Toward a Professional Development Model for Critical Digital Literacies in TESOL

Abstract

L ocated at the intersection of critical and digital literacy studies, critical digital literacies, or critical digital literacy, has become an essential pedagogic goal in TESOL and related fields (Darvin, 2020). Nevertheless, despite a plethora of research on critical and digital literacies that generates no lack of instructional suggestions, many teachers and TESOL practitioners still find teaching critical digital literacies fraught with challenges (e.g., terminological challenges to define critical digital literacies) and uncertainty (e.g., about how critical digital literacies can be implemented). This could be due to practical constraints such as a heavy workload, a high-stakes testing culture, and the deeply-entrenched tradition that takes TESOL and ELT as a psycholinguistic and apolitical enterprise (Jiang, 2021). It is also likely that teachers face conflicting perspectives regarding the suitability of critical digital literacies for L2 learners, particularly those of low linguistic proficiency and socioeconomic status and with difficulties of achieving proficiency in English (Jiang, Yu, & Zhao, 2021). In stark contrast to the increasing omnipresence of digital literacy practices, there is also a discrepancy between needed and available training for L2 teachers. Such discrepancy not only causes confusion regarding

Digital multimodal composing in L2 classrooms: A research agenda

“…Drawing on a social practice orientation, both digital literacy and critical literacy can be integrated into DMC to facilitate students' agentive actions for change and improvement through authoring digital multimodal texts that engage with issues of power and so serve to develop critical digital literacies (Pangrazio, 2016). Accordingly, the multifaceted construct of critical digital literacies can be operationalised as, for instance, "skills and practices that lead to the creation of digital texts through which students explore personal identity, interrogate the world, and enact civic participation for the betterment of communities and social equity" (Jiang & Gu, 2022, p. 1030. With this operationalised understanding, the role of DMC in promoting the learning and development of critical digital literacies can be specified through equity-oriented actions of creating/authoring digital multimodal texts.…”