Classrooms

This study investigated the teaching of multiliteracy in three middle school English as a Second Language Arts classrooms. The research question was: How are English learners (ELs) developing multiliteracy- defined as critical literacy, electronic literacy, and socio-cultural literacy, if at all, in middle school ESL Language Arts classrooms? Collected data consisted of classroom observations, transcribed teacher and focus student interviews; copies of teacher and student artifacts such as handouts and student notebooks.The findings of the study suggest that teachers did not teach all aspects of multiliteracy and the students seemed to be developing mostly electronic literacy, but not so much critical and socio-cultural literacy. The implications of these findings suggest the need for professional development and in-service training on the various aspects of literacy. For purposes of this manuscript, I use Caws (2006) definition of multiliteracy, which integrates three types of literacy, namely critical literacy, electronic literacy, and socio-cultural literacy.Caw defines these concepts as follows: Critical literacy is the ability to think criticall