Experience is quintessentially embodied, real, enacted. Teaching and learning experiences equally so. However, when we write about such experiences they seem to diminish into 2D - text on the page. Think of a news article or textbook espousing the benefits of something like organisational learning...

How can we 'write' experience to retain its 3D quality? How can we do this in such a way that by writing experience we tell a rich and mutlifaceted story that is an essential learning tool in itself?

Image by chotda.

Think: surround sound; millions of colours; sour-sweet-bitter-salt; somatic sensations, (like being skin hungry).

There are many who are writing digital stories and discussing social and digital literacies (even blog literacy) and for these efforts I'm grateful - and as an educational designer, I'm challenged. And, as a 'new' researcher undertaking a Master of Education, I'm incredibly challenged by the fact that I need to 'write' what I research in some way. It is this problematic I hope will frame my research into the scholarship of teaching and the accessibility of 'research' in teaching and learning.

On track with mine and other's thinking are members of the International Multiliteracies Project Team who maintain

that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success [abstract, 1996].

As a researcher then, I should negotiate two key concerns for designing learning; "the multiple linguistic and cultural differences in our society", and see these as "central to the pragmatics of working, civic and private lives" of learners [ibid]. As I formulate my research proposal learners and teachers will become 'participants' in my research (I hope).

I am aware though, through my work, of the gaps in skills and understanding of what it is to learn, to teach others about learning, and to be aware of when learning is occurring (and when to measure learning). I'd agree with the Team that literacy pedagogy has for some time been restricted to reading and writing that is "formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed" [1996:para 1]. Exploring this through my research will be a most interesting journey!

I think we need to consider all forms of literacy - multiple literacies, yes - in order to continually develop skills for learning. Multiple literacies can only inform better 'writing' of our experiences, especially our learning experiences, and most certainly our research in its myriad forms, and aid our retainment of its 3D quality.

I want to flesh this out more and work toward building a more in-depth understanding of designing for learning in a digital and networked world, and keep this foremost in my mind as I consider research design in my studies.

Reference

New London Group, (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), Spring 1996. http://wwwstatic.kern.org/filer/blogWrite44ManilaWebsite/paul/art [Viewed 4 August 2006].