Multilingualism, Multimodality, and Gamification: Pathways to Democratising Educational Spaces

Abstract

In this chapter, democratisation of educational spaces means that we welcome non-standard entrants into professional roles in education. Teaching and designing learning can be done by people without the usual (post)graduate pedagogical qualifications. Educational research can be done by people who do not have PhD degrees and formal training in research methods. But how do we go about opening up educational spaces and pushing these boundaries? What about legitimacy, accreditation and rigour? To engage with such questions, it is enlightening to look at the periphery of educational systems because it is here that experimentation can thrive. We therefore take a tour to rural India to look at alternative learning pathways, covering both deaf education and education for sustainability. Here we find innovations that are enabled by a cast of supporting actors: multilingualism, multimodality, and gamification. I present examples of educational settings with several languages both signed and spoken used in different modalities such as writing, fingerspelling, and visual multimedia. In addition, gamification of learning also plays an important role in breaking down the usual power dynamics in teaching and learning.