While literacy research in the area of multimodality includes a range of communication modes, the combination of the visual and verbal modes is arguably the most common multimodal text form used in classroom contexts from posters, charts and information texts to picture books and graphic novels. Assessment of students' understanding of visual and…

While "arts-based" has received increased attention in recent years as a research methodology rooted in an aesthetic framework, less attention has been paid to conceptualizing what arts-based means in the context of particular disciplines of K-12 teaching and learning. This qualitative study recognizes a need to examine sustained and…

English is an already crowded curriculum and the incursion of multimodal literature puts it under increased pressure. How do teachers and students learn to understand and deploy tools of analysis that shed light on verbiage and images without becoming entangled in a complex and crowded analytical language? Is it possible to develop a metalanguage…

Multimodal texts are now part of the curriculum for school English, but they are by their nature inherently complex, and pose many challenges for the classroom. Not least is finding a way to manage the technical complexity of accounting for these texts, as well as finding a way to move students beyond simple observation and description to critical…

In a previous phase of a project based in a group of UK primary schools, speaking and listening was found to be an effective focus for improved learning across the curriculum and for teachers' professional development. At the project's second stage and in the light of recently changed Department for Education guidelines, these findings have been…

This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts--ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games--can play in connecting pupils' gaming literacy practices to "traditional" school-based literacies…

To provide insight into the issue of multimodal literacy instruction, the authors explore presentation techniques and instructional activities employed in their secondary language arts classes. They collaborate on assignments that focus students on "anchored media instruction" and engage them in producing multimodal, technology-infused projects,…

This article examines synergies and gaps in the construction of English, literacy, multimodality in policy and curriculum in Australian education with a focus on current assessment practices and educational accountability in order to make recommendations for future practice for teachers and for policy-makers. The article builds on analyses of the…

Contemporary curriculum guidelines, such as those provided in the incoming Australian curriculum, call for English to attend to multimodal forms of text and literacy as well as more traditional forms. Students are expected to become capable and critical readers, users and creators of texts and forms of literacy that span everything from newspapers…

"Oedipus Rex" dramatizes a collision of past, present, and future. Once Oedipus recognizes the connection between the past and his horrific present, he stabs out his eyes, ashamed at what he has wrought and unwilling to look upon his future. The 21st-century English language arts classroom is in the midst of a collision as well. Coming into…

This article explores the emergence of multimodality as intrinsic to the learning, teaching and assessment of English in the Twenty-First Century. With subject traditions tied to the study of language, literature and media, multimodal texts and new technologies are now accorded overdue recognition in English curriculum documents in several…

This instructor's manual explains the premise on which the text is based: that ideas on a particular topic are made up of input from several perspectives. The authors disclaim that the manual is telling teachers how to teach the text. Instead, the manual, like the textbook, is a series of "probes": suggestions to stimulate thinking and discussion.…