This study aims to investigate how English language lecturers in Malaysian higher education conceptualise and enact literacy pedagogy in response to digitalisation, multimodality and multilingual realities. It moves beyond deficit framings by analysing how lecturers negotiate inherited traditions, institutional expectations and new communicative needs, contributing to teaching, learning and innovation in Global South higher education contexts.
An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed. Phase One surveyed 117 lecturers on literacy conceptions and learning by design engagement. Phase Two interviewed 20 lecturers, offering deeper insight into how they define literacy and negotiate their pedagogical roles within institutional constraints.
Lecturers’ literacy conceptions remain language-centric, yet their practices reveal routine integration of multimodal resources and relational strategies. Awareness of multiliteracies pedagogy was rare and engagement partial – strong in experiential and conceptual processes but weaker in critical and creative ones – revealing intuitive alignment alongside systemic gaps shaping pedagogical hybridity.
Situated in a multilingual, postcolonial context where multiliteracies pedagogy is absent from curricula and teacher education, this study demonstrates how lecturers negotiate literacy pedagogy without systemic support. It reframes engagement not as resistance but as partial hybridity shaped by policy and institutional conditions. Findings highlight the need for professional learning that validates existing practices while extending critical and creative literacies, offering timely insights for curriculum and pedagogical reform in higher education.
