Toward a pedagogy of Black livingness: Black students’ creative multimodal renderings of resistance to anti-Blackness

Purpose Historically, literacy education and research have been dominated by white supremacist narratives that marginalize and deficitize the literate practices of Black students. As anti-Blackness proliferates in US schools, Black youth suffer social, psychological, intellectual, and physical traumas. Despite relentless attacks of anti-Blackness, Black youth fight valiantly through a range of creative outlets, including multimodal compositions, that enable them to move beyond negative stereotypes, maintain their creativity, and manifest the present and future lives they desire and so deeply deserve. Design/methodology/approach This study aims to answer the question “How do Black students' multimodal renderings demonstrate creativity and love in ways that disrupt anti-Blackness?” The authors critically examine four multimodal compositions created by Black elementary and middle school students to understand how Black youth author a more racially just society and envision self-determined, joyful futures. The authors take up Black Livingness as a theoretical framework and use visual methodologies to analyze themes of Black life, love and hope in the young people’s multimodal renderings. Findings The findings suggest that Black youth creatively compose multimodal renderings that are humanizing, allowing their thoughts, feelings and experiences to guide their critiques of the present world and envision new personal and societal futures. The authors conclude with a theorization of a Black Livingness Pedagogy that centers care for Black youth. Originality/value Recognizing that “the creation and use of images [is] a practice of decolonizing methodology” (Brown, 2013, loc. 2323), the authors examine Black student-created multimodal compositional practices to understand how Black youth author a more racially just society and envision self-determined, joyful futures.

“I like the first slide. I like how we put it like that [words and pictures on a diagonal]:” composing multimodal texts in a grade four classroom

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).

Adolescent English language learners’ digitally mediated multimodal compositions: multimodal enactment across different genres of writing in the EFL context

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.

Reimagining Mobile Phones

As the number of students with access to cell phones increases, so do opportunities to bridge the technology divide that may exist among them. With the shift towards virtual learning gaining momentum, now is the time for teachers to increase their digital footprints in the classroom, and utilizing available mobile devices is one way to increase digital access for all. Coinciding with the ease of access to mobile technology is the growing research that supports the adoption of multiliteracies to foster readers and writers who can participate in and impact the world around them with nontraditional forms of communication. Digital multimodal compositions (DMCs) are digital texts created through the use of various modes, including written text, audio, visual, and other interactive media. DMCs are an effective way to incorporate both mobile technology and multiple literacies into both face-to-face and virtual curricula.

Assessing students’ multimodal compositions: an analysis of the literature

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.

The Value Students and Instructors Place on Multimodal Composition within Academic Life

This mixed methods research-based study was conducted to investigate the advantages and possible disadvantages of using multimodal compositions (MMCs) in the English as a Second Language (ESL) writing classroom. The conveniently selected participants were thirteen ESL learners and a native speaker of English instructor. Two data collection instruments were employed to gather the primary data for this research study. The first instrument was a student survey to explore the perceptions and beliefs of the students about MMCs. The second measure involved a set of semi-structured interviews with four students and their instructor. The results of the statistical data analysis of the student survey indicated that the majority of the student participants expressed their preference for using MMCs because this writing approach enabled them to more completely and professionally explain their meanings to others. The findings from the analysis of the data gathered from the semi structured interviews demonstrated that the students believed that MMCs made writing easier than writing with words only. However, the perception of the teacher was that some students believe that MMCs add an extra burden to their writing assignments and do not constitute an integral part of an assignment itself. Suggestions and recommendations for the more effective use of MMCs in ESL writing classrooms in the USA context, based on this research study, are provided at the end of this study.