A new vision of literacy education that involves moral, political, and cultural decisions about the literate practices needed to enhance both peoples' agency over their life trajectories and communities' intellectual, cultural and semiotic resources is essential for reframing literacy to encompass the multiple modalities and literacies of the 21st century. Yet, standardization in U.S. schools continues to be an integral factor in curriculum design, classroom practice, evaluation and testing as well as in the professional development programs available to teachers. Drawing from Australian educational contexts as a model, this study seeks to explore the affordances and challenges of using an alternative perspective to literacy education in which the role of teachers and their students shifts from reproducers of knowledge to designers of knowledge as they engage actively and agentively in their textual and social worlds. In the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies Framework (PMF), the notion of Design is integral to framing the ways that theory is enacted in practice: how curriculum, culture and other available resources for meaning making are taken up and recontextualized in the classroom; and how identities, ideologies and discourses about literacy, learning, language and the world are understood, critiqued and utilized for engaging in authentic learning experiences. As with students in their classrooms, teachers also need meaningful learning experiences that frame them as designers but theirs is in the form of powerful and diverse professional development programs. In this dissertation study, an inquiry group model for professional development is utilized as a collaborative learning space for two experienced elementary teachers and the researcher as they explore the new designs of a critical multiliteracies perspective on literacy learning for developing a literacy unit on bullying. This study is shaped by overarching questions that consider the impact of introducing the teachers to the new designs of the PMF; the impact of such a framework for student learning; and the implications of an inquiry group working with the PMF for professional development in U.S. context. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]