the learning process results in a
better understanding of a certain topic.
Ultimately, there is only one world that we share, and we have to become properly
trained and educated teachers to preserve it. The time to act is now. Hence, it might be
extraordinarily meaningful and fruitful to include multiliteracies and digital competencies to
our teaching routine as “reflective practitioners” (Viebrock 48). However, risks like online
security and the handling of personal information always have to be addressed when students
participate in the society of a rapidly evolving digital world.
-Daniel
Works Cited
Hutton, Eric L. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton University Press, 2014. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wq19b. Accessed 26 May 2020.
Raworth, Kate. “1. Change the Goal – 1/7 Doughnut Economics.“ YouTube, uploaded by
Doughnut Economics Action Lab, 02.04.2017, youtu.be/Mkg2XMTWV4g.
Viebrock, Britta. Teachers of English as a Foreign Language – Experience and Professional
Development. In: Teaching English as a Foreign Language – An Introduction, edited
by Carola Surkamp and Britta Viebrock, J.B. Metzler, 2018, 39-55.