Assessing Multiliteracies in English Language Teacher Education: The Perceived Levels of Multiliteracies and the Impact of Demographic Factors

Abstract

The growing emphasis on 21st-century skills underscores the importance of multiliteracies for pre-service English language teachers in navigating diverse, digital, and multimodal classrooms. However, research on their perceived multiliteracies and associations with demographic factors remains limited. Thus, this study bridges this gap by determining how pre-service English language teachers perceived their multiliteracies using Teacher Multiliteracies Scale (TMS) encompassing four key dimensions: multimodal literacy (ML), digital literacy (DL), critical literacy (CL), socio-cultural literacy (SCL), and analyzing the variations based on demographic characteristics involving a total of 393 pre-service English language teachers. The result showed that the participants generally perceived themselves as moderately competent across all the dimensions, with DL dimension scoring the highest, followed by SCL, ML, and CL dimensions. Interestingly, no significant differences were found for gender, age, or academic level. Further regression analysis confirmed that teaching experience was modestly associated with ML, CL, and SCL dimensions, whereas DL showed no significant variations across the demographic variables among pre-service English language teachers. These findings suggest that teacher education programs may consider providing more authentic teaching experiences and practice-based learning opportunities to support multiliteracies development.