Multiliteracies and multimedia technology as a
support to multicultural and multilingual balanced
development
: « Multilittéracies et multimédias au
service du multiculturel et du multilinguisme »
jean-paul.narcy-combes@wanadoo.fr
Université Sorbonne nouvelle-Paris 3
DILTEC-EA2288
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Bibliography
(please ask for complete list: jean-paul.narcy-combes@wanadoo.fr)
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Coste, Daniel (2002). Quelle(s) acquisition(s) dans quelle(s) classe (s) ? AILE 16, 3-22.
Genesee, Fred (2007), “The suitability of french immersion for students who are at risk: a review of
research evidence, Canadian Modern Language Review, v63 5, 655-687.
Jordan, Geoff (2004), Theory Construction in Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam, John
Benjamins.
Véronique, Daniel (2005), « Les interrelations entre la recherche sur l’acquisition du français
langue étrangère et la didactique du français langue étrangère », Acquisition et Interactions en
langues étrangères. Troadec, B. (2007). Psychologie culturelle. Le développement cognitif est-il
culturel ? . Paris : Belin Sup.
Troadec, B. (1999). Le développement de la pensée chez l’enfant. Catégorisation et culture.
Toulouse : Presses universitaires du Mirail.
Saint Martin, C. (2013). La construction de l’espace didactique du français, langue de l’école, en
Polynésie française : dynamiques et perspectives. Une réflexion sur l’intégration de la
problématique sociolinguistique en vue de l’amélioration de la qualité du système éducatif en
contexte plurilingue. Thèse de l’Université Européenne de Bretagne (Rennes 2).
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Present-day episteme
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Situated science
Uncertainty (Foucault, Derrida, Morin)
Complexity (Varela, Morin)
Problem-solving (Popper) vs. Progress (improvement)
Deconstruction (Derrida, Bachelard, Morin)
Doxa (Bourdieu) and difficulty of accepting uncertainty
(Gigerenzer )
• Difference between collective representations (Dürkheim)
and scientific theories?
• Perhaps methodological approaches and
publications/discussions of results: complementarity
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Who the researcher is
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Continental French senior researcher (situated)
Bi-cultural education
“didactique de l’intervention” and epistemology
Action research
Epistemology
Another researcher in another context would have
expressed everything differently and have
different references.
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Problematic issues in the Indian
Ocean (1)
• Contextual parameters are numerous and variable, it is
difficult to cope with them all and to convince decision
makers of the need to pay attention to previous research
results and careful assessment of the situation : possible
“obscurantisme” and top-down decision-making.
• Need for teachers to « accommodate » children from
traditionally « uneducated » backgrounds (loss of
original « oral literacies »
• Attitudes to languages (dominant or non-dominant)
• Pragmatic motivation: to « improve » « effectiveness »
of teaching systems (mastery of the language of
education vs. home languages)
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Problematic issues in the Indian
Ocean (2)
• Representations of the culture  ideology produced by local,
dominant classes and the intelligentsia
• Identity constructions  mirror effect due to the colonial period.
• In some areas pre-colonial written sources are inexistent, in other
they were temporarily left aside by the colonisers.
• Identity construction - quest means going beyond colonial
stereotypes.
• Present phenomenon of +/- permanent (economic or educational)
migration => concept of network of residences (Taylor, 1996).
• Concept of interculturation (Demorgon) : cultural modifications do
not result from acculturation by borrowing from another culture
but also from resistances and oppositions (cf. Tunisian election)
• Devereux and interculturation: cultures will not become alike but
both homogeneous and heterogeneous according to an
antagonistic process
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Problematic issues in the Indian
Ocean (3)
A cohesive force: community links vs. risk factors similar to
Europe :
• Lethal dynamics of poverty  social isolation, relational
deficit
• Victimization (women, children, teenagers)
• Number of children below poverty line
• Absence of degrees and cultural isolation
• Low incomes increase social isolation,=> no reciprocity in
social intercourse
• Urbanisation and social isolation
• Reification and sacralisation of culture as a state ideology and
role of religions
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Epistemological Consequences
• More than one scientific research
domains are involved (some
quantitative, others qualitative)
• Study of variations and how
regular and predictable it can be?
• Accept predictability of variation
instead of condemning variation.
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A central postulate (this paper)
• Human behaviour and mental processes are the
results of neuro-physiological events taking
place in the human brain (Ledoux 2003) and
shared as discourse and behaviour outside the
human brain (cf. Bruner and Vygotski, and
going farther in terms of cognition: no
knowledge in the brain but cognitive neuronal
structures).
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Nomothetic vs. idiographic answers
• Some fields are essentially nomothetic (LeDoux 2003)
even if their research is situated (neurolinguistics,
psycholinguistics, acquisition, for ex.). We need them.
• In « intervention » research an initial question is to
determine what is predictable (nomothetic) and what is
contex-specific.
• In such research, the researcher(s) will take contextual
data into consideration in order construct an adequate
theoretical and methodological framework and will
ensure that it is validated by the data.
• Institutional projects should be subjected to such
validation.
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Some domains that could not be
overlooked (contextual)
• Individual psychology and neurophysiology
(emotions and cognition)
• Emergentism and DST
• Sociocultural theory
• Multilingualism
• Multiliteracies
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(1) Neurophysiology and humanistic psychology
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Two dimensions in education: cognitive/intellectual and affective/emotional
For some (Damasio 1999) and (Varela 1993) only one dimension cf. concept of
whole person of humanistic psychology.
Education seen as a process of self-realization => institutional education should set
up learning environments that facilitate the development of the leaners’ potential.
Maslow (1967) and needs. Frustration leads to aggressiveness or resignation and to
relationships based on need for power or for security => this helps to understand
sociological phenomena at individual level
“Resistance” is in fact the sign that something is not OK, threatening => to be
investigated and taken into account instead of being overlooked or despised.
Innovation and new (counterintuitive) scientific knowledge (Seliger et Shohamy)
=> destabilizing => refusal as a protection.
=> empathy, communication, implication and empowerment in order to transform
the resistance or to overcome it,
=> locate cultural phenomena likely to foster resistance
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(2)Emergentism
• Processual approach of cognitive phenomena. Language production results
from parallel interplay of processes that facilitate communication among
individuals (O.. Emergence of language is non-linear, not totally
predictable, regression is likely, training can facilitate development.
• Cognition  stabilization of neuronal connections (functional) and not
symbolic that becomes apparent in discourse and behaviour (role of
previous connections, adjustment problems, pararallel processing and
diverging signals)
• => language development is connected to doing not to learning and
connected with biological variables and neuronal activity and not
symbols to be learnt (Varela 1993)
• Connection with task-based approaches (social tasks and training
tasks).
• Role of discourse production  reflection (Varela 1993).
• Emergentism => intrapsychic work (Vygotsky), unpredictability of
effect of tasks, need for interaction and training
• No key to affective, emotional and psychosocial components of
development (idiogaphy).
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(3)Sociocultural perspective
• Socio cultural perspective
• Cognitive and language development are related to social practices
=> development cannot be reduced to the learning of a system nor of
rules of communication, it is a result of developing the capacity of
interacting socially in the expected context.
• Two questions:
(1) What about assimilation/nativization ? Some research results point
to the need for more than interaction.
(2) No problem with variation, but what is regular and irregular in
variation and why variation?
• This field of research helps us to understand interpsychic
phenomena and motivation for interaction but not the conditions for
that motivation.
• All learning is situated understanding of code switching
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(4)Multilingualism
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Multilingualism => qualitative change of psycholinguistic system, monitoring,
specific management of available codes, contrastive sensitiveness, intentionality
and code switching> Code switching as the rule of language production> Strong
link with emergentisme (Herdina et Jessner 2006).
Vygotski (1934-1997) =>formal and informal learning  (Basic
intercommunmication skills) and CALP (Cognitive academic language proficiency)
(Cummins 1994).
Language of education and CALP.
L1 and L2 developments are not disconnected and L2 can contribute to L1 
literacy and development of writing
Connection with humanistic psychology as far as motivation, self-confidence, and
anxiety are concerned in language development
Missing answers :
Links with content
BICS to CALP
Social and psychological issue
Emic stance will help (Van Lier 2004).
Multilingualism and social status
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(5) Multiliteracies and social
resistance to academic education
• Ideological and political stance opposing academic and less formal and
elite-oriented forms of literacy.
• How can leaning initially from forms of literacies closer to
learners’envrironment facilitate access to CALP capacities and academic
disciplinary contents.
• Less resistance, easier gradual accommodation to academic standards.
• Code switching and alternation may help (contrary to doxa)
• Multiliteracy tasks more legitimate than academic tasks for larners.
• Literacy seen as social interaction  emergentism and sociocultural
theory
• Humanistic psychology as a complement to multiliteracy studies
• Other connection with emergentism (training and support from ICT
tools, including word processing, or Google translate
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Dealing with social resistance
• Individual characteristics vs. societal expectations
(Marquilló Larruy 2012).
• Parents refused creole-based classes in the West
Indies but accepted them in France (different
situations).
• When parents are associated in decision making
such resistance changes, Colette Noyau (2014),
Saura (2007)
• Balanced co-existence of original forms of
literacy and academic literacy cannot be ruled
from above.
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Sharing the construction of action
• Group analysis (méthode d’analyse en groupe,
MAG, Van Campenhoudt, Franssen &
Cantelli)  action research (Lewin)
• cf. LASCOLAF project and C. Noyau
• + action research itself
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Some evidence (LASCOLAF/IFADEM)
• Collaborative approaches including parents, teachers, etc.
are more appropriate.
• Top down organization are rarely successful (resistance).
• Small local projects, validated and adapted to new contexts
prove successful.
• Generalizing new environments to whole population
remains problematic.
• Additive bilingualism has more satisfactory results when
explained to parents.
• Initial access to CALP in home language or partial use of
home language facilitate development of disciplinary
knowledge.
• Teacher training: discourse is modified before practices…
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What remains to be researched
• Better
understanding
of
link
between
language/discourse/norms in a plurilingual
academic setting (undermining the influence of
the code – undermining the dominance of
centrality)
• Learning vs. teaching in such contexts to
understand link between development and
mediation in specific cultural situations (process >
product)
• Study connection between professional structures,
ideology and beliefs and problems of face in order
to better understand resistance.
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Some answers
• Reflection on learning environments and technology
(individual/small group/large group work, flipped schooling,
telecollaboration, mobile technology, etc.)
• Closer study of influence of psycho-sociological factors on
individual development
• Bottom up participative projects (action research or more
fundamental research) and not top down projects with identical
actions in every school
• Try and describe “variation” in order to cope with it; problem
solving at individual level.
• Complementarity vs. superiority
• From complexity to simplexity (to cope with individual variation).
• Simplexity is not reductionism
• Dissemination of results and partial duplication when applicable
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Merssi
Thank you
Merci
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