Examining the “Tools of the Trade”: A Knowledge Process Approach to Materials Analysis and Materials Evaluation

Textbooks, audio and video recordings, websites, and teacher-designed worksheets, tasks, and activities represent just some of the many “tools of the trade” for language and literacy teachers and learners. Teaching/learning materials such as these play a pivotal role in the classroom and thus deserve careful analysis and evaluation to ensure that they are engaging, supporting and inspiring learners to the fullest extent possible. One way to do this is to examine the materials for the knowledge processes — experiencing, analyzing, conceptualizing, applying — they anticipate. This chapter outlines a procedure for converting the Knowledge Process framework into materials analysis and evaluation instruments for use within any educational context where there is an interest in a Multiliteracies approach to language and literacy teaching and learning. It also presents a case for the use of knowledge process materials analyses/evaluations at institutions in which there is no intention of implementing Multiliteracies pedagogy. Knowing is the process of connecting the stuff of the mind to the stuff of the world. Knowing is a form of action and to know in this active sense is to learn. —Kalantzis, Cope & The Learning by Design Group, 2005, p. 70.