Reflecting on languaging the Lion King - an educational encounter - in the context of English literacy education

• Main Author: Raichlin, Desiree
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net10539/14322

In this Research Report I present an overview of the connections between Languaging The Lion King - An Educational Encounter, a workbook designed as a literacy learning device for English language learning in contemporary South African schools, and the changing educational and curricular environments facing South African teachers and students - particularly in the area of literacy learning. The introduction of Curriculum 2005 in South African schools in 1998, in line with the political and social changes taking place in the country, has facilitated increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in Senior Phase education curricula. Curriculum 2005’s objective to include rather than to marginalise a range of learners in a range of educational contexts, particularly as articulated in its Communication, Literacy and Language learning area, calls for a view of literacy broader than that promoted in previous language-based curricula. These national curricular concerns and the New London Group’s International Multiiiteracies Project, which captures and validates the diversity of people's literacies, provide the theoretical framework for my investigation of the ways in which the workbook attempts to negotiate the literacy practices required by South African literacy learners in the achievement of a new level of literacy competence.