Abstract

Multiliteracies has been a key concept in the field of education worldwide, inspiring new ways of teaching and learning. In my disciplines for undergraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student teachers in a public Brazilian university, I have worked with the theoretical and pedagogical framework of the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies and Learning by Design (LbD) as a repertoire of practices, which are increasingly important for participation in communities and work and academic life in our globalized world. These practices revolve around three main ideas: critical thinking, enhanced reading skills, and teacher professionalism. In this article, I discuss these three main domains of practice and give examples of how I have used LbD knowledge processes to promote relevant learning experiences for my student teachers. I believe that if teachers are expected to be able to develop their students’ critical thinking, multimodal skills, and abilities to “think out of the box,” to negotiate meanings, and to participate in teamwork, they need to have these skills developed first in their own process of teacher education. In this sense, as a repertoire of practices, multiliteracies and LbD play an important role in teacher education.