ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief review of how globalisation, technology and diversity have influenced the development of new and evolving literacies. It discusses how these literacies have led to new forms of texts that are produced and transmitted in differing ways in order to deal with continuous change. It explores how the ever-increasing pace of change has necessitated new understandings about what it is to be literate and multiliterate in the 21st century. This is undertaken through a historical review of how understandings about literacy and literacies have evolved from ideas about codes, linguistic relativity and communicative competence to discourse and Discourse.
The chapter also looks at the repertoire of skills and practices that are necessary to deal with these new understandings about being literate, literacy, literacies and multiliteracies, that form part of everyday lifet in the 21st century. Finally, a model is proposed that defines a pedagogy for the new literacies and multiliteracies.
