Classroom videos offer a powerful opportunity for teachers to observe authentic instructional practices, analyze classroom interactions, and engage in reflective professional learning. By making teaching visible, video-based reflection helps educators connect pedagogical theory with classroom practice and develop a deeper understanding of how students make meaning through language and other semiotic modes.
This is the goal of a new Open Educational Resource (OER) on teaching multiliteracies created by Kristen Michelson (Texas Tech University) and Bruna Sommer Farias (MAFLT, Michigan State University). Developed for world language educators and teacher educators, the resource features classroom video lessons and accompanying materials designed to support the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy in diverse instructional contexts.
Multiliteracies pedagogies emphasize meaning-making across multiple semiotic modes, promoting critical engagement with diverse texts, and leveraging learners’ multilingual repertoires. This framework aligns with sociocultural theories of learning that position teaching as reflective, adaptive, and socially mediated. The videos offer a window into how teachers can design and facilitate classroom dialogue that supports key multiliteracies practices, including engaging with diverse texts, making meaningful connections between language form and meaning, and promoting critical analysis and interpretation.
The repository currently includes lessons for Portuguese, Arabic, Polish and Japanese classes, and will soon add Korean and Chinese. The project was sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL), a Title VI Language Resource Center.
Bruna and Kristen have shared the resources and participated in discussions on how to implement the materials in multiple venues. On October 17th, they presented their work at the Symposium on Language Pedagogy in Higher Education (SOLPHE) , where they highlighted the development of the OER and supporting materials that can be adapted to teacher education courses and professional development opportunities, such as viewing guides.
We invite teachers, teacher educators, and graduate students to explore the new resource and learn more about how video-enhanced reflection can support professional learning and classroom practice. You can also learn more about this approach by enrolling in FLT 841 Special Topics – Literacies in Foreign Language Teaching in Spring 2027.
Explore the Multiliteracies OER here: https://oer.cercll.arizona.edu/multiliteracies/