Abstract
Social sustainability embraces literacy development as a means by which children integrate their knowledge in society and become powerful and meaningful. In this context, the development of writing among young children requires the design of new teaching strategies that allow for the multimodal repertoire brought by children into the classroom. Systemic Functional Linguistics offers tools for the analysis of children’s multimodal writing, which plays an important role in their literacy development. Our research was carried out in an urban context, the participants being 12 children aged 7 to 8. Data were collected through participant observation, conversations, and the analysis of documents and products generated by the children. From them, we analysed two stories written by two girls, which showed the way in which the children created meaning by combining verbal and visual modes, and how these modes interact (intersemiosis). The performance of a literacy task in which children are able to integrate their knowledge and heritage into the classroom, may constitute an interdisciplinary tool for their participation and engagement in the school, thus leading to a more equal society. In consequence, we propose that the integration of a genre-based pedagogy in the classroom should include greater awareness in teachers of the value of pupils’ multimodal assessments.
Highlights
Social sustainability has been described as the sum of formal and informal processes, systems and relationships that work together building healthy and liveable communities [1]
Following the interdisciplinary concept of social sustainability developed by McKenzie [1], and its materialisation in schools [4], we focus on young children’s creative writing, considering it as a field for participation, intergenerational understanding and identity development
Our research aims to present multimodal literacy development in the school as a tool for developing cultural relations between the school and the children’s environment, considered as an indicator of social sustainability [1]
Summary
Social sustainability has been described as the sum of formal and informal processes, systems and relationships that work together building healthy and liveable communities [1]. The non-physical factors supporting social sustainability include, among others, education, social capital and cultural tradition [2]. Educational as well as linguistic concerns influence the achievement of equity, considered as one of the key elements of sustainable societies [2], both within and between generations [1]. A broad understanding of social sustainability supports literacy, as well as numeracy, music or movement, as part of the knowledge acquired by children in their communities, and brought by them into the classroom [3]. Following the interdisciplinary concept of social sustainability developed by McKenzie [1], and its materialisation in schools [4], we focus on young children’s creative writing, considering it as a field for participation, intergenerational understanding and identity development. Recent research on written communication during early childhood [5,6,7,8,9] has underlined the variety of multimodal texts surrounding children, and the way in which they develop a multimodal literacy [10] during their literacy development, both in and out of school [11,12,13]
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