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Educational context and teacher beliefs matter: Multimodal literacy in the Greater Bay Area of China
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Type
Article
Citation
Liu, J. E., & Lim, F. V. (2024). Educational context and teacher beliefs matter: Multimodal literacy in the Greater Bay Area of China. RELC Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882241304136
Abstract
Multimodal literacy has been increasingly included as part of the language and literacy curriculum in many education systems across the world. In the Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China (Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau), multimodal literacy has recently been incorporated into the curriculum guides to varying degrees. Little research has attended to how teachers understand multimodal literacy and how they react to the curriculum initiatives. Through examining the national and regional curriculum documents and conducting individual in-depth interviews with 15 purposively sampled secondary school English language teachers in the GBA, this study explores teachers’ beliefs about teaching multimodal literacy and the factors influencing their beliefs. The findings revealed that while the teachers recognized the importance of multimodal literacy in language education, they expressed mixed understandings of multimodal literacy and articulated diverse perspectives on how to teach it across the three regions. The teachers’ beliefs were found to be mediated by various factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The findings provide important implications for curriculum reforms and professional development for multimodal literacy education. This study argues for the importance of clarifying curriculum expectations for multimodal literacy and developing contextually sensitive and responsive approaches to meet teachers’ and students’ needs. It also highlights the cruciality of considering teachers’ beliefs in professional development programmes for multimodal literacy. Focusing on the GBA of China, where regions are just beginning to integrate multimodal literacy into the curriculum, this study builds on earlier research on multimodal literacy in other areas of Asia and discusses its findings in relation to these studies. Collectively, these studies, while situated in Asia, contribute to the ongoing global interest and advancement of multiliteracies education.
Date Issued
2024
Publisher
Sage
Journal
RELC Journal
DOI
10.1177/00336882241304136