Integrating the Four Resources Model to Promote Disability Awareness and Literacy Development in EFL Education

This descriptive case study explores the impact of the Four Resources Model (Luke & Freebody, 1999) on the development of disability awareness and conventional literacy―specifically oral proficiency―among Korean university EFL learners. Three participants with diverse English proficiency levels and educational backgrounds engaged in a two-month instructional program that blended traditional and digital learning modalities. The curriculum incorporated multiple versions of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid―including original, parody, and animated forms―as multimodal texts to promote critical engagement. A mixed-methods design was employed, drawing on data from questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, group discussions, and prompt verbal counter-narrative productions conducted within a metaverse platform. Familiar fairy tales, recontextualized through critical multimodal literacy tasks, served as effective mediums for cultivating interpretive skills, learner motivation, and critical reflection. The findings revealed marked improvement in learners’ sensitivity to disability-related social issues alongside oral English proficiency―specifically in discourse organization, vocabulary use, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, and syntactic complexity. Participation in the critical literacy activities expanded learners’ sociocultural awareness and nurtured empathetic, critically conscious attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. Moreover, avatar-based storytelling in the metaverse fostered learner autonomy and supporting sustained linguistic and cognitive engagement. This study highlights the pedagogical value of integrating the Four Resources Model with multimodal, digitally mediated literacy practices in EFL education. Such an approach not only advances conventional literacy skills but also fosters inclusive, socially responsible language users equipped to interrogate dominant ideologies and engage with real-world social issues.