Digital multimodal composing (DMC) has been receiving increasing attention in the research on English as an additional language (EAL) instruction in higher education. While this approach responds to students' changing writing practices in the digital world, it can create tension with mandated curricula and high-stakes testing regimes that…

The authors argue for an expansive and inclusive approach to literacy instruction that moves beyond multimodality to embrace multiplicity in readers, texts, mediums, activities, environments, and contexts aligned to our 21st century world. In particular, rather than privileging the linguistic mode, the authors argue for using all modes and…

This article explores the potential of multimodal literacies to support a more equitable, inclusive approach to literacy instruction. Approaching multimodal literacies with an asset-based stance toward students with respect to culture, language, and dis/ability, multimodal literacies can support the enactment of culturally relevant pedagogy as…

This teacher-research study explored how opportunities for multimodal project learning provided time in the classroom for ongoing conversations and inquiries that promoted student agency and growth, cultivated content and literacy learning, and inherently provided authentic assessment opportunities. This study documented the multimodal curriculum…

Drawing from a multiple-case study of professional learning in literacy, this article presents vignettes from a Grade 1 classroom where the professional learning focused on multimodal literacy pedagogies that combined digital and print-based resources to expand children's meaning-making. Linking children's opportunities for expansive literacy…

The authors detail how one fourth-grade teacher implemented a comics writers' workshop in the weeks that concluded the academic school year. Each phase of the comics writers' workshop is described. Students interpreted and analyzed the words, images, and design features that compose published comics before constructing and publishing their own…

This practitioner research explores ways children engage in literacy learning through storytelling with the use of touch technology in a VPK (Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten) classroom. With access to diverse touch technology devices but no experience using these technologies, a VPK teacher explored strategies to use the resources to enhance literacy…

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…

Freebody and Luke proffered an expanded conceptualization of the resources readers utilize when reading and the roles readers adopt during the act of reading. The four resources model, and its associated four roles of the reader, expanded the definition of reading from a simple model of decoding printed texts to a model of constructing meaning and…

For young deaf children a co-enrolment setting with hearing children in nursery school is recognised as a useful provision for inclusive education. The aim of the study reported in this article was to gain knowledge about pathways into literacy for young deaf children in a co-enrolment setting. The questions raised in this article are: How are…

This article reports on a study of literacy practices in a Norwegian preschool where deaf and hearing children are enrolled in the same group and where communication is based on both sign language and spoken language. The aim of the study was to explore pathways to literacy for young deaf children within this setting. Our implicit assumption is…

Two classrooms of diverse 5-year-old children were set the task of exploring ways of realising music invention through the semiotic import of composing resources. In both a rural and an inner-urban setting in Australia, children demonstrated syncretism in bilingual practices in communication. Visual multimodal analysis demonstrated how children…

Young children frequently tell visual stories, drawing pictures to record and share their thoughts, feelings and understanding. How and what young children describe through art, especially when written language is not an option, is the focus of this interpretive analysis. A series of pictures by John, a 6-year-old boy, were drawn across the…

This article explores the experiences and literacy practices of an adolescent boy enrolled in an academic support class, in which students received an open-ended invitation to respond to S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders" with the software programme Comic Life. In constructing this "telling case", we highlight how traditional…

Literate practice in the arts encompasses both aesthetics and creativity. It is also multimodal in nature and often collaborative. This article presents data collected from a small multi-age school, with children from Prep to Year 7, during their preparation for an end-of-year show. The children had studied the topics of conservation and…