Using perspectives drawn from recent work in the anthropology of learning as socially situated practice, alongside attention to multimodality as a lens for exploring learning, this article analyzes patterns of meaning-making among children engaged in small group learning during an after-school Creole literacy program in Haiti. Ethnographic…

This article explores the possibilities of incorporating collaborative digital storytelling into preservice teacher education to support teachers in learning about their students' rich perspectives on teaching and learning. Data were gathered in an elementary literacy methods course at a public university in the northeastern United States to…

This study examines the challenges of analyzing texts that are multimodal--that is, combining more than one mode of communication, such as written text, images, video, and/or audio--and considers the theoretical and practical implications of two very different approaches. The more common current approach, which adapts the work of Halliday and…

After 10 years of interviews with professionals who work across creative and business sectors, the author has drawn together findings in this article to encourage a collapsing of silos between schools and workplaces so that educators can build on untapped expertise from professionals who work and think multimodally. This call for change involves…

Drawing from the research methods of three distinct literacy studies, in this piece, we highlight the visualisation approaches integral to our enquiry processes as researchers working to make sense of literacy and learning. We aim to encourage, provoke even, a conversation about visualisation processes in literacy research by sharing the…

This article explores the digital reading preferences and strategies used by preservice teachers when reading an e-textbook in a literacy methods course. The use of e-textbooks is becoming more prevalent due to an increase in access to mobile devices, acceptance of e-books in general, and the high cost of print textbooks. To ensure comprehension,…

In our contemporary society, digital texts circulate more readily and extend beyond page-bound formats to include interactive representations such as online newsprint with hyperlinks to audio and video files. This is to say that multimodality combined with digital technologies extends grammar to include voice, visual, and music, among other modes…

Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was…

Colour, a visual element of art and design, is a semiotic mode that is used strategically by sign-makers to communicate meaning. Understanding the meaning-making potential of colour can enhance students' understanding, appreciation, interpretation and composition of multimodal texts. This article features a case study of Anya, an 11-year-old…

This article explores how immigrant students in the United States utilise multimodal literacy practices to complicate dominant narratives of American national identity--narratives of facile assimilation, meritocracy and linear trajectories. Such ideologies can be explicitly evident in curricular materials or can be woven more implicitly into…

This paper explores how students, as multimodal storytellers, can weave powerful narratives blending modes, genres, artefacts and literary conventions to represent the real and imagined in their lives. Part of a larger ethnographic case study of student writing in a middle years class for immigrant students learning English as an additional…

This study assesses the effects of the use of learning strategies on student literacy performance based on the 2002 Hong Kong Program for International Student Assessment. The descriptive statistics show that students use the memorization strategy almost as frequently as the elaboration strategy. Independent sample t-tests reveal that female…

This study investigated the modes, semiotic resources, and intersemiotic relationships present in the design of multimodal electronic texts. The participants comprised 10 women and 2 men, who were enrolled in a graduate-level course focused on multimodality and who used a virtual poster tool to respond to a classroom assignment. Content analysis…

Multimodal texts involve the presence, absence, and co-occurrence of alphabetic text with visual, audio, tactile, gestural, and spatial representations. This article explores how teachers' evaluation of students' multimodal work can be understood in terms of cognition and culture. When teachers apply a paradigm of assessment rooted in print-based…

This article looks at the way in which the changing visual environment affects education at two levels: in communication patterns and research methodologies. The research considers differences in the variance and quantity of types of visual media and their relationship to the written mode in the urban landscapes of Tokyo and London, using…