Listening to teachers talk about multimodality and multimodal texts: considerations for the national English curriculum

PurposeThis work examines the role of critical framing in using multimodal texts to engage English Language Learners (ELLs) in reading comprehension activities in the new language. A framework is presented to systematically elicit student perspectives on contemporary domestic and global issues, capitalizing on the affordances of using intermodal complementarity and criticality to enhance ELLs’ representation and autonomy in the classroom.Design/methodology/approachThis framework emphasizes planning and preparation through an understanding of students’ backgrounds and linguistic repertoires, language scaffolding and cultural connections to multimodal texts during instruction and opening spaces for ELLs to critique multimodal texts to be aware of forces that produce and reproduce social inequities within these texts.FindingsWe provide instructional strategies to support critical discussion for new language development and a means for qualitative researchers to observe and discuss this dynamic process.Research limitations/implicationsThe research implications of this study highlight the importance of multimodal literacies in enhancing ELLs' engagement and critical thinking. The proposed framework can aid researchers in observing classroom practices, focusing on complementarity to develop a common metalanguage for analyzing texts. This approach empowers ELLs to articulate and critique multimodal texts, moving beyond traditional language instruction to foster authentic, culturally responsive language competence. It suggests that critical media literacy can bridge gaps between dominant and marginalized discourses, promoting social justice and empowering ELLs to participate in student-centered learning.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of this study highlight the integration of multimodal texts in teaching ELLs to enhance their engagement and comprehension. By using a framework that emphasizes planning and preparation, educators can tailor instruction to students' linguistic backgrounds and cultural experiences. This approach encourages critical analysis of multimodal texts, fostering student autonomy and allowing them to critique social inequities. The framework also provides instructional scaffolds, enabling ELLs to develop language proficiency and critical thinking skills, ultimately making literacy practices more authentic and culturally responsive.Social implicationsThe social implications of this study emphasize the need for inclusive literacy practices that empower ELLs by recognizing and valuing their cultural and experiential diversity. By critically analyzing multimodal texts, ELLs can engage with content that challenges traditional power dynamics and promotes social justice. This approach allows students to interrogate and reimagine texts, fostering a deeper understanding of social structures and encouraging equitable discourse. The framework supports bridging the gap between dominant and marginalized discourses, enabling ELLs to connect their learning with local and global communities.Originality/valueWhile qualitative researchers have explored the benefits of these elements, a framework that connects and reflects these complex pedagogical decisions of educators and researchers in the classroom is needed.

How students negotiate what to include, and exclude, in multimodal texts is, in this article, explored in order to find out how, and to what extent, creating multimodal texts in language education can be regarded as a literacy practice at the boundary. When students create multimodal texts in classrooms they may incorporate contextual references from domains outside of education, such as popular culture, in the multimodal texts. By incorporating contextual references from activities outside of education, the multimodal texts become boundary objects which potentially connect educational and everyday practices. Boundary objects have different meanings in different activity systems but may connect, as well as divide, the activity systems involved. By analyzing student interactions this article aims to illuminate to what extent the students relate to multimodal texts as boundary objects. The ambiguous nature of boundaries accommodates for variations which are discernible in how the students relate to, and incorporate contextual references from several literacy practices in their multimodal texts. The students sometimes utilize the multimodal text as a boundary object which connects the activity systems involved, but by excluding certain contextual references the division between the activity systems is also enacted by the students.

Given the changing nature of literacy, there is an urgent need to develop alternative ways of assessment in support of students' new literacy practices in the digital age. While emergent models of multimodal assessment are being developed in theoretical contexts, the study reported in this paper illustrates how multimodal theories can be realized in classroom practice. Seeking to address the needs of both literacy instruction and assessment, this study proposed a design rubric from the multiliteracies perspective to assess students' design of multimodal texts as a means to support assessable new literacy practices. Specifically, this research aimed to investigate how the design rubric as a formative assessment tool affects E nglish learners' multimodal text production (in this case, presentation slides). The empirical results of this study reveal that the theory‐driven design rubric was useful for enhancing the students' understanding and awareness of the multimodal nature of presentation slides and led to improvement in their multimodal text production. The findings have important implications for scaffolding students' multimodal literacy by using formative assessment as one of the instructional approaches in multiliteracies pedagogy. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic The advent of digital technology brings about a re‐conceptualization of literacy. Today's students must be literate in both traditional printed texts and multimodal texts that are commonly associated with digital technology and multimedia. New literacy practices require teachers to develop new assessment practices. What this paper adds This paper offers valuable insights into literacy instruction and assessment. This paper presents a course design using action research that responds to the urgent need to develop alternative ways of assessment in support of students' new literacy practices in the digital age. This paper proposes a theory‐driven design rubric from the multiliteracies perspective to assess learners' multimodal text production. Implications for practice and/or policy Multimodal assessment allows teachers to help students build a metalanguage for understanding and describing multimodal texts. Literacy and language educators may consider adapting the proposed design rubric as a formative assessment tool to provide students with constructive feedback pertaining to the multimodality of texts. The proposed design rubric can also be used for peer review and self‐assessment.

This paper explores a group of primary teachers’ knowledge and perspectives about multimodal text and its usage in teaching critical reading skills for upper primary students in Surakarta, Indonesia. This case study explores a group of primary teachers’ knowledge and perspectives about multimodal text and its usage in teaching critical reading skills for upper primary students (students of grades 4, 5 and 6) in Surakarta, Indonesia. A focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted among 30 primary teachers and 10 school principals by using open-ended inquiries. The discussion administered several topics related to teachers’ perspectives about multimodal texts, teaching critical reading instructions, and the application of multimodal text in upper primary learning. The results of the research shows that text-based learning in the primary curriculum was mostly using written text with minimum illustration and often was only supported by a video from the internet. Most participants confirmed that they develop upper primary students’ critical reading skills by asking students to retell, finding key information, discussing the main ideas, and mostly answering questions about the text they read. The conclusion of the research is that the implementation of multimodal text in upper primary learning was limited to written text with illustrations, posters, advertisements, and video or animation videos from the internet. The implication of this research urges teachers to use multimodal texts to enhance critical thinking skills.

The term “critical analysis of multimodal discourse” suggests a merger of two distinct fields of applied linguistics: critical discourse analysis and multimodality. At present it cannot be said that such a merger has taken place. Unlike critical discourse analysis and multimodality, the “critical analysis of multimodal discourse” is not—or not yet—a field with its own conferences, journals, edited books, and so on. Although some critical discourse analysts focus on multimodal texts and some multimodal analysts take a critical stance, they are in the minority, in both fields, despite the increasingly important role of multi‐modal discourse in many social and political contexts, especially since the emergence of the Internet. It is therefore best to separately survey multimodal work within the tradition of critical discourse analysis and critical work within the tradition of multimodality; and to then assess whether—and if so, to what degree—a coherent field of study has begun to emerge, even though it does not as yet have a clear academic identity of its own.

As reading continues to become governed by a spatial “logic of the image” rather than strictly a temporal or linear logic of written language (Kress, 2003), and readers increasingly engage with a range of Internet-based texts, a host of challenges ensue for educators and students alike. One of the most vexing of these challenges deals with discernments of credibility. Determining the credibility of multimodal texts, especially on/within the Internet with its “vast network of relations of credibility” (Burbules & Callister, 2000), is particularly challenging because these texts mix images, music, graphic arts, video, and print to make sophisticated claims supported by various forms or types of evidence. This article examines how a group of ninth-grade students grappled with issues of credibility after viewing the controversial Internet video, Loose Change, a well-documented and comprehensive multimedia account that argues the “real story” of September 11 was covered up by the U.S. government. Findings from the study highlight the range of knowledge and literacy practices students mobilized to “read” the video and the challenges they experienced reading and evaluating the video as a multimodal text. Implications of this work point to the need to consider epistemological issues and further develop tools that can support teachers and students in critically assessing multimodal texts.

The rapid advancement of technology has significantly impacted education, particularly in language classrooms where multimodal texts have become crucial. These technology-based texts facilitate diverse meaning-making methods, shifting literacy pedagogy from traditional to modern teaching approaches. Integrating technology into English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms is essential for this transformation. This research aimed to assess the effectiveness of using various multimodal texts to enhance student engagement in virtual classrooms in Sri Lanka. Conducted as an action research project over a month, the study involved 35 grade 10 students from H/Thalawa Vidyalaya, employing quantitative and qualitative methods. The teaching sessions incorporated a range of multimodal texts suitable for the learners and the lesson goals, each featuring at least one multimodal text. These lessons aimed to teach aspects of the four language skills: grammar, and vocabulary. Tools like Google Classroom, presentation slides, videos, Padlet, Slido, Google Forms, and chat options via Zoom and WhatsApp were utilized. Quantitative data were collected through a Google Forms survey, while qualitative data were obtained from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Additionally, observations and student work reviews were used for data collection. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and the qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The study found that using learner-friendly and familiar multimodal texts significantly enhanced student engagement and fostered a positive attitude towards their use for various purposes in language learning. These findings highlight the importance and effectiveness of diverse multimodal texts in English classrooms, particularly in virtual settings, to boost student motivation, interest, and engagement.

The papers in this issue were first presented at a meeting of critical discourse analysts, held at the University of Birmingham in April 1999. Critical discourse analysts are interested in the processes and products of discourse and their impact on social practices. Although its theoretical framework is eclectic and interdisciplinary, critical discourse analysis has for the most part focused on language and ignored other semiotic modes. The Birmingham meeting sought to remedy this by instigating a discussion about the interface between social semiotics and critical discourse analysis, putting multimodality on the agenda as essential to the practices of discourse analysts and social theorists, and examining the ways in which our 'professional vision' has been affected by the advances of postmodernity.For us, ‘semiotics’ indicates in the first place an interest in modes of communication other than language. This does not of course exclude language. We are also, and especially, interested in how language and other modes of communication combine in multimodal texts and communicative events.The ‘social’ in ‘critical social semiotics’ indicates that we are not interested in semiotics for its own sake. We relate semiotic theory to key sociological themes (see article by R. Scollon) and apply semiotic analysis to areas such as education (article by L. M. T. Menezes de Souza), cross-cultural communication (see the articles by S. Scollon and R. Martinec) and popular culture (see article by Caldas-Coulthard and Van Leeuwen).The ‘critical’ in ‘critical social semiotics’ finally indicates that social semiotics takes part in the enterprise of critical discourse analysis. It does not stop at description, but analyses multimodal texts as playing a vital role in the production, reproduction and transformation of the social practices that constitute the society in which we live.Although the approaches of some schools of semiotics derive principally from philosophy and cultural studies, others have a firm basis in linguistics. The contributors to this special issue are linguists and educators who apply linguistic and social theories and methods to their work. For them, therefore, ‘critical social semiotics’ explores differences among current relations and meanings, historicises and contextualises them, and finally has the main objective of acting on and altering political forces.

This action research examined the process of integrating students’ out-of-school digital literacy into a second language composition class and the role of social mediation in developing learner agency. It involved EFL students with pre-basic and basic proficiency (pre-A1 to A1-A2 on the CEFR level) in a Saudi Arabian university. Using socially mediated view of literacy and learner agency as a theoretical framework, this study reveals the complex ways in which the students composed multimodal texts while relying on their agency to utilize the digital tools. Data sources include interviews with the students, teacher-researcher reflections, and the students’ multimodal texts. The data reveal that through three distinct bridging practices, the students skillfully navigated through different reading sources and digital tools when they composed their multimodal texts (technological bridging), thus affording the opportunities for them to express themselves authentically (identity bridging) and to engage with the text that they composed meaningfully (semiotic bridging). However, there was a trade-off in terms of the teacher’s role in facilitating learner agency and linguistic accuracy. Focus on content lowered the bar on acceptable grammar mistakes. This insight corroborates existing literature on the need for a balanced pedagogical focus on content and accuracy in multimodal composition. This study has implications for teachers who wish to reimagine EFL composition by connecting it to students’ literacy practices, particularly to those with pre-basic and basic proficiency.

Uvodnik gostujoča urednika V zadnjih štirih desetletjih se tempo človeškega življenja predaja vse večji naglici, kot bi se naš planet začel vrteti pospešeno. Hiter razvoj tehnologije prinaša še do pred kratkim neslutene možnosti povezovanja ljudi in hitrega dostopa do raznih informacij, nove medije in nove možnosti izražanja z več semiotskimi sistemi hkrati. Prinaša tudi umetno inteligenco in njeno vključevanje v sodobne komunikacijske procese, kar človeku, izobraženem in vzgojenem v humanističnih vrednotah, povzroča občutja nelagodja in negotovosti. Gledano s tehnološkega vidika, se je komunikacija razbohotila, kar razodeva tudi življenjski slog sodobne družbe. V sodobnem komuniciranju nastajajo pretežno večkodna besedila, zgrajena iz več semiotskih virov (Kress, van Leeuwen, [1996 ] 2004) . Ta sicer v zgodovini človeštva niso novost, saj je govorjeno besedilo vedno večkodno, tj. sestavljeno iz jezika in parajezika, kot Ngo idr. (2022) imenujejo kvaliteto glasu in telesno govorico, s katerima se realizira z jezikom povezan pomen. Tudi v zapisanem besedilu, v starih rokopisih se z barvo in velikostjo pisave, z inicialkami ustvarja večkodnost. V sodobnosti pa zaradi že omenjenega tehnološkega razvoja z možnostmi različnega tiska postajajo večkodna besedila prevladujoča v tiskanih medijih, v katerih se besedno sporočilo ali zamenja s slikovnim ali se pomena slikovnega in besednega dopolnjujeta ali nadgrajujeta. Film, TV in elektronski mediji pa za izražanje želenega pomena že s svojo tehnološko zasnovo predvidevajo hkratno rabo več semiotskih sistemov. V taki komunikacijski krajini posameznik spontano usvaja načine razbiranja pomenov večkodnih besedil, tako kot spontano usvoji svojo materinščino. Iz tega paralelizma se pojavi ugotovitev, da bi morali učenci in dijaki v šolah poleg maternega jezika spoznavati in ozaveščati tudi značilnosti pomenjenja v večkodnih besedilih, kritične presoje izbire ustreznih semiostskih virov, branja in ustvarjalnega tvorjenja takih besedil.

Children’s emerging conceptions about literacy and its functions are influenced by their experiences with a wide range of written and oral literacies, including the use of digital technology, in their homes and communities. Now that mobile technologies have become intuitive to use, relatively inexpensive, small and easy to move around and networked, they have provided an entry point for transformations in the creation and sharing of texts – they are changing the way young children ‘do’ literacy. In this chapter, the authors discuss the ways that children learn about multimodal texts; how mobile technology can facilitate the reading, creation and sharing of multimodal texts in preschool and primary classrooms; the literacy skills necessary for reading multimodal texts, and; strategies for planning instruction into which multimodal texts and mobile devices are integrated. Examples of how children may engage in multimodal reading and writing in and out of the classroom are also provided.

The graphic novel is considered as a multimodal text — a complex of verbal and visual components. The differences between comics and graphic novels are explained. The definition of the concept of “multimodality” is given, and the main approaches to the study of a multimodal text are described. Attention is paid to the issue of identity in a multicultural aspect. On the example of a specific autobiographical graphic novel, the discursive construction of identity by visual and linguistic means is analyzed. The expediency of using critical discourse analysis to understand verbal and non-verbal connections, visual images and communications, as well as text and context is substantiated. To study the linguistic modality of the graphic novel, the methods of linguo-stylistic, lexico-semantic and contextual analysis of the literary text were used, while the iconic components were considered using the methods of observation, interpretation and comparison with the text. The sociocultural dominants of food and appearance were revealed in the novel, which contributed to the convergence of stylistic and iconic means of expressing meaning. Examples of combining linguistic, metalinguistic and visual aspects of expressing aspects of identity in the space of the American graphic novel as a multimodal text are given. The novelty of the study is seen in the demonstration of identity markers in a multimodal text.

In this groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary book, Rebecca Rogers explores the complexity of family literacy practices through an in-depth case study of one family, the attendant issues of power and identity, and contemporary social debates about the connections between literacy and society. The study focuses on June Treader and her daughter Vicky, urban African Americans labeled as "low income" and "low literate." Using participant-observation, ethnographic interviewing, photography, document collection, and discourse analysis, Rogers describes and explains the complexities of identity, power, and discursive practices that June and Vicky engage with in their daily life as they proficiently, critically, and strategically negotiate language and literacy in their home and community. She explores why, despite their proficiencies, neither June or Vicky sees themselves as literate, and how this and other contradictions prevent them from transforming their literate capital into social profit. This study contributes in multiple ways to extending both theoretically and empirically existing research on literacy, identity, and power: * Critical discourse analysis. The analytic technique of critical discourse analysis is brought into the area of family literacy. The detailed explanation, interpretation, and demonstration of critical discourse analysis will be extremely helpful for novices learning to use this technique. This is a timely book, for there are few ethnographic studies exploring the usefulness and limits of critical discourse analysis. * Combines critical discourse analysis and ethnography. This new synthesis, which is thoroughly illustrated, offers an explanatory framework for the stronghold of institutional discursive power. Using critical discourse analysis as a methodological tool in order to build critical language awareness in classrooms and schools, educators working toward a critical social democracy may be better armed to recognize sources of inequity. * Researcher reflexivity. Unlike most critical discourse analyses, throughout the book the researcher and analyst is clearly visible and complicated into the role of power and language. This practice allows clearer analysis of the ethical, moral, and theoretical implications in conducting ethnographic research concerned with issues of power. * A critical perspective on family literacy. Many discussions of family literacy do not acknowledge the raced, classed, and gendered nature of interacting with texts that constitutes a family's literacy practices. This book makes clear how the power relationships that are acquired as children and adults interact with literacy in the many domains of a family's literacy lives. A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy Practices: Power In and Out of Print will interest researchers and practitioners in the fields of qualitative methodology, discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, literacy education, and adult literacy, and is highly relevant as a text for courses in these areas.

This article explores the role of critical framing in selecting and using multimodal texts in an English as a Foreign Language classroom to engage students in the larger world and shed light on human experiences and contemporary global issues. Specifically, we invite educators to explore language and literacy practices using multimodal texts that can provide opportunities to examine implicit and explicit biases and power relations in the portrayal of global and cultural issues. We ground this discussion of cultural responsiveness in addressing pertinent contemporary issues using multimodal texts in critical literacy and multimodal semiotics within an English as a Foreign Language classroom context.

Australian primary school teachers face two major challenges in their implementation of the national curriculum for English: literary study and multimodality. Whilst teachers and students frequently engage with texts like literary picture books, the requirement that teachers build children’s understandings of texts as patterned, aesthetic constructs is new. And it is especially demanding for teachers without specialized training in either literature or multimodality. They must learn to manage the expanded ‘reservoir’ of meaning in school English and develop ‘repertoires’ of semiotic understanding in the course of fulltime teaching (Bernstein, 2000). This paper emerges from a larger study that aimed to meet the challenge of literary study in English by introducing practicing teachers to a semiotic toolkit inspired by systemic functional grammatics. Grammatics, as Halliday (2002) interprets it, distinguishes the theory from the practice of grammar, the metalanguage from language in use. In our project, systemic functional grammatics included study not just of clause-level choices in language but their role in larger discourse frames and, via analogy, in images and multimodal texts. We made use of the ‘resemblance’ between focalization in print narratives and in bi-modal narratives picture books. Adapting semiotic principles like stratification and metafunction to national curriculum notions of ‘levels of analysis’ and ‘threads of meaning’, we used systemic functional (SF) theory to open up the potential of literature study for English teachers in NSW and Victoria, attempting to build understanding about the ‘uses’ of grammatics for a relatively uninformed group of ‘users’ (Martin et al., 2013). Because of the need to manage the theory-practice nexus in professional learning, we attempted to characterize ‘knowledge about’ images in narrative in accessible and systematic ways and to relate this to pedagogic ‘know-how’ in primary teaching and assessment of narrative. The paper introduces the analytical framework we developed to represent and develop knowledge and know-how in primary school literature study. It shows how we used the framework to benchmark teacher starting-points as they commented on students’ responses to a picture book called The Great Bear by Armin Greder and Libby Gleeson (1999). It overviews input provided to teachers in workshops based on SF principles such as system, stratification and metafunctions. Finally, it overviews our initial findings based on our analysis of follow-up interviews with two teachers as they reflected on students’ responses to The Tunnel, by Anthony Browne (1989). Changes are arrayed on clines produced to account for shifts in teacher knowledge and know-how. Early results of our project are very encouraging, providing evidence of significant if varied growth in teachers’ orientations to narrative meaning and increased levels of meta-semiotic awareness. The paper concludes with reflections on the use of SF grammatics for meeting the challenges of literature study in primary school English in an era of multimodality.