The following is a short blog about the article Multimodality: Challenges to Thinking About Language, by Gunther Kress. It was published in TESOL Quarterly in Volume 34, No. 2.

The society that our students inhabit is global, fluid (Bauman, 1998) and networked. Their communication skills need to evolve accordingly, and as teachers and administrators, we continually ask ourselves what epistemological and pedagogical changes must occur so that our students are literate in the 21st century.  Research shows that our students must be engaged, passionate, learned, and capable of design. To best prepare our students, we must ensure that our curriculum embraces the tenets of both Critical Literacy Theory and Multimodality. Without this combined framework, our students will not participate in meaningful learning that will allow them to thrive in the 21-century workplace. Our task then is twofold. We must ascertain that our community of educators fully understands and embraces these theories and we need to make sure that our curriculum aligns with the research to best support the growth of these ever-evolving 21-century literacy skills.

Critical Literacy Theory and Multimodality Defined

Critical literacy theory is actively reading the text in a manner that promotes a deeper understanding of socially constructed concepts, such as power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships.  Shor and Freire (1987) called it a dream of a new society against the power now in power. Foucault (1980) stated that it was an insurrection of subjugated knowledges. Ray William (1977) wrote that it was a counter-hegemonic structure of feeling.   And Adrienne Rich (1979) added that it was language used against fitting unexceptionally into the status quo.

For our usage, the aptest definition is that “literacy is a social action through language use that develops us as agents inside a larger culture, while critical literacy is understood as part of the process of becoming conscious of one’s experience as historically constructed with specific power relations” (Anderson and Irvine, 1982).  Critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of self (Shor,1999). As readers, we examine our ongoing development to understand ourselves and the world around us. It is how we learn how to make sense of the world.   And students of all ages need adult alliances to help win language rights to free speech and to social criticism.

Critical reading and critical literacy theory are not the same. However, the two can be closely linked (O’Byrne, 2018).  The Common Core State Standards support critical analysis of a text in two ways. The students are expected to focus on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s meaning.  And secondly, the students are asked to determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text. Critical literacy moves the reader’s focus away from the “self” in critical reading to the interpretation of texts in different environmental and cultural contexts (Luke, 2000).

In order to prevent the low profile, everyday forms of silencing John Goodlad 1983 Michelle Fine (1987,1993) found in mass schooling, we need to create an environment that does not base its curriculum on standardized tests, commercial textbooks, and one-correct-answer tests.  Our curriculum must have a focus on situated practice based on the learners’ experiences. We need to challenge the traditional monologic relationship between teacher and student. We need to take the students’ experiences, interests, and existing technological and discourse resources as a starting point (Jewitt, 2008).  The social and political goal of multiliteracies is to situate teachers and students as active participants in social change, the active designers of social futures (Cope&Kalantis, 2000). With this explicit agenda for social change, the pedagogic aim of multiliteracies is to attend to the multiple and multimodal texts and a wide range of literacy practices that students are engaged with (Jewitt, 2008).

We need to make sure that our classrooms are places where everyone is given equal chances at success. If education were indeed neutral, everyone would have equal access as well as equal monies invested in their development something this democratic never provided and still doesn’t (Quality Counts, 20-21, 54). Often students of color show lower representation in gifted and talented classes due to biased testing.

Multimodality (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn & Tsatsarelis, 2001; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), like multiliteracies, has emerged in response to the changing social and semiotic landscape. From the multimodal perspective on literacy, there is an understanding that meanings are made (as well as distributed, interpreted, and remade) through many different communicational resources.  Language is only one of those resources (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Multimodality is a term that is now widely used in the academic world. A mode (image, gesture, gaze, language, body posture, sound, music, speech, and so on) is defined as a unit of expression and representation. As Jewitt (2009) purposed, it is the outcome of the cultural shaping of material. It is socially and materially situated.  Halliday (1978) broadened the definition to extend “far beyond mere physicality, to encompass ephemeral, immaterial qualities that are materialized through physical features such as color, heft, light, angle, and gaze.” Different means of meaning-making are not separated but almost always appear together; image with writing, speech with gesture, math symbolism with writing and so forth. What is most important is how the different kinds of meaning-making are combined into an integrated, multimodal whole that scholars attempt to highlight when they start using the term multimodality (Jewitt, 2008).  Rosewell (2013) gives precise examples of how these modes can work together in different ways. Transmodal elements reach across the modes like the visuals and sound in films. Intermodal elements are when the modes can exist separately but can cross-reference each other. For example, in a book, the illustrations may work in sync with the font. And lastly, there are intramodal elements that join together to make meaning. An example of this may be the choice of fabric and color that work together to create a particular fashion statement. Successful designers, be they creators of homes, clothes, art, or interfaces, all make these types of multimodal decisions in their design processes.  Each mode carries affordances and constraints.

Why is multimodality important?

School literacy is criticized where it continues to focus on restrictive print and language-based options of literacy (Gee, 2004; Lam, 2006; Leander, 2007).  As Jennifer Roswell writes, “there remains a veil of secrecy around what experts in productions, design, and multimodality know and do and a discrepancy between that and the conventions that we teach students when they produce texts in the real world.” We need to make curricular changes so that students will be better prepared for a life of meaningful and productive 21st-century work. If we privilege only written language, our students will lose important opportunities.

How do we ensure that our practices reflect our beliefs?  

The following factors are identified as key (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; New London Group, 1996).  We must make sure that:

The students need to be immersed in an acquisition-rich environment.  Teachers and students need to be trained in acquisition skills. New digital materials, including better databases, should be made available.

Our focus is on situated practice based on the learners’ experiences.  Lessons should be tied to current issues that are age appropriate. From math, to science, to ELA, the students will solve problems that motivate and engage.

We provide overt instruction allows for the systematic and explicit teaching of the vocabulary for understanding the design processes. Because very few of the professionals in education have a design background, we need to provide professional development to build these skills.  

We use a critical framing stance that connects meanings to their social contexts and purposes to interpret and interrogate the social and cultural context of designs. With this intention, the students would be given the opportunity to solve meaningful problems that will prepare them for engaged participation in our democracy on the local, national, and worldwide scale. We cannot expect our citizens to be knowledgable participants unless we give them the skills needed to make informed decisions.

We encourage transformative practice which allows students to recreate and recontextualize meaning across contexts. We will accept that the boundaries between modes blur and mesh into new configurations.  These new configurations affect the construction of knowledge and identities (Jewitt, 2006; Leander, 2007; Pelletier, 2005, 2006). These concepts will first be built with professional development that involves hands-on participation.  

We recognize that a significant amount of this work is accomplished through a range of modes.  We will not privilege written language as the only option for communication.

The success of this transition depends solely on teacher training.  Most teachers (other than those who enter teaching as a second career) do not have the skills readily available to assist students in the design process.  They should not be expected to learn through trial and error or to learn on their own. The transition to a school that embraces critical learning theory and multimodality should be considered a multiple year project, with dedicated leadership guiding the process.  Students finding their own way (as is often the response when technology is introduced) is misguided and unethical.

How do we make sure the curriculum is aligned with our beliefs?

With guided scaffolding, the teachers will create a rubric based on research.  This rubric will evaluate the quality of the current materials and processes. The community of teachers will set the criteria based on the research they have read and the professional development they have received.  The criteria would include aspects of critical literacy theory and multimodality.

When our students and our teachers are able to access the materials and processes used in the modern workplace, armed with the freedom and the knowledge developed in a critical thinking and multimodal environment, our classroom work will be engaging and productive.   With adequate support, a fair and purposeful curriculum would be available to all students.

Works Cited

1998. “Quality counts:  The urban challenge–public education in the 40 states”. Education Week, 17.17(January 8).

Anderson, Gary L., and Patricia Irvine. 1993. Informing critical literacy with

ethnography. In Critical literacy: Politics, praxis, and the postmodern. Eds. Colin

Lankshear and Peter L. McLaren. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 81-104.

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies. London: Routledge.

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., & Et al. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review,(6), 1st ser., 60.

Fine, Michelle. (1987). Silencing in public school. Language Arts, 64(February): 157-164.

Foucault, Michel. (1980). Power/knowledge. Ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon.

Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed.  New York: Seabury.

Goodlad, John. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Halliday. M. (1978). Language as a Social Semiotic.  London: Edward Arnold.

Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 241-267.

Jewitt, C. (ed.) (2009). The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis.  London: Routledge.

Kress G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.

Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001).  Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London: Continuum.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication.  London: Arnold.

Lam, W. (2006). Culture and learning in the context of globalization: Research directions. Review of Research in Education, 30, 213-237.

Leander, K. (2007, June). Youth internet practices and pleasure:  Media effects missed by the discourses of “reading” and “design.” Keynote delivered at ESRC Seminar Series:  Final Conference, Institute of Education, London.

Luke, A. (2000). Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(5), 448-461.

O’Bryne, W. (2018, May 11). What is “Critical Literacy” in Education? Retrieved from https://wiobyrne.com/critical-literacy/

Pelletier, C. (2005). The use of literacy in studying computer games:  Comparing students’ oral and visual representations of games. English Teaching; Practice and Critique, 4(1), 40-59.

Pelletier, C. (2006). Reconfiguring interactivity, agency, and pleasure in the education and computer games debate:  Using Zizek’s concept of interpassivity to analyze educational play. E-learning, 2(4), 317-326.

Rowsell, J. (2013). Working with multimodality: Rethinking literacy in a digital age. New York: Routledge.

Shor, Ira, and Paulo Freire. (1987).  A pedagogy for liberation.   Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Shor, I. (1999). What is Critical Literacy. Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice,1(4), 2-32.

Williams, Raymond. (1977). Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wiobyrne. (2018, May 11). What is “Critical Literacy” in Education? Retrieved from https://wiobyrne.com/critical-literacy/

Rowsell, Jennifer. Working With Multimodality:  Rethinking Literacy in a Digital Age. Routledge, 2013, 166 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-67623-6.

Teachers are often caught between the 20th and 21st-century expectations of literacy instruction knowing that multimodality should be a part of their lesson plans, yet not sure where or how to begin.  In reading this short paperback, I found not only answers to many of my questions but practical classroom suggestions that I could implement immediately.

Roswell uses an ethnographic lens to interview thirty successful professionals (whom she calls producers) who utilize the affordances of multimodality in their careers. These producers grant the reader the opportunity of a behind the scenes view of how multimodality works. The modes frame each chapter and detail how the producers use the modes when they are in the design phase of production.  The book ends each chapter with classroom takeaways that bridge the gap between heady research tomes and the hit or miss of classroom discovery.

As educators, we understand that literacy is much more than words on paper. We know that real-world literacy experiences (such as books, websites, films) combine many different elements for the author to communicate a message successfully.  To be prepared to read and write in the professional world, students need to have the skills necessary to create and understand the multimodal experiences in which they live. But, as Rowsell writes, “there remains a veil of secrecy around what experts in productions, design, and multimodality know and do and a discrepancy between that and the conventions that we teach students when they produce texts at school.”  Reading this book caused me to make curricular changes so that my students would be better prepared for a life of meaningful and productive work. Watching these producers combine modes in specific ways and leverage their affordances to achieve particular effects invigorated my teaching strategies.

What are modes and how do the work?

Rosewell prepares the reader by explaining that a mode is defined as a unit of expression and representation.  As Jewitt (2009) purposed, it is the outcome of the cultural shaping of material. It is socially and materially situated.  Halliday (1978) broadened the definition to extend “far beyond mere physicality, to encompass ephemeral, immaterial qualities that are materialized through physical features such as color, heft, light, angle, and gaze.”  Rosewell gives precise examples of how these modes can work together in different ways. Transmodal elements reach across the modes like the visuals and sound in films. Intermodal elements are when the modes can exist separately but can cross-reference each other. For example, in a book, the illustrations may work in sync with the font.  And lastly, there are intramodal elements that join together to make meaning. An example of this may be the choice of fabric and color that work together to create a particular fashion statement.

Who are the producers and why should we emulate them?

Roswell interviewed successful filmmakers, illustrators, web designers, journalists, actors, and architects, each of whom is a producer who designs. “Design physically manifests ideas, beliefs, and values through modes,” writes Rowsell, adding that  “we must examine the way producers evoke, combine and privilege one or more modes in a text if we are to determine how we can use a mode that best suits a composition when we produce texts.” The value of this learning lies not in just the modes themselves, but in how the modes are used and manipulated by the producers. Our desire as classroom teachers is not that our students become experts in textiles, but instead learn the practices that these modes offer these producers.

Film and Visuals

A key concept in film production is differentiating between representation and communication.  Gunther Kress claims that “representation focuses on my interest; communication focuses on the assumed interest of the recipient of the sign: (Kress, 2010). The three takeaways that I found interesting was the need to isolate the mood of films, the importance of perspective, and the deep sense of director agency in controlling the created message. “Framing stories through visuals and sound effects is a skill,” Rowsell states, that could “serve as a framework for educators to think about assigning moving-image projects on topics.”

In visuals, the producers spoke of perspective, color, and detail.  One consideration these producers offered was when visuals might be incorporated into the text and when sometimes the text is good enough.  Another critical idea they offered was that not everything could or should be depicted visually. Good readers and writers know that texture plays an integral part of good writing.  Bringing these modes to the front of the stage may enable literacy learners to appreciate the nuances of the selections they read or enable them to develop their writing more fully.

Sound

Sound can be a subjective experience as in the case of cultural experiences such as church or holiday music, and it can be objective when used to “create more general if not universal feelings of joy, suspense, or fear, as in the case of movie soundtracks.”  Literacy students would benefit from knowing what affordances sound has. One way of using sound in the classroom might be to analyze how different songs may achieve different moods. However, as Roswell states, the value of what we learn about sound can transcend the aural elements.  Both of the interviewed producers talked about the value of knowing how to combine information to convey meaning. What can be learned through an analysis of sound is directly applicable to writing, where student-created combinations might be “words that students use to create sentences, the evidence they offer in an argument, choices for syntax, etc.”

Interface

As an educator, this chapter was by far the biggest game changer for me.  At this point in the book I realized that if I wanted to prepare my students for their future professions, I needed to make changes in my attitudes and behavior in my classroom.  Rowsell points out that interface has moved beyond the mere function of how a user interacts with a given system to a consideration of aesthetics. Instead of spending hours wordsmithing, searching for the perfect word, we must look at interface to prepare our writers for their future professions. Where remixing privileges mixing and melding together of previously existing texts, discourses, and “stuff” (Gee, 1999), convergence privileges uniting technologies and functions, thereby gathering dispersed networks (Sheridan and Rowsell, 2010).  Creating digital media helps students become more critical readers, writers, and thinkers (Peppler and Kafai, 2007). Using and creating digital material are the skills my students need to know.

Rowsell continues with chapters each detailing modes of movement, textile, word, and space, granting the novice multimodality student a glimpse into the possibilities of a genuinely multimodal classroom.

In conclusion, Rowsell writes that “it is critical for students to develop the same brand of creativity and innovation that producers talk about and demonstrate – creative and innovative habits that are distinguished from the demonstrations of competence that characterize traditional monomodal, print-based writing practices because the professional and economic landscape of their future will demand that they be inventive and creative.”  If our students are to be prepared for their futures, we as teachers must demand that our classrooms offer more of an emphasis on designing and making than on the final product. And, we must come to believe that “words may be vital, but they are by no means the only competence of value and worth and words and language are usually coupled with other modes.”

Works Cited

Gee, J.P. (1999). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis:  Theory and Method. London: Routledge.

Halliday. M. (1978).  Language as a Social Semiotic.   London: Edward Arnold.

Jewitt, C. (ed.) (2009). The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis.  London:  Routledge.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age.  London: Routledge.

Sheridan, M. and Rowsell, J. (2010). Design Literacies.   London:  Routledge.

As usual, I had to be gently reminded that I am doing a terrible job keeping you informed on what is happening in the classroom.  It was one of my peeves as a parent, and now as your child’s teacher, I am committing the same offense. The fact that I am a huge talker and a prolific writer makes the current situation uncanny. All I can say is that I promise to reform.

Standards-Based Grading was a topic of many of the conferences last week.  With only ten minutes to converse, I really couldn’t speak about it with the attention it deserves.  Perhaps in this communication, I can do it justice.

When I started teaching thirty-two years ago, my first school was completely SBG.  It was a progressive public school in a small middle-class town outside of Madison.  SBG made perfect sense to me. We covered a unit (social studies, math, etc.) and assessed each standard of the unit.  If we evaluated the standard more than once, the most current assessment data was considered the current status. Therefore, if a child ultimately showed mastery of a standard, we considered that standard mastered.

A year later, and a move to Illinois, found me in a totally different situation.  Now I was expected to take 30 grades, add them together, divide by 30 and give each of my 120 students a grade.  As a mathematician and as an educator this did not make sense to me. This number meant nothing. It told the parents nothing.  If a student received a 0% on an assignment and then a 100% on the next, her average was 50%. What did that mean? If I covered nine different topics and she was amazing on some, and still struggled on others, how did a 86% inform anyone about anything we were doing in the classroom?  It just didn’t make sense. At this particular school, it was expected that I had 30 grades per kid per quarter so that I could prove my quarterly grades. Almost ten thousand grades were marked in my grade book. Only the kids who got 100s on everything were accurately informed of their progress.  It was a mean game that we were playing, and I didn’t like it. Education is about learning. Learning means to go from not knowing to understanding. While learning is really fun, I don’t believe that it was ever meant to be a game where we vie for points.

Just recently I participated in one of my professional reviews.  Several times per year, I am observed, and feedback is given. While I may excel in some areas and continue to strive for improvement in others, our central purpose is for me to continue to grow and learn.  We aren’t playing a game. My performance is designated by a position on several different bands of expectations. Thank goodness the scores for each of the areas weren’t added together and then divided to give me a percentage rating. (Imagine what the parent communication score would have done to the overall average!) That score would not have made sense, and it would not help me become a better teacher.

SBG has made me a much better teacher.  When I am relieved of the burden of every grade counting, when I am given the freedom to assess as often as necessary to allow my student to achieve success, then I know that I can really do the job expected of me.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes, right? (I remember someone telling me that I couldn’t keep assessing. Why not?) You want me to make sure that your child is learning the ideas necessary to learn future ideas. You also want me to continue to instill in your child that we are never finished learning.  I believe that we develop the hunger to learn by being successful. I can’t motivate and engage in a game that involves vying for points.

I believe in SBG in the same way that I believe in world peace.  I am still actively working on learning how to play my role in providing both.  Is there learning yet to be done? Of course. If I said I knew everything, I would be lying.  Will I ever know everything? Probably not, but I will try to learn as much as I can. I am no longer 24 years old, and now when things don’t make sense, I object, loudly. I honestly believe that education is not as easy to understand as one might wish it to be.  For sure, the path is not linear. I can feel myself wanting to write about concept nodes and brain development. Perhaps that is a topic left for another message.
 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton