Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts text and image in classroom practice.

Faulkner, Julie

Len Unsworth Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001. 306pp. ISBN 0-335-20604-2

Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts text and image in classroom practice is written as a textbook for literacy educators. Unsworth takes the notion of 'multiliteracies' and applies it to the genres of English, history and science, discussing in some detail how grammatical structures can be used to critically understand print and visual representations of knowledge.

A critical grammatical approach is one which has grown from recent shifts in thinking. Pedagogy, in many ways, is still working to accommodate the major theoretical and technological shifts in the late 20th century. The area of literacy is a telling illustration of some of the struggles which have accompanied changes in ideologies and practice. Critical thinking suggests that everything is a text and that all texts are socially constructed as, in turn, are we through the texts we read and write. 'Reading' and 'writing' became configured as 'literacy', or 'literacies', to describe the multifaceted and multimodal ways that texts are read and produced.

Conceptualizations of English and literacy have undergone their own political variations. In the 1980s, those from a linguistic tradition sought a more socially critical, systematic approach. These views formed from systemic functional linguistics, or 'new' grammar, a grammar which was seen to offer a useful metalanguage for analysis of ideological construction. It is the new grammar position which Unsworth firmly occupies in Multiliteracies across the curriculum. The functional grammar approach gained purchase in curriculum documents and some schools, particularly in primary classrooms. Unsworth claims that it generated a 'fresh and inviting perspective on the nature and role of grammar in teaching' (p. 23), and this linguistic approach has led, for example, to the inclusion of the English Language subject in the Victorian Certificate of Education.

However, new language frameworks are rarely accepted without controversy and, in this case, a structured grammatical approach to literacy has had to defend itself against a more broadly personal and social view of language. Unsworth adds another voice to this side of the argument. His textbook is comprehensive in its theoretical framing as well as dense in application of theory to both primary and secondary curriculum, and it is literacy teachers for whom he writes. 'Multiliteracies', now a catchphrase in modern literacy practices, describes the ways that meaning is made from the multiple resources of language and image. Systematic functional grammar offers, according to Unsworth, an effective tool to analyze the different ways that print, visual and electronic texts are constructed. Furthermore his approach to teaching delves into the specific ways that various curriculum subjects deploy different language structures, or genres. He focuses at some length on the linguistic variations within history, science and English, providing a technical language for analysis of visual and print texts. Accessible tables are offered comparing genres across the disciplines and the ways that characteristic grammatical features define particular subject areas. Unsworth then connects such linguistic knowledge to representations of experience, integrating the critical elements of the analysis.

This is a valuable book for those who have a linguistic background and those who would like to learn more about the functional grammar contribution to critical literacy. Unsworth presents a wealth of complex material under clearly organized chapter headings, although he does admit that the reader may find descriptions of systemic functional linguistics 'extravagant' (p. 70). The text is richly illustrated with charts, photographs and diagrams, serving as examples for Unsworth's thorough explications.

However, other educators might seek an approach which is conceptually more flexible. If we are discussing multiliteracies, we might well appreciate a multitheoretical approach to teaching and learning, taking from and blending different disciplines and stances. It is illuminating and important to understand the metalinguistic argument, but such an approach stands as only one version of the available positions on multiliteracies in education. The question for many teachers may be whether any single new framework helps to teach or learn with passion, clarity and enthusiasm. At times, Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum requires persistence from the reader to work through the detail, which may not easily offer the teacher ready pathways to richer teaching experiences. Nevertheless Unsworth's use of a systemic functional paradigm will offer many educators a sound, classroom-oriented account of a multiliteracies approach. This comprehensive text may well be a useful inclusion in a reference collection.

Julie Faulkner

RMIT University