Pedagogy Perspectives with Professor Bill Cope

Professor William Cope is a leading educational theorist from the University of Illinois, best known for co‑developing the multiliteracies framework. In dialogue with us, Professor Cope reflects on the origins, evolution, and future of the New London Group’s multiliteracies framework and its implications for pedagogy.

We discuss:

• How multiliteracies represent the intertwined roles of multimodal communication, cultural diversity, and responsive pedagogy rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all instructional model.
• The need for teachers to develop a pedagogical repertoire enabling them to adapt instructional strategies based on learners’ unique meaning‑making tools and cultural lifeworlds.
• How conventional schooling’s reduction of meaning-making to rote text strips away learners’ embodied, multimodal capacities in favour of sterile test formats.
• How design and meaning-making processes position learners as transformative agents, producing uniquely expressive, context-sensitive texts rather than repeating templates.

Listen in to hear how Cope advocates for transformative teaching grounded in learners’ lived experiences and expressive repertoires, pushing back against standardised testing regimes.