Creative and critical approaches to language learning and digital technology: findings from a multilingual digital storytelling project

This article presents findings from the global literacy project, Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling (MDST), which provides a means of nurturing and reflecting multiliteracies in practice. It recognises the power of storytelling and the space stories offer both for self-representation and for engaging with otherness. It draws on affordances of the digital medium for multimodal composition and for collaborative and dialogic ways of working and sharing across boundaries of home, school and community. It values and supports multilingual repertoires recognising that every language is a distinct medium with its own expressive resources, its own palette of colours, its own sounds and rhythms, all shaped by and representing history, culture, values and beliefs. The core argument is that greater attention needs to be given to the multilingual dimension within multiliteracies research. We outline the theoretical framework underpinning our research and the rationale for adopting a critical ethnographic approach. We explore the significance of MDST for young people and their learning; the effective pedagogical framework for carrying out MDST; and the implications for policy and teacher development. This research enabled us to demonstrate the importance of an integrated and inclusive approach towards languages within the multiliteracies framework.