Multiliteracies at the Museum: A Resource Book for Language Teachers

A new open educational resource created by Dr. Chantelle Warner & Richmond Embeywa (University of Arizona) published by CERCLL, is now live (published in summer 2022). 

The guide for teachers includes an introductory section on how museum-based pedagogies can help to facilitate genre awareness, visual literacy, and critical intercultural thinking in a new language. There are also sets of sample lessons and materials in German, Swahili, and English. As open materials, the resources are designed to be easily modified for educators’ own classrooms. While several of the sample lessons take direct inspiration from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, instructor notes in the lessons point users towards ways in which the ideas can be adapted to other contexts, including online teaching. 

The lessons included in this handbook are intended to serve as resources and models for language/culture teachers, who want to begin to integrate multiliteracies as multisensory, aesthetic experiences into their classrooms. Although many of the lessons are set in an art gallery, these work to indicate alternate ways of engaging with the activities in the classroom; and some others consider other spaces (e.g., Instagram sites, outdoor markets) using the framework of the gallery, thus pushing educators and students to also think of these as designed but also dynamic compositions of various semiotic elements that can experienced, analyzed and conceptualized in terms of their symbolic and culture elements, and applied as meaning making resources in new contexts.

➣ Access the handbook, free, here: https://opentextbooks.library.arizona.edu/multiliteraciesatthemuseum/ 

Multiliteracies at the Museum: A Resource Book for Language Teachers by Chantelle Warner and Richmond Embeywa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.