What is Additive multilingualism

Contemporary conceptualizations of literacy as socially and culturally situated practice must be framed in our digitally-mediated, glocalized societies where networked communication technologies have created innovative texts opening up new literacies and demanding new pedagogies. This chapter discusses a Toronto-based program of collaborative school-university action research that aims to develop a pedagogy of multiliteracies in an urban elementary school. The project engaging our research collective is about guiding children to rewrite traditional children’s stories as individualized digital narratives that enfold their cultural understandings and community languages. Situated within current epistemological questions about what it means to become a literate person in the 21st century, our project responds to reciprocal educational challenges: How can we facilitate the acquisition of relevant literacies for contemporary children experiencing divergent home, school, community and societal practices? How can we redesign curricula and assessment to be socially responsive and responsible?