Abstract:

This paper will focus upon education reform initiatives undertaken in teacher preparation through innovative pedagogy and a learner -centered research agenda (Darling-Hammond et al 2005), at Bahrain Teachers College (BTC), Bahrain Education Reform, (2006) www.btc.uob.edu.bh/index/html, www.bahrainedb.bh. in order to reform the Bahrainian K-12 school system.
Curriculum reform movements have extended the trajectory of 21st century literacies, transforming teaching and learning from traditional resources to digital, multimodal resources. The affordances of computer technologies-cyberliteracies have transformed information and communication (Unsworth, 2001).
This in turn has led to a transformation of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, of multimodalities –visual, textual, audio, to a multiplicity of semiotic resources, meaning making cultures to build different dimensions of meaning: linguistic, visual, digital (Street, 1984, Gee 1990, New London Group, 2000).
Technological changes have taken place in literate forms of communication. The way the book is read, the way information is selected, is now transformed and mediated by technology to textual habitat, (Goodwyn, 1998) to screen based literacies (Kress 1997).
This paper reports preliminary attempts on the use of multimodal, multliteracies in Bahrain classrooms. Educators Hargreaves and Reyan, (1989), argue that teachers need to be increasingly included in curriculum conception, and not just be seen as technical executors of technical delivery of pupil learning.
Teacher’s candidates at BTC are introduced to multimedia materials, their awareness raised for critical understanding of multiliteracies in order to develop informed teachers for effective pedagogic intervention. During fieldwork teachers are encouraged and set tasks to develop digital teaching materials using digital leaning tools: to record mediascape and soundscape of interactive environmental events and episodes, where the emphasis is on participation, role relationships and engagement. This in turn is used to develop digital images and digital scripts.

Keywords:

Curriculum, reform, multiliteracies.