Not sure. I think that there are two other questions before that.  First,  how does a teacher react/answer to the manifesto? Second, if knowledge is constructed locally, can we have general questions that would apply to everyone around the world?

Wholeheartedly agree to the first question. Thanks for posing it. However, I'd like to see if you agree with my attempt to clarify the second. Would you agree that locally produced knowledge might still be of interest to a more general audience? I ask because I'm presently writing a column for an international journal whose audiences could potentially have an interest in research beyond their borders. If not for the purpose of applying findings, but for adding to their own knowledge base (epistemologies)? Please take this question in the spirit it was meant (as free of rhetoric as possible). 

I am not a native speaker of English and, if I were in my Portuguese language environment, I probably would have not sounded so harsh. I think that general audiences might be interested in the constructing / building power of multiliteracies. Locally produced knowledge would be very interesting if the local producers had voice. Any second hand account is not theirs so it should be taken with a grain of salt. I do not mean to be offensive by any means but there is still a very strong financial difference between doing research in the First World and doing research in the Second, Third or Fourth Worlds. If we do not change this flow of research, multiliteracies will only be another fad.

Greetings,  Thank you Donna for beginning this discussion.  Obrigada Osvaldo.  

I am not certain 

Both of you make important points.  I wonder if any Manifesto captures the whole or does it (re)present particular perspectives.  I have been attending the (re)thinking Ethnography conferences and attending research summer schools (IRMSS) and international conferences (CITERS) in Hong Kong. There is extensive work across national borders in and across the multilingual worlds that often do not reach the shores of monolingual societies or where other languages are not valued.

I wonder how the definition of the New London Group's definition has developed, been modified, or transformed in the decades since it was introduced -- framed.

At the center of intercultural is the question of what constitutes a conceptual or theoretical framing of culture.  I think of Brian Street's international work on culture as a verb and directions on the reflective turn in which the argument building on Ellen, 1984 (Producing Data in his book on Ethnographic Research) and the work on Writing Culture by Clifford and Marcus for Anthropology (like Ellen), Atkinson for Sociology, and Bucholtz for Applied linguistics.  Often we talk about national borders as if all are the same cultural group.  So I guess I wonder what counts as intercultural and multiliteracies today.  

I am not certain that I answered your question but we need to step back from what we think this means to explore what each "other" means.  We call this in our community as taking Ethnographic Eyes.

The divisions in the above belie the fact that any of us face multiliteracies daily.  Freire argued that by taking up the language of such divisions is to re-invent victimization.  Is the US first world for all?  How do we understand each of the conceptualizations embedded in these questions?

Thanks, Judith. Your points are well taken. I've just returned to my very used and loved copy of Clifford and Marcus' book. And last night I was reading chapters in Brian Street's cross-cultural edited book. Trying to wrap my head around an issue that has increasingly caught my attention of late while serving on editorial review boards (some are international in scope; some in name only).  

Ethnographic methods are described aptly enough in the methodology sections; however, the theoretical frameworks or perspectives taken by the authors quite often clash with both the literature reviewed and the methods claimed. This does not bode well for the analytic sections that follow, nor the interpretation(s) in the end. Abstracts contain name dropping (e.g., New London Group, Vygotsky, Freire, or...) It's as if hybridity is on steroids. 

Actually, I'm not sure my question or my issues with writing research reports belong in this public forum. Thinking that I'll step back a bit and see if I can become better versed in what it means to take Ethnographic Eyes. As you know, I have not done an ethnography; nor ever supervised a doctoral student's dissertation that used ethnography as a design  I also don't check that approach when I'm asked to list what I feel comfortable reviewing. However, I have over the years read a few books and several articles by you and your colleagues. These interest me, still. 

However, the terms international and crossing borders are what drew me in. 

Will stop by again. 

In Brazil, see the wonderful work by Walkyria Mor ... and there are a number of international examples, including from her, in our recent "Pedagogy of Multiliteracies" book (Palgrave 2016) and the new edition of our "Literacies" book (Cambridge 2016). (Nice to hear from you Donna, hoping your goes on from strength to strength!)

Thank you, Bill, for the references. I didn't know of Walkyria Mor's work; obviously missed it in your new Palgrave book. Will look more carefully this time. I was a under a deadline to write my my policy & practice (remix) column (3 a year for 2 years) JAAL. Colin Harrison does the alternating three per year. I should have time at copyedit stage to add the Brazilian context. 

I'm enjoying the genre and just finished an 10-double-spaced page on multiliteracies. I think you will like it (if the editors of JAAL do). I see doctoral students, full( profs, and other folks using what I refer to as "so-called near- synonyms" of multiliteracies (multimodal reading and writing, new literacies, digital literacies, multiple literacies, and media literacy) in ways that I believe detract from  the concept of a pedagogy of multiliteracies. So, I wrote about 2500 words (the limit) on the importance in matters of policy and practice to distinguish between the near-synonyms and the initial take on the term. I realize language is dynamic, but when definitions are used loosely, it soon becomes a free-for-all. 

Attached herein.

Thank you Stephen Poon. I was unaware of the 3rd reference.

Look forward to reading your piece, Donna, do send it to me when you are done!

It surely works well in the Malaysian ecosystem. Attached are for your reference.

Article Using Multiliteracies to Engage Learners to Produce Learning

Article The Effect of Incorporating Multiliteracies Pedagogy in ESL Writing.

Data The Effects of Using Multimodal Approaches in Meaning-Making...

Sorry Donna. You want to comment on anything ? Its blank above.