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This chapter provides the rationale and background to the whole volume. It is divided into four sections, each addressing the core components that make up this book and its contribution into the field. After situating the volume within the field of curriculum studies, especially within the theory and practice of multiliteracies, the chapter provides insights into the education of young children in Finland. It then moves on to defining multiliteracies from the perspectives of international research literature and Finnish curriculum texts and pedagogies. This is followed by an introduction to The Joy of Learning Multiliteracies (Monilukutaitoa Opitaan Ilolla, MOI) research and development program launched by the Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture to address the importance of multiliteracies in the lives of young children. The chapter ends with an outline of the individual chapters of the book, discussing how each chapter provides a unique yet complementary angle to multiliteracies and curriculum innovation in Finland and beyond.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book considers the role of multiliteracies in the education of young children living and learning in contemporary societies in the global North. It illustrates curriculum innovation and reform efforts situated in Finnish early childhood and primary education. The book presents some of the challenges and opportunities for enhancing professional development opportunities of early years practitioners. It shows how more established classroom practices interact and come into tension with new ways of teaching and learning multiliteracies. The book also considers how teacher agency and the conditions for its emergence are important drivers of transforming classroom practice. It provides rich descriptions how multiliteracies standards be benchmarked and meaningful learning progressions mapped from a sociocultural practice perspective. The book examines the cultural practices around reading and literacy in the United States, and considers how theory of multiliteracies might inform these practices.

In this chapter I will address and analyse claims that argue that we need to turn to what has been lost through pedagogicization, and that we need to de-pedagogicize society. I will discuss the limitations and the potential of going native in an apparently over-pedagogicized society, through reflecting on the questions: How do we understand pedagogicization in relationship to learning? Is pedagogy, or teaching as a separate register unique? How do we understand a teaching register, and (why) do we need it?; Can we speak at all of a “natural” way of learning removed from communities of practice?

In this chapter I will address and analyse claims that argue that we need to turn to what has been lost through pedagogicization, and that we need to de-pedagogicize society. I will discuss the limitations and the potential of going native in an apparently over-pedagogicized society, through reflecting on the questions: How do we understand pedagogicization in relationship to learning? Is pedagogy, or teaching as a separate register unique? How do we understand a teaching register, and (why) do we need it?; Can we speak at all of a “natural” way of learning removed from communities of practice?

This report is a synthesis of ongoing research, design, and implementation of an approach to education called “connected learning.” It advocates for broadened access to learning that is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity. Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement. This model is based on evidence that the most resilient, adaptive, and effective learning involves individual interest as well as social support to overcome adversity and provide recognition. This report investigates how we can use new media to foster the growth and sustenance of environments that support connected learning in a broad-based and equitable way. This report also offers a design and reform agenda, grounded in a rich understanding of child development and learning, to promote and test connected learning theories.

In trying to address the vexed challenge of theorizing learning transfer to make sense of how we learn across social contexts and what learning might mean in more informal domestic circumstances, Stevens and his colleagues offer a series of detailed studies of gaming in the home (Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008). They argue that we need to look at the “dispositions and purposes” that people bring with them to experiences and then consider “what people make of experiences in other times and places in their lives” (pp. 63–64). Learning, they suggest, is the process of interpretation as people reach back and forth across experiences (and the meanings that have been attributed to them). Rather than focusing on the learning experience in isolation, we need to pay attention to how learners conceptualize, contextualize, and reflect on experiences and to what resources they use and draw on to do this. Stevens et al. suggest that only by developing methods that allow us to study people across and within a range of settings can we see how people actively juxtapose, reject, select, contrast, or build on experiences. The research focus then needs both an intrapersonal historical dimension, reflecting how individuals frame their experiences over time, as well as a way of describing the types of understanding involved—the language and values that circulate within those experiences.