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Article
Publication date: 8 October 2019

Kate T. Anderson and Dani Kachorsky

This article presents an analysis of empirical literature on classroom assessment of students’ multimodal compositions to characterize the field and make recommendations for…

Abstract

Purpose

This article presents an analysis of empirical literature on classroom assessment of students’ multimodal compositions to characterize the field and make recommendations for teachers and researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

An interpretive synthesis of the literature related to practices and possibilities for assessing students’ multimodal compositions.

Findings

Findings present three overarching types of studies across the body of literature on assessment of student multimodal compositions: reshaping educational practices, promoting multiliteracies approaches to learning and evaluating students’ understanding and competence. These studies’ recommendations range along a continuum of more to less structural changes to “what counts” in classrooms.

Research limitations/implications

This review only considers studies published in English from 2000to 2019. Future studies could extend these parameters.

Practical implications

This analysis of the literature on assessing student multimodal compositions highlights foundational differences across studies’ purposes and offers guidance for educations seeking to revise their practices, whether their goals are more theoretical/philosophical, oriented toward reshaping classroom practice or focused on ways of measuring student understanding.

Social implications

Rethinking assessment can reshape educational practices to be more equitable, more theoretically commensurate with teachers’ beliefs and/or include more thorough and accurate measures of student understanding. Changes to any or all of these facets of educational practices can lead to continued discussion and change regarding the role of multimodal composition in teaching and learning.

Originality/value

This study fills a gap in the literature by considering what empirical studies suggest about why, how and what to assess with regard to multimodal compositions.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 18 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 October 2018

Brady Nash

This paper aims to explore recent research (2007-2017) on the implementation of multimodal writing instruction in secondary English courses. It seeks to highlight the varied ways…

1332

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore recent research (2007-2017) on the implementation of multimodal writing instruction in secondary English courses. It seeks to highlight the varied ways in which theoretical conceptions of multimodality have been implemented in writing instruction and the impacts of these implementations on students' experiences in classrooms.

Design/methodology/approach

The author used a keyword search of relevant academic databases to identity articles within the search parameters. This was followed by bibliographic branching to identify additional articles and two rounds of open coding to identify themes for analysis.

Findings

The literature revealed a diversity of approaches to incorporating multimodal writing in classrooms; teachers mixed modalities within assignments, paired writing in print with multimodal composition and redesigned entire units or courses around multimodality. Studies showed the impact of multimodality on student learning through shifts in conceptions of communication, increases in student engagement, composition for real audiences and an increased role for students’ interests and identities.

Practical implications

This review has implications for teachers and researchers interested in developing multimodal writing curricula. It highlights the specific ways in which multimodal writing can be incorporated into instruction and the changes in student learning that result from this shift.

Originality/value

While theoretical writing on multimodality is abundant, multiple researchers have noted the difficulty of finding research on classroom implementations of multimodality (Howell et al., 2017; Smith, 2017). This review is intended to address this difficulty by contributing to a body of literature that teachers and scholars can draw on as they conceptualize and design multimodal writing experiences for students in the future.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 17 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 February 2021

Joohoon Kang

This paper aims to investigate adolescent English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ digitally mediated multimodal compositions across different genres of writing.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate adolescent English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ digitally mediated multimodal compositions across different genres of writing.

Design/methodology/approach

Three Korean high school students participated in the study and created multiple multimodal texts over the course of one academic semester. These texts and other materials were the basis for this study’s qualitative case studies. Multiple sources of data (e.g. class observations, demographic surveys, interviews, field notes and students’ artifacts) were collected. Drawing upon the inductive approach, a coding-oriented analysis was used for the collected data. In addition, a multimodal text analysis was conducted for the students’ multimodal texts and their storyboards.

Findings

The study participants’ perceptions of multimodal composing practices seemed to be positively reshaped as a result of them creating multimodal texts. Some participants created multimodal products in phases (e.g. selecting or changing a topic, constructing a storyboard and editing). Especially, although the students’ creative processes had a similarly fixed and linear flow from print-based writing to other modalities, their creative processes proved to be flexible, recursive and/or circular.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the understanding of adolescent English language learners’ multimodal composing practices in the EFL context, which has been underexplored in the literature. It also presents the students’ perspectives on these practices. In short, it provides theoretical and methodological grounds for future L2 literacy researchers to conduct empirical studies on multimodal composing practices.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 20 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2017

Bernadette Bullinger

In job advertisements, companies present claims about their organizational identity. My study explores how employers use multimodality in visuals and verbal text to construct…

Abstract

In job advertisements, companies present claims about their organizational identity. My study explores how employers use multimodality in visuals and verbal text to construct organizational identity claims and address potential future employees. Drawing on a multimodal analysis of job advertisements used by German fashion companies between 1968 and 2013, I identify three types of job advertisements and analyze their content and latent meanings. I find three specific relationships between identity claims’ verbal and visual dimensions that also influence viewers’ attraction to, perception of the legitimacy of, and identification with organizations. My study contributes to research on multimodality and on organizational identity claims.

Details

Multimodality, Meaning, and Institutions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-332-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 May 2023

Rebecca Woodard, Amanda R. Diaz, Nathan C. Phillips, Maria Varelas, Rebecca Kotler, Rachelle Palnick Tsachor, Ronan Rock and Miguel Melchor

The purpose of this study is to examine playful practices in the science video composition of a fourth-grader.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine playful practices in the science video composition of a fourth-grader.

Design/methodology/approach

With an analytic interest in “chasing the theory of muchness” (Thiel, 2015a) that describes distinctive moments of affective energies in playful learning, the authors explored a child’s video in which a food chain is dramatized.

Findings

The authors identified how muchness manifested in/through her compositional play.

Originality/value

The potential of playful composing and dramatizing to support meaning-making across contexts and disciplines is discussed.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 22 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 14 February 2022

Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski

Abstract

Details

Designing XR: A Rhetorical Design Perspective for the Ecology of Human+Computer Systems
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-366-6

Article
Publication date: 25 October 2021

Jennifer M. Higgs and Grace MyHyun Kim

Research on nonschool settings suggests young people benefit from digital multimodal composition. Less is known about how digital composing can support students as they interpret…

Abstract

Purpose

Research on nonschool settings suggests young people benefit from digital multimodal composition. Less is known about how digital composing can support students as they interpret required literary class texts. To understand the potential benefits and challenges of digitally composing for literary analysis, design interviews with two high school students were conducted to examine their processes as they designed digital multimodal compositions to interpret Anglo-Saxon poems. Grounded in the social semiotic theory of multimodality, this study aims to examine how students engaged in literary analysis and interpretive digital composition within secondary ELA.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative classroom data were collected through digital means over a six-week period: a whole-class student survey, focal student semistructured design interviews, emails, field notes, analytic memos and student-created digital artifacts.

Findings

Students’ print-based literary engagements and digital multimodal composition processes were mutually shaped. Additionally, digital multimodal composition offered entry points into challenging print-based literary texts, resulting in understandings enacted across multiple forms of mediation.

Research limitations/implications

The study focused on one cycle of multimodal composition. Additional studies of students’ digital multimodal composition processes in ELA classrooms over time could be beneficial to the field.

Practical implications

The study identifies an approach to digital multimodal composition that may help teachers address and integrate core disciplinary objectives.

Originality/value

This study contributes to scholarship concerned with how “new” technologies and “old” literacies co-exist in contexts requiring students to engage in expanded communication modes alongside specific academic literacies.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 May 2013

Owen Barden

Defining and describing research methodologies is difficult. Methodologies have similarities and resonances, and overlapping characteristics. Familiar labels of case study, action…

Abstract

Purpose

Defining and describing research methodologies is difficult. Methodologies have similarities and resonances, and overlapping characteristics. Familiar labels of case study, action research and ethnography may not be adequate to describe new and creative approaches to qualitative research. If we simply transfer old ways to new contexts, we risk limiting our understanding of the complexities of real life settings. The call to set aside old dualisms and devise new methodological approaches has been sounded. Accordingly, this article sets out to describe a fledgling new methodological approach, and how it was operationalized in a small‐scale study of digitally‐mediated classroom learning.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology combines elements of action research and case study with an ethnographic approach. It was devised for a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a sixth form college in north‐west England. Its flexibility and attention to detail enabled multiple data collection methods. This range of methods enabled meticulous analysis of many of the group's online and offline interactions with each other and with Facebook as they co‐constructed their group Facebook page.

Findings

Reflexively combining elements of case study, action research and ethnography thus helped capture the “connected complexities” (Davies) of this contemporary classroom setting. This is necessary if researchers are to obtain any meaningful understanding of how learning happens in such contexts.

Originality/value

The author hopes to contribute to the discourse on qualitative methodology and invites other researchers studying similar contexts to consider a similar approach.

Article
Publication date: 18 June 2021

Amy Seely Flint, Rebecca Rohloff and Sarah Williams

Young children often enter formal schooling with a range of digital experiences, including using apps on tablets and engaging with interactive educational toys. The convergence…

Abstract

Purpose

Young children often enter formal schooling with a range of digital experiences, including using apps on tablets and engaging with interactive educational toys. The convergence and increased accessibility of digital resources has made it more convenient for young children to navigate multiple modes (e.g. words, images, sound and movement) as they construct meaning across many different texts. The purpose of the study is to examine affordances and choices when students compose multimodal texts.

Design/methodology/approach

Three lines of inquiry support this study: the social construction of writing practices, multiliteracies and multimodality and intertextuality. Data analysis used an iterative two-tiered process of reading, rereading and coding students’ multimodal compositions and supplemental field notes (Creswell, 1998; Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Findings

Analysis of the 23 multimodal compositions revealed three significant findings related to choice and affordances of multimodal texts: the popularity of Minecraft as a topic choice based on the social interactions of students; semiotic concurrence and semiotic complementarity and sophisticated use of literary techniques (e.g. nonlinear structures, shifting point of view, asides and emojis) across the multimodal stories, particularly those that carried Minecraft themes.

Originality/value

Students’ intentionality with the modes in their compositions suggested they were fully aware of the “complexity, interrelatedness and interdependence between image [animation and sound] and language” (Shanahan, 2013, p. 213).

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 20 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2021

Emily Hellmich, Jill Castek, Blaine E. Smith, Rachel Floyd and Wen Wen

Multimodal composing is often romanticized as a flexible approach suitable for all learners. There is a lack of research that critically examines students’ perspectives and the…

Abstract

Purpose

Multimodal composing is often romanticized as a flexible approach suitable for all learners. There is a lack of research that critically examines students’ perspectives and the constraints of multimodal composing across academic contexts. This study aims to address this need by exploring high school learners’ perspectives and experiences enacting multimodal learning in an L2 classroom. More specifically, this study presents key tensions between students’ experiences of multimodal composing and teacher/researchers’ use of multimodal composition in an L2 classroom setting.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper focuses on two multimodal composing projects developed within a design-based implementation research approach and implemented in a high school French class. Multiple data sources were used: observations; interviews; written reflections; and multimodal compositions. Data were analyzed using the critical incident technique (CIT). A critical incident is one that is unplanned and that stimulates reflection on teaching and learning. Methodologically, CIT was enacted through iterative coding to identify critical incidents and collaborative analysis.

Findings

Using illustrative examples from multiple data sources, this study discusses four tensions between students’ experiences of multimodal composing and teacher/researchers’ use of multimodal composition in a classroom setting: the primary audience of student projects, the media leveraged in student projects, expectations of learning in school and the role of a public viewing of student work.

Originality/value

This paper problematizes basic assumptions and benefits of multimodal composing and offers ideas on how to re-center multimodal composing on student voices.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 20 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

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