“It Makes It More Real”: Teaching New Literacies in a

Transcription

B a i l e y > Te a c h i n g N e w L i t e r a c i e s i n a S e c o n d a r y E n g l i s h C l a s s r o o m
“It Makes It More Real”: Teaching
New Literacies in a Secondary
English Classroom
Nancy M. Bailey
S
itting in Carol’s English 9 class on a late October day, I smiled at the
portions of conversations that I could hear. Students were working
with intense concentration to find pictures, sounds, and colors to create
multimodal stories. Here’s sample of what I heard (all names of students
are self-selected pseudonyms):
“Hey, does anyone know where I can find the sound of breaking
glass?”—Sophia
“This is the coolest story I’ve ever written!”—Shaq Diesel
“I’ve already got four pages, and I’m only on the rising action!”
—Rick
“When you put sounds and music [into your story], it is a lot easier
to be creative and have fun.”—Lucey
These snippets of student talk demonstrate some of the absorption,
energy, and enthusiasm that a multimodal writing assignment generated
in Carol’s English 9 classroom. The students were using the multimodal
affordances of hyperlinks in word-processing software to write dynamic
Halloween stories, a creative writing assignment developed as a result of
what Carol was learning about new literacies in a graduate class, one that I
co-taught. The multimodal Halloween project was the initial part of Carol’s
yearlong revision of her ninth-grade curriculum to reflect her growing
understanding of literacy as evolving, shifting, and changing. That she was
recognizing the need to change the way that she was teaching literacy was
reflected in a statement that she made in early November: “I’ve just changed
English Education, April 2009
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English Education, V41 N3, April 2009
my whole conception of what literacy is” (Interview, 11/4/05). During the
time that I spent in her classroom, Carol discovered that new literacies call
for teachers to understand new communicational and representational
demands, as well as new practices that are relevant to twenty-first-century
life (Albers, 2006; Kress, 2003; Leu & Kinzer, 2003).
Carol’s new understanding of literacy followed my growing awareness of a need to change the way that I was viewing and teaching literacy
in teacher education classes. One such class was
Carol’s new understanding of
a graduate course that I developed with two colliteracy followed my growing
leagues. As lead teacher during the semester that
awareness of a need to change
Carol attended, I began to redesign the course
the way that I was viewing and materials to reflect my growing awareness that
teaching literacy in teacher literacy is communication and meaning-making
education classes. in particular social contexts and that texts may
use traditional formats (i.e., print-based) but also digital formats (e.g., the
Internet) or a hybrid of the two (Bruce, 1997). To see how these new ideas
could translate into classroom practice, I spent 5 months in one of Carol’s
English 9 classes, watching her integrate what she was learning in her graduate class into her teaching practice. Over time, Carol revised her literacy
teaching, and her students came to see literacy not only as the “authorized
knowledge” required in English 9 but also as a means for representing and
communicating knowledge that was important to them.
Changing Notions of Literacy and Changes in an English Classroom
Framed in theories of new literacies (e.g., Gee, 2003; Kist, 2005; Kress,
2003;), this article presents the story of one ninth-grade English teacher who
constructed lessons around semiotic analysis and constructivist learning
in multimodal formats as an integral part of her instruction. Her students
constructed identities as more competent, literate beings through guided
participation (Rogoff, 1995) in their new literacies classroom. Underlying
my use of the term, new literacies is a belief that literate practices are deeply
embedded in social practices, social contexts, and social identities. In relation
to new literacies, social practices, social contexts, and social identities have
changed and continue to do so in these “New Times” (Luke & Elkins, 1998),
often converging with digital technologies—particularly those used by adolescents outside of school (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Chandler-Olcott
& Mahar, 2003)—and with the economic and social changes referred to as
“new capitalism” (Gee, 2004). New literacies may be particularly identified
with sociocultural practices in which local knowledge (Barton & Hamilton,
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2000) is valued as much as canonical, school knowledge (Street, 2005) and
instruction in new literacies can be a way to link literacy knowledge and
practices to wider social and cultural goals (e.g., Simon, 2005). The plural
form of literacies or multiliteracies (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 2000; New
London Group, 1996) is often used in these contexts.
The term new literacies is also frequently used in a way that retains the
emphasis on social and local knowledge—such as in the “personal literacies”
of adolescents studied by Gallego and Hollingsworth (2000) and Alvermann
and Hagood (2000)—but includes an emphasis on multimodality as well.
Those who engage with theory and research pursuing this particular thread
of new literacies—my study is one such example—work from the idea that
teachers need new language and formats for enacting, talking, and thinking
about new social practices that are embedded in literacy practices in multimodal text formats (i.e., those using traditional text, but also those integrating
elements of sound, image, animation, color, design, etc.). Modes and media
other than alphabetic language and print media (e.g., sound and images)
can, through electronic means, now be easily created, “read,” displayed, and
exchanged as readily as traditional written language (Kress & Van Leeuwen,
2001). The emergence of digital technologies has accelerated a shift from
the dominance of print in many communication and information sources to
visual modes and greater reliance on other modes of representation (Kress,
2003). Thus, an ability to read visual and aural texts is increasingly regarded
as a skill embedded in literacy practices. The reading and writing of these
texts as well as the social practices that accompany them are interesting
ways to understand how new literacies could affect and change teaching
and learning in secondary classrooms such as Carol’s.
Conflicting Paradigms
Carol’s gradual adoption of new literacies became a manifestation of a
shift in thinking about the nature of literacy. This transition in views of
literacy, while increasingly evident in the literature (e.g., Doering, Beach,
& O’Brien, 2007; Miller, 2007), is slowly reaching our teacher education
classes and high school classrooms. In a review of two books about relatively
recent paradigmatic shifts in literacy, O’Brien and Bauer (2005) take up
the issue of adolescent literacy instruction and discuss what they see as “a
tension” between the newer paradigms of literacy and an older, traditional
conceptualization of literacy that they call “the Institution of Old Learning
(IOL).” The latter, they say, “represents the anachronistic, institutionalized
literacy practices in schools” (p. 122). O’Brien and Bauer, like the theorists
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of the New Literacy Studies that they discuss, are critical of the IOL, and
they consider traditional school literacy lessons as static when they remain
teacher-centered and bound to traditional, printed texts. If teachers do use
new technologies, the authors say, they “attach them in unengaging ways
to the anachronistic curriculum” (p. 127). Moreover, too many secondary
teachers resist seeing literacy as dynamic, and therefore they do not make
the changes in their instruction and curricula that are necessary to make
literacy instruction for today’s adolescents more relevant to young lives and
challenging in ways that will truly engage modern youth. O’Brien and Bauer
note that teachers should “embrace these [new literacies] as legitimate” (p.
128) and include them in their curricula so that schools can become more
relevant to students’ twenty-first-century lives.
Literacy as Social Practice
Because the notion of literacy as social practice (Gee, 2001) was so influential
in the design and execution of my study, I used elements of sociocultural and
social constructivist theories as lenses to analyze and explain the literacy
practices that I saw and to help me to discuss them as literacy learning. In
particular, I drew on Rogoff’s (1995) sociocultural constructs of apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation.
Social constructivist theories (e.g., Owens, Hester, & Teale, 2002; Wells,
2000) that emphasize inquiry were also important for explaining Carol’s
emphasis on students’ local knowledge in a new literacies curriculum.
Owens, Hester, and Teale (2002) define inquiry learning as a way in which
“children can formulate engaging questions and then participate in various
language and literacy experiences to answer them” (p. 616). By allowing
students increasing opportunities to use discussion and social interaction
to raise and answer questions, Carol seemed to find in an inquiry model
one effective “organizing principle” (Wells, 2000, p. 62) for her curriculum.
As she came to realize how rich students’ experiences and questions were,
Carol increasingly encouraged students to use what they knew in order to
learn in her classroom.
Literacy as Multimodal Practice
Carol was also influenced greatly to change her instruction based on what
she was learning in her graduate class about multimodality. She encountered
the work of scholars who speak in the past tense about the centrality of written and spoken language for representation and communication of ideas.
For example, Kress (2000) and Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) dispute the
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long-held belief that language, especially written language, should be the
primary medium—even the sole, “formal” medium—of communication and
representation (Kress, 1998, 2000). In these New Times, particularly because
of the affordances of digital technologies and a shift “from page to screen”
(Snyder, 1998), written, alphabetic language is often dislodged as the central
focus when meaning-making is considered, which should have tremendous
ramifications for how literacy is viewed and how literacy is taught in schools.
Since the combination of visual and verbal modes is becoming increasingly common in today’s textbooks and newspapers, Kress (1998) explains
the complementary, interactive, and important role each mode plays when
these modal elements function together. Lemke (1998) speaks of “joint
meaning” that is produced as different modalities interact and intersect in
multimodal texts:
Meanings in multimedia are not fixed and additive (the word meaning
plus the picture meaning), but multiplicative (word meaning modified
by image context, image meaning modified by textual context), making
a whole far greater than the simple sum of its parts. (1998, pp. 283–284,
emphasis added)
The acts of “reading” and “writing” become, among other things, a constant
cross-referencing (Lemke, 1998, p. 285) between and among interdependent
modal elements, each of which carries individual meaning(s) and also the
potential for even more meaning in combination with other modal elements.
New Literacies Pedagogy
Carol’s intent to draw on new literacies to guide her English teaching was also
supported by Kist’s (2005) work in new literacies. Kist studied a number of
classrooms in the United States and Canada where daily literacy instruction
revolved around multiple, nontraditional approaches including sophisticated
uses of digital technologies and collaborative efforts to produce representation and communication in multimedia projects. In earlier studies (1999,
2003, 2004), Kist found many positive aspects for students and teachers of
integrating new literacies into classroom curricula; he provided clear evidence of more active learning by students (2004) as well as increased critical thinking (2003) and new, positive roles for teachers (1999). In a more
developed study (2005), however, Kist came to no definitive conclusions about
the benefits and constraints of the new literacies classrooms that he studied,
and he acknowledged that there are still many unanswered questions about
the value of a new literacies curriculum and whether or not new literacies
can be taught in current K–12 schools that are so tightly accountable to de-
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mands of the standards movement. Yet, he felt that “perhaps in the end . . .
these classrooms became transcendent places in spite of . . . [ambiguities he
observed, such as] somewhat murky goals for collaboration and an ultimate
reliance on print media” (p. 133). Kist’s ambivalence suggests a strong need
for more research in new literacies classrooms—classrooms like Carol’s.
Carol negotiated meaning in her English 9 classroom while engaged
in new literacies pedagogy. Leu and Kinzer (2003), among others (e.g., New
London Group, 1996; Snyder, 2001), envision new literacies as building on a
foundation of traditional literacies but, at the same time, continuously taking
new forms as traditional texts combine and take on elements of alternate
semiotic systems and new formats made possible by complex, electronic networks. In studying Carol’s integration of new literacies into her traditional
curriculum, I was hopeful that I would see teaching and learning that would
truly reflect a new, twenty-first-century view of literacy with its emphasis
on sociocultural and multimodal elements. My study was guided by two
questions: (1) How did an English 9 teacher change her teaching when she
adopted a new literacies stance? and (2) What kind of literacy learning can
result when one teacher integrates new literacies into a traditional English
9 curriculum?
Methodology
Participants
Carol’s class consisted of 14 girls and 14 boys, with little ethnic diversity in
the group; teacher and students all appeared to be predominantly Caucasian.
Most of the students in this class were tracked as “average” (neither honors
level nor part of a special education/regular education “blended” class in
their school); only 4 students were classified as special education students
who had individualized education plans (IEPs) and received special services
outside of Carol’s classroom.
Context of the Study
Carol and her students did their work at South Weston High School (a
pseudonym), a suburban high school in a largely middle-class community
in the Northeast. Carol had a great deal of freedom to create her ninth-grade
English curriculum, provided that she included some kind of instruction
in skills and topics that were specified by her department. Specifically, she
was to teach students to recognize and apply their knowledge of literary
elements (e.g., plot, characterization, irony, etc.), the parts of a short story
(e.g., rising action, climax, denouement, etc.), and basic poetic elements (e.g.,
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metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, etc.). In addition, she had to include in
her curriculum the study of a specified number of short stories, a novel of
her choosing from a list approved by her department, and also the study of
Romeo and Juliet. Finally, Carol’s students had to learn some basic research
skills, but they were required to write only a short paper using those skills.
While Carol did not have to worry about preparing her students for a state
or national standardized test, since there is no standardized test for English
9 in her state, students did have to take a district-constructed ninth-grade
exam. In addition to testing students’ knowledge of the literary and poetic
content covered by the ninth-grade curriculum, this exam also required
students to demonstrate a basic competency in writing. Because Carol had
complete discretion about the ways in which she wished to teach ninth-grade
content and prepare students for their end-of-the year district exam, the way
was clear for her to use new literacies to enact her curriculum goals.
Researcher’s Role
I assumed the role of participant-observer (Spradley, 1980) in Carol’s class,
which I attended three to four times a week for more than five months.
Though I spent much of that time primarily as an observer, I did have several
participating roles as well. Because I had begun my observations at the beginning of the school year, many students often talked with me casually before
and after class as well as during times that they were working collaboratively.
I had many opportunities to talk to Carol during a free period that was
scheduled directly before the class that I observed, and I often took advantage
of this time to talk to Carol informally as well as in formal interviews. Since
I was also the co-instructor of a new literacies graduate course that Carol
was attending during the first four months of the study, but not the instructor who was grading her work in the course, I fell quite naturally into the
role of friend and mentor, a role that Carol seemingly assigned by asking
questions and using our time together as a chance to reflect on the successes
or failures of her attempts to integrate new literacies into her instruction.
Finally, by late January, the last full month of my observations, Carol
was attempting for the first time a project that integrated poetry and a
PowerPoint computer application. She had learned to do this the previous
semester in the graduate course that I had co-taught. As she planned and
executed this project, my role became more collaborative as Carol and I
worked out together how this project could be developed for particular
students whose skills and abilities I had, by that time, gotten to know well.
Because the students were working individually at computers, I also took
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on a role as an assistant teacher in the class as I tried to help Carol answer
all of the individual questions that sometimes came simultaneously. These
questions were both procedural, such as how to layer text on top of a picture
on a PowerPoint slide, and semiotic, as in whether or not tan was a “warm
enough color” to complement words about happiness in a poem. Thus, my
role shifted from one that was primarily observational to a more active one
as I attempted to answer questions or give advice to students who asked for
assistance. Sometimes—often, as students became more and more proud
of what they were composing—they merely wanted to show someone what
they had done, and so I also took on an active role as appreciative audience
member, a position that gave me further access to students’ stated motivations and thoughts.
Data Collection and Analysis
For this interpretive case study (Merriam, 2001), I collected descriptive field
notes from over 100 hours of classroom observation, transcripts from at least
nine structured and semi-structured interviews with Carol, transcripts from
both formal, taped interviews with students and written notes from our
informal conversations, copies of email conversations both with Carol and
with some of her students, teacher artifacts such as lesson plans and written reflections, and student artifacts such as written work and completed
multimodal projects. I wrote analytical memos during data collection and
also after examining and annotating all of the above data.
Data analysis was ongoing and recursive throughout the data collection process, and it continued as a reiterative process once the sites where
data were collected appeared to be saturated and data collection ended.
Throughout data collection and analysis, open codes (Glaser, 1992) were
used to help me to focus my observations. When most of data collection was
finished, open codes were grouped by conceptual properties. Resulting axial
codes (Cresswell, 1998, p. 57) were charted and those for which there was
relatively less compelling evidence were eliminated.
Out of the remaining codes, I developed categories based on the characteristics of data that supported each. I then created a data display arranged
by category so that I could see how each might contribute to a thematic description of what I was seeing and also how each might address the research
questions that had guided my study. I continually went back into my data and
repeated the process of “categorical aggregation” (Cresswell, 1998, p. 153)
and data display, which helped me to create “naturalistic generalizations”
(Cresswell, 1998, p.154), or firmer themes that would guide the writing of
my interpretation of Carol’s teaching and the work of her students.
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Following the advice of Erickson (1986), I also created some narrative
vignettes, which described in some detail the activity and talk in Carol’s classroom during specific periods of time. Culled from various data sources and
then examined for examples of student and teacher activity, these vignettes
helped me to attend to phenomena that might have otherwise escaped my
notice as part of the “invisibility of everyday life” (Erickson, 1986, p. 121). In
the end, the narratives served to confirm the suitability of the themes that I
was developing and helped me to refine the wording of each.
Cresswell (1998) recommends member checks, an opportunity for participants to review the accuracy of data gathering and the trustworthiness of
the researcher’s interpretations. As such, this is “the most critical technique
for establishing credibility” (pp. 202–203). Knowing the importance of this
procedure, I found ways to accommodate Carol’s schedule so that I could
have her review some of the interpretations I was making and, whenever
possible, read rough drafts of research analysis and findings that I wrote.
More than once, she provided information when we talked that I needed to
confirm, correct, or modify the inferences that I was making.
Summary of Findings
Findings from the data analysis showed the following:
1. By successfully adopting a new literacies stance and constructing
a corresponding curriculum in her English 9 class, Carol slowly
came to value the elements of new literacies less as a way to “hook”
students and more as a way to do the real work of a literacy curriculum.
2. When new literacies were successfully integrated into their English
9 classes, students did seem to better learn the authorized ninthgrade curriculum; moreover, many came to see themselves as
possessing new powers brought about by a growing understanding
of literacy as social practice and growing mastery of literacy as a
medium of self-discovery and self-expression.
Multimodality as a “Spoonful of Sugar”
When I first observed Carol’s English 9 class in early September, I was impressed by how much multimodal composition and embodied learning Carol
used. For example, she had students learn literary elements—authorized
curriculum for ninth grade in her district—by finding irony or conflict in
the song lyrics of popular music, by watching an episode of the television
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program Friends to analyze the way elements of a short story were presented,
and by acting out skits created to portray protagonists and antagonists or
elements of foreshadowing. Carol filmed their skits and edited movies that
the students reviewed and analyzed.
Soon after these early lessons, from about mid-September to midOctober, however, Carol reverted to traditional methods to teach a unit of
short stories, using round-robin reading, teacher-centered discussions, and
traditional worksheets where the students used factual knowledge in rote
fashion. Students approached these traditional learning tasks with compliance but seemed not to have the enthusiasm and absorption that they exhibited when engaging with the multimodal activities during the first two
weeks of school. Carol was disappointed, moreover, when many students
did poorly on three traditional quizzes that she gave to test how well they
were learning literary elements, parts of short stories, and specific factual
information about the stories they were reading.
Interpretation of Carol’s reasoning for reverting to such traditional
methods after such a propitious beginning to the school year came from
analyzing Carol’s written reflections in the graduate class that I was coteaching and her statements in interviews. Carol’s lessons during the early
part of the school year seemed heavily influenced by the ways in which she
understood the nature of literacy and also by the way that this understanding informed her teaching. While she thought it was important to include
digital technologies and other means of expression, such as music, in her
literacy lessons, she still considered these elements as separate and dichotomous when comparing each with print literacy. She was asked in the first
meeting of her graduate class what she hoped to accomplish by taking the
course, and she wrote, “Use more technology effectively and enhance student
literacy by using technology” (Graduate Student Information Survey, 8/31/05;
emphasis added). Carol seemed to consider literacy and technology as separate, rather than “a mutually constitutive relation” (Bruce, 1997, p. 303)—a
view that signals a more complex and sophisticated understanding of how
literacy and technology together can exist in a transactional and integrative
relationship (McVee, Bailey, & Shanahan, 2008). Additionally, she seemed to
assume that by using “technology” (meaning computer technologies, and
also television, music, and film), students would be more likely to learn with
and about printed texts because technology is often engaging and motivating
for students: “Getting freshmen to become engaged, interested and excited
about something, especially reading and writing, is an extremely difficult
task. However, by incorporating technology I have found a way to ‘hook’
them and keep them ‘on the line’ for the rest of the year” (Graduate Course
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Position Statement, 9/7/05). A week after she wrote this, when I asked Carol
how she felt that her use of technology enhanced student learning, she again
used the same metaphor to tell me about the motivational impact of technology, which she tied to her plans for covering required curriculum elements:
From a student viewpoint, I think that [technology] is a motivator. . . . It
not only piques their interest, but I think it makes them want to get more
involved in the activity and learn more. . . . I think you hook them with
the technology, and once they are engaged, it keeps them. . . . Like, next
week, I’m going to start literary terms, which, you know, they hate that
. . . everyone hates that. But I’m going to teach it through music. Even
their music, they have characterization, they have a plot, and they have
a theme. . . . And then when I start my short story unit . . . well, I show a
sitcom. Your sitcom has all this. Then they’re ready to read the stories and
it keeps them [motivated]. (Interview, 9/16/05)
Clearly, Carol intended to use her considerable creativity to develop multimodal activities primarily to “hook” students, priming them for the traditional lessons in authorized knowledge that would follow. Used in this way,
the multi-modal activities were more akin to “the spoonful of sugar to make
the medicine go down” (Kist, 2005) than to new literacies instruction that
draws on significant learning principles (Gee, 2003) and is located in students’ local knowledge.
The irony is that Carol’s students did not appear as motivated to participate in class once she started the short-story unit as they were when she
was using the nontraditional methods built around multimodal activities.
Carol gradually came to realize that merely dropping multimodal activities
or embodied learning into classes is not new litCarol gradually came to realize
eracies instruction. When she developed lessons
that merely dropping multimodal
using a systematic approach to new literacies as
activities or embodied learning
the core of classroom teaching and learning, howinto classes is not new literacies
ever, student engagement seemed to heighten
and—more importantly—so did the desire to find instruction.
and communicate information about real questions that they raised about
literacy and about their world. By January, when Carol was teaching students
to interpret poems and communicate their interpretations in multimodal
presentations created by PowerPoint software, technology seemed to play
only a minor role in motivating students’ efforts on their projects. Carol and
her students appeared to be viewing technology and multimodal work differently from the way that Carol described it early in the school year as the
“hook” with which to pull students in so that they would learn the “real”
work of English 9.
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Carol Adopts a New Literacies Stance
Throughout the fall semester, Carol gradually manifested in her teaching
an understanding of the learning principles associated with new literacies.
This development paralleled readings and discussions in her graduate class
about multimodality, semiotic theory, semiotic domains, situated and local
knowledge, and inquiry learning. As the semester progressed, she appeared
to adopt a belief that gradual integration of all of these elements into her
lessons would create the literacy learning in her classroom that she wanted
to see. Carol was essentially “taking on a new literacies stance.” By this, I
mean that as she learned about, discussed, and thought deeply about new
literacies, Carol changed many of the usual ways that she conducted her
English 9 classes. Rather than the largely teacher-centered recitations (Tharp
& Gallimore, 1988) that I saw in much of September and early October, her
new lessons were largely informed by ideas that the nature of learning is
sociocultural (Rogoff, 1995; Vygotsky, 1978; Wells, 2000), constructivist (Oxford, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978), semiotic (Kress, 2003; Semali, 2002), situated in
the local knowledge and real inquiry of students (Barton & Hamilton, 2000;
Owens, Hester, & Teale, 2002), and often multimodal in nature (Gee, 2003;
Kress, 2003; Smith & Curtin, 1998). As she integrated these ideas into her
curriculum, she also provided students many opportunities to learn.
Many times, the opportunities for learning enjoyed by Carol’s students
made her classroom a place that was highly congruent with the new literacies classrooms that Kist (2005) describes, and the framework illustrating
students’ opportunities to learn draws on Kist’s “five defining characteristics”
(2005, p. 15) of new literacies classrooms.
Opportunities to Engage in Embodied Learning
Johnson (2007) argues that meaning and understanding of abstract concepts
“is grounded in bodily experience” (p. 12). Emig (2001) further defines
embodied learning as learning that evolves “through transactions with . . .
others in authentic communities of inquiry” (p. 273). Carol’s students had
many opportunities to construct meaning through embodiment. For example,
Carol had students put on trial a character from “The Most Dangerous Game”
(Connell, 1968), one of the short stories that they read, to prompt them to
engage in careful analysis of the characters in the story. After reading another
story, “Button, Button” (Matheson, 2005), they wrote and then conducted
“news interviews” to show the results of their inquiry into the motivations
of the story’s main characters. These projects took careful preparation using
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students’ reading, writing, speaking, and listening—processes they enthusiastically took part in because they served the purpose of active performance.
Opportunities to Learn through Dialogic, Collaborative Activity
Students had opportunities virtually every day to construct knowledge
through dialogic, collaborative activity (Nystrand, 1997). For example, after
they were introduced to poetic devices using popular music that Carol selected, they suggested that they could teach the class using their own favorite
songs. When Carol agreed, the students formed panels, worked together to
analyze and interpret poetic elements in the lyrics from music they enjoyed,
and then presented their work to the entire class in the form of a formal
lecture and demonstration. Using scaffolding from Carole’s guidelines for
their “lectures,” students talked about metaphors, similes, personification,
irony, and other literary elements they found in lyrics of their favorite songs
carefully selected to illustrate poetic elements. They posed questions for each
other and challenged each other to elaborate when answers were brief or
vague. Carol was delighted by the students’ initiative in learning the authorized curricular knowledge of English 9 (the poetic elements) and by the
ways in which she saw them appropriating literacy tools to communicate and
represent their knowledge. As she told me shortly after the song lyric project,
That was the best week! They taught for 40 minutes and I [initiated] absolutely nothing. . . . What I think has changed this year [from other years
she had taught English 9] . . . with the students is that they are asking,
why. Or, they are giving reasons why. And I realized that when they were
teaching the class, they instinctively asked the other kids, “Well, why did
you think that?” What high schooler does that? I mean a kid gives an answer
and they say to each other, okay, that’s good. . . . Now, they support [their
points], that’s what they do. They say [Carol mimics them mimicking
her], “How are you going to support your answer?” But they are doing it.
And it’s never been there [in previous years’ classes that she has taught].
(Interview, 1/24/06)
As Carol’s analysis of the panel discussions indicated, her students this year
were not only learning to identify the devices that poets use, as required by
the ninth-grade curriculum, but they were also actually able to discuss them
as subjects of their own inquiry. This was a different result from the lessons
on the same topic built around worksheets that she had used in her teaching
in previous years. Data helped confirm my observation that students seemed
to be learning from Carol’s new literacies curriculum.
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Opportunities to Learn by Using Local, Personal Knowledge
Students had opportunities to use their local knowledge during lessons, and
they were provided with appropriate scaffolds for connecting local knowledge to the authorized knowledge required for current and future school
success. Preparing to begin the novel Whirligig by Paul Fleischman (1998)
with her class, Carol showed the class a music video called “Untitled” by the
popular group Simple Plan. Both the video and the book share a common
theme—the idea that serious consequences can result from foolish and irresponsible actions. By teaching the students to first analyze the music video,
using knowledge from their lives, Carol helped them to see the same theme
in the book, where it is somewhat more obscurely presented. Throughout
the study of the novel, they returned a number of times to their analysis of
the music video as a mediating tool for understanding the novel’s theme
and literary structure.
Opportunities to Learn through Projective Identities
Carol’s students’ movements back and forth between local and authorized
knowledge seemed to provide opportunities for projective identities (Gee,
2004) to evolve. In an attempt to get students to ask questions related to what
they were studying, Carol most often had them start and end their projects by
connecting what they were learning to their lives and also to lives that they
wanted to have. For instance, when she finished the unit on Whirligig, she
had the students create their own whirligigs—constructions reminiscent of a
child’s toy with whirling arms and legs—portraying personal characteristics
that they were most proud of or that they were striving for. When they each
orally presented the resulting projects, students celebrated their accomplishments by portraying themselves as successful athletes, musicians, scholars,
or other professional people using various “arms” of the whirligig to present
symbols and attributes of those identities.
Opportunities to Learn through Multimodal Projects
Most important, students had opportunities to engage in multimodal learning on a regular basis. From mid-October on, Carol’s class engaged daily in
multimodal activities. As they did, Carol often took the opportunity to teach
explicitly how semiotic elements work in text to create and expand meaning.
Carol learned to view texts using a semiotic lens in her graduate class, and
she simplified some of the lessons taught there for her students. One of the
best examples occurred when she brought the music video “Untitled” to
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class. Carol had begun to talk explicitly about the elements of multimodal
text—what she was learning to call “multimodal grammar” after reading
an article by Kress (1998) in her graduate class. By directing students’ attention to the linguistic and visual elements in the video and asking them
to make connections, Carol began to use a metalanguage (Kress, 1998; New
London Group, 1996; Unsworth, 2001) that students would then take up and
use for meaning making. According to the New London Group (1996), the
metalanguage of multimodality “describes meaning in various realms . . .
includ[ing] the textual and the visual, as well as the multimodal relations
between the different meaning-making processes that are now so critical
in media texts and the texts of electronic multimedia” (p. 77). By applying
a metalanguage to the music video—a genre that the students claimed as
part of their local knowledge—Carol legitimized both the use of that local
knowledge and the careful examination of multimodal elements for serious
study and application to school literacy.
Carol showed the three-minute video “Untitled” three times. She directed students’ attention to multimodal elements by giving them specific
directions for each viewing: First, they were to merely record in writing their
initial reactions. Next, they were to list visual images that “help to create the
mood and message” in the video, and last they were to “really listen to the
words [the lead singer] is singing” and comment on ways that “words link
to the [visual] images and symbols.” At the end of the three viewings and
after what I described in my field notes as “furious writing,” the students
responded to the video with comments that connected semiotic elements
with metaphorical analysis, as can be seen in this transcription of a segment
of student-dominated talk:
(1) C arol: What did you see in the video?
(2) snow flake: The shattered picture shows how the whole family
is affected.
(3) D ede : They sing “Open my eyes” and you see a white light.
(4) sop h ia: It’s raining and the girl’s crying. They’re like the same.
(5) lu ce y : The cars are just touching but you know a lot more hap-
pens.
(6) j e f f : The song talks about fading away and we see the girl dying.
(7) h elena: Yeah, he sings about fading away and his life is fading
too.
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( 8 ) rob by : The picture is fading away, kind of like the guy’s vision
might have been when he was drunk.
( 9 ) Carol: So the voice in the song coincides with the images we
see? Excellent point.
( 1 0 ) dede: “How could this happen to me?” relates to the family.
They might be saying that their daughter is hit physically, but they
are hit emotionally.
( 1 1 ) ko be: When they showed the image of the doctor putting the
oxygen mask over the girl (snapping his fingers), they went right to
the image of the kid drinking from the bottle putting that over his
face.
( 1 2 ) Carol: So the movement is important too. What could that
mean?
( 13 ) rick : Yeah, the movement: When the people were thrown
against the wall in slow motion, the music got louder. It was kind of
fast-paced until then, but then the people start getting all shook up
and hit the walls. You know, [interpreting] you’re probably just going along in your day, and they probably want you to stop and think
that you have to take a step back and take a look at your life. (Class
discussion about “Untitled,” a music video, 11/3/05)
The students’ comments seemed to indicate that they understood
Carol’s instruction about the power of multimodal elements, particularly
visual elements. The visual metaphors that they discussed, in fact, would
become important elements for a later composing/interpreting project they
would do. Rick’s comments in Turn 13 about changes in the music’s volume
and the speed of the movement of bodies in the video, moreover, showed an
implicit knowledge that there are also rules governing auditory and gestural
information that convey meaning. When Carol encouraged students—both
through her directions on the guide sheet at the start of their viewing and
in the class discussions—to think about these rules of visual, auditory, and
gestural grammars, she was opening potentially useful ways of making
meaning to them, and when she connected the music video to the novel
they were about to read, she explicitly encouraged them to make meaningful, intertextual connections between their local, popular culture texts and
authorized school texts. As can be seen in the students’ conversation, they
demonstrated some excellent insights, and they would later carry these into
the study of Whirligig.
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The Poetry Interpretation Projects
The multimodal poetry interpretation project that Carol introduced in
her curriculum warrants special attention because it is such an excellent
example of how multimodal projects seemed to aid Carol’s students in learning both the required English 9 curriculum and lessons about the power of
literacy. After learning about metaphors and similes and other poetic devices
through analysis of poems and song lyrics, Carol’s students had an opportunity to select, prepare, and present an interpretation of a favorite poem (or
one they had written) using a multimodal format afforded by PowerPoint
software. Even after the multimodal study of the music video by Simple Plan,
Carol continued to talk to students about multimodal elements as resources
(Kress, 2003; New London Group, 1996). One day, for example, she talked to
them about how colors, different-sized fonts, and movement could be used
in digital texts in ways similar to words and other print-centered graphics
such as punctuation and capital letters, teaching them to consider many
semiotic elements as tools for information, representation, and communication. Kress’s (2003) explanation of “mode” is important for understanding
the importance of what Carol taught her students:
Mode is the name for a culturally and socially fashioned resource for representation and communication. . . . When we can choose mode easily, as
we now can through the facilities of the new media, questions about the
characteristics of mode arise, in ways that they had not really done before:
what can a specific mode do? What are its limitations and potentials? What
are the affordances of a mode? The materiality of mode, for instance the
material of sound in speech or in music, of graphic matter and light in image, or of the motion of parts of the body in gesture, holds specific potentials
for representation. (p. 45; original emphases)
As she gained an understanding of these ideas about modes, Carol made
thinking and talking about multimodality important to the students. She
also engaged them in explicit discussion—and encouraged them to talk with
each other while they were working on their poetry interpretations—about
exactly how multimodal elements could help them to express their thoughts
and ideas in powerful ways. Some interesting conversations arose as a result.
For example, a number of discussions started with questions like, “What
color makes you think of . . . being alone?” (Field notes, 1/13/06), “What
color is confusion?” (Field Notes, 1/12/06), or “Why do you have the black?”
(Field Notes, 1/13/06). A notable interchange between Carol and Little Willy
showed that he, like his classmates, was thinking about how color and shading can convey meaning:
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C arol: [pointing to a figure on one of Little Willy’s slides] Why did
you darken his face?
L ittle Willy : Because he doesn’t know who he is. (Field notes,
1/12/06)
Little Willy really seemed to be thinking semiotically; that is, he was intentionally using color to layer additional meaning onto the linguistic poem
that he was interpreting. Even more notable was the fact that Little Willy,
classified as eligible for special education services, was attending an “extra”
English class, where he was receiving instruction in basic skills. His teacher
there sometimes complained to Carol about his bad behavior and his inability
to learn. This surprised both Carol and me since Little Willy participated
fully in all of Carol’s classes and turned in acceptable assignments.
When I asked Little Willy one day about the difference in his two
English classes, he couldn’t tell me much about the work in his “extra”
(remedial) English class except to say that the point of the reading there
was “to [better] your fluency, and to . . . better speech; I’m not sure.” In
speaking of Carol’s class, however, he articulated what he saw as the benefit
of the new literacies projects that he and his classmates often did: “When I
do that stuff, I think about what’s going on in the book. More than I would
than just reading it.” When I asked the point of reading books like Whirligig,
he told me, “Um, to find, like, how to live” (Interview, 1/5/06). Little Willy’s
contrasting behaviors in his two English classes and his different definitions
of the “reading” he was doing in each class offer a good illustration of how
much Carol’s students seemed to regard her new literacies curriculum as
meaningful and useful to them.
After listening to the students talk while they worked on their poetry
interpretations and also after reading their written reflections about these
projects, it was clear that Little Willy was not the only one who felt empowered by the multimodal tools that Carol put at their disposal. Rayne, for
example, explained how the different modal elements that the multimedia
software allowed her in her poetry interpretation provided different kinds
of meaning that could lead to more complex understandings:
It makes it more real. Like, you could read [the poem] and it’d be “Okay,
this person’s feeling this, and like that.” But in PowerPoint, when you see
the pictures and the movement . . . [i]t actually shows you what’s going
on, and it makes you feel, even if you don’t realize it. . . . It’s kind of like
school . . . so many things collide together to learn one thing. And I guess
that’s what the music and the colors and the stuff do. (Interview, 1/20/06,
original emphases)
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Through direct instruction about the various aspects and conventions of
multimodality, Carol was able to “construct a classroom community in which
adolescents develop[ed] the skills and habits of mind to convey meaning
through—and recover meaning from—a range of symbol systems” (Landay,
2004, p. 115). As much of the data collected in Carol’s classroom indicated,
including the words of both Little Willy and Rayne, the students appeared to
learn a great deal about how multimodal languages could help them to understand, represent, and communicate meaning that was important to them.
On the day of the poetry interpretation presentations, every student
in the class presented an interesting, well-thought-out project to his or her
classmates. When working on their poetry interpretation projects, Carol’s
students appeared to see themselves as competent designers (New London
Group, 1996) of powerful, multimodal statements. For example, Jeff, who
wrote and interpreted a poem about the loss of American lives in Iraq, used
the opportunity to create a statement of grave social concern, as did Lucey
and Robby, who used references to Hurricane Katrina and September 11,
respectively, as visual metaphors in their poetry interpretations. While all
three were impressive, Jeff’s was particularly so because of the elements
of critical literacy woven through his project. Wishing to make a statement
with “deep meaning” (Poetry reflection, 1/30/07) about the war in Iraq, Jeff
first wrote his poem and then used colors, images, and pictures to complement and augment the meaning in the words of his poem. Calling his poem
“0 to 2000” to signify the number of deaths in Iraq at the time, Jeff used
numbers, cultural icons such as stars and stripes, and visual symbols such
as fire to call attention to and comment upon the tragedy of the war on his
title slide (see fig. 1).
In a reflection, Jeff noted that on the next slide he used “the background
of rain to represent the tears of many people that have lost love [sic] ones
in the war.” The slide (see fig. 2) presents people crying and rain drops on
a gray background, juxtaposed with a picture of President Bush. The word
“Lost” is accentuated by font size, calling attention to the soldiers lost in the
war—presumably mourned by the crying women in the picture—and also
the lost cause in Iraq that, according to Jeff, Bush refused to acknowledge.
Jeff created other slides for his interpretation, most of which repeated
imagery, and numbers, symbols, and icons; for example, he placed pictures
of helmets resting on bayoneted rifles and war-weary soldiers on a fiery
background for one slide and used an American flag as the background on
another. However, one of his slides is notable for its exceptionally creative
use of semiotic resources. About this slide, Jeff wrote in his reflection that
it “was meant to represent two different options: black and white and ying
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[sic] and yang” (Poetry Reflection, 1/30/06). As can be seen in Figure 3, the
Figure 1. Jeff’s Title Slide
Figure 2. Jeff Represents the War in Iraq
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and yang” (Poetry Reflection, 1/30/06). As can be seen in Figure 3, the top
of the slide is dark and carries a picture of President Bush in his role of
commander-in-chief, as represented by his salute. The poem’s words next to
this picture say, “Leaders say we should go.” The bottom of the slide, which
is lighter, carries the words, “Everybody else says leave,” next to the picture
of an antiwar march.
Through color, image, and symbolic gesture, Jeff attempted to present the deep divide in opinions that was making the war a topic of growing
discord in our country at the time that Jeff was creating his poem and its
interpretation. The multimodal elements of the poem that Jeff created allowed him to potentially create a far more eloquent protest than he could
in an accompanying written reflection. In that required paper, he simply
explained his disgust with the war by saying, “I [created] this poem because
it was the way that I viewed the war and this war looks like it will go on
forever” (Poetry reflection, 1/30/06).
Other students, such as Lori, Snowflake, and Monika, used their poetry
projects to express concerns about drugs, suicide, and street violence that
so often preoccupy the thoughts of students their ages. Still other students,
such as Dani and Rayne, attempted to use their poetry interpretations to explain who they were and what was important to them. When I asked Rayne
Figure 3. Jeff Represents Differing Opinions about the War
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to explain why she had used some of the images and symbols that she did in
her poetry interpretation project, her explanation illustrated the intersections that often existed in her classmates’ projects between the multimodal
elements they chose to use, the popular culture from which many of those
symbols came, and the identities that they were defining for themselves.
Rayne discussed her use of one particular symbol, a heart inside of a circle
that was prominent in her project (see fig. 4):
The symbol I use in my power point [sic] is called the Heartagram. It could
stand for many things. It is my favorite band HIM’s symbol. I use it quite
often as a signature, but a lot of the time, I use it to show my emotions . . .
[like] sorrow, misery, or hatred. It could also mean a greater good, with
the never ending circle around the heart, or endless love. I used it in my
power point to mean a lot of things, and to tie it all together in the end.
(personal communication, 4/15/06)
Rayne’s use of the symbol of the Heartagram “as a signature” could
be seen as an effort to project herself into a virtual world where she could
be identified with the “coolness” of her favorite band. At the same time,
in using it to represent her real-world self, she made it stand for her emotions—both those that were sad or dark and those that were involved with
“the greater good” or “endless love.” Using this symbol is just one way that
Rayne projected her identity as someone who can name who she is.
Figure 4. Heartagram Used in Rayne’s Presentation
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Implications
To train teachers to be as successful as Carol was in teaching important
literacy skills to their students, teacher educators must help them to shape
an epistemological perspective that is consistent with a strong new literacies
stance. Teachers should understand that literacy is a social and cultural practice shaped by multiple sign systems, and students must have opportunities to
use their situated, local knowledge, as well as dialogue and inquiry, to transform their participation and activity into learning and identity building. The
many examples of the literacy practices and the literacy learning of Carol’s
students are persuasive evidence that such secondary English instruction
can be effective for teaching traditional curriculum and so much more.
Teachers should also develop a deep understanding of the theory and
learning principles that support new literacies so that they can better deliver
this kind of instruction. Like apprentices in Rogoff’s (1995) model and the
learners in Carol’s class, teachers can learn to teach new literacies through
their participation with the guidance of a teacher educator (Bailey, 2006).
This will be particularly successful if teacher educators are better aware
that new literacies teaching must be built upon a sociocultural foundation
and must include a strong acquaintance with new literacies theory (e.g.,
Gee, 2003; Kress, 2003; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004; New London
Group, 1996; Smith & Curtin, 1998), particularly that body of work that explains the structure and metalanguage involved with multimodality (e.g.,
Kress, 1998, 2003). By assuming a new literacies stance, teachers can better
approach literacy teaching with a deep and broad understanding of literacy
and with teaching methods that are powerful and potentially transforming
for learners.
It is also important to reiterate that, after the first few weeks of school,
Carol did not use multimodal activity as mere exercises dropped into a day’s
lesson to make them fun or engaging for students. The engagement of her
students, particularly when they were using computers to create multimodal
texts, became largely secondary in their minds. As Carol said when students
were using PowerPoint to express their knowledge and appreciation of poetry, “I don’t think they looked at it as a PowerPoint presentation at all. I
think that they looked at it as an interpretation” (Interview, 1/24/06). The
computers became tools to the students, affording them an opportunity to
create multimodal texts, and the texts themselves became their motivational
focus. Carol allowed them the opportunity to choose what they would say
and—most important—access to an important metalanguage, another set of
tools, with which to construct their meaning. Armed with deep interest in
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the task and tools to complete it, her students seemed to learn deeply about
poetry, about language, and about themselves and their world.
Thus, a new literacies curriculum should emphasize multimodality,
but only in a systematic and informed way. Multimodality is an important
cultural tool, like any language, and teachers must, therefore, systematically
teach students about multiple representational systems (Albers, 2006; Kress
& Van Leeuwen, 2001) and the capacities of the different modes (e.g., visual
or gestural modes; Kress, 2003; Lemke, 1998) for meaning making, as Carol
did with her students. Before any curriculum can be developed around multimodality, teachers should better understand the semiotic potential and the
essential elements of individual modes, and how to teach this information.
Conclusion
The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996)
claims that “no other intervention can make the difference that a knowledgeable, skillful teacher can make in the learning process” (cited in Allington &
Johnston, 2000, p. 1). As I traced Carol’s learning about new literacies and
how she gradually implemented what she was learning into her English 9
classroom, I was struck by the aptness of these words. Through conscientious study and reflection about the theoretical basis of new literacies, Carol
assumed a more sociocultural perspective—drawing on elements such as
dialogism, inquiry-based learning, and students’ local knowledge (Gee,
2003; Nystrand, 1997; Wells, 2000)—and a semiotic perspective—drawing
on elements of multimodality and semiotic grammars (Kress, 1998, 2003;
Unsworth, 2001). The more she saw her students participate and learn the
required curricular knowledge of English 9 from the activities she designed
and redesigned (New London Group, 1996), the more she realized that new
literacies shouldn’t be used as a “hook” to pull students into learning or
even as “a spoonful of sugar” (Kist, 2005) to make learning more palatable.
Instead, when new literacies were the daily work of the class, students learned
literary elements, poetic devices, rhetorical elements, and used reading and
writing strategies in ways that previous classes never had before. Rather than
give her students traditional quizzes or artificial writing assignments to test
their knowledge—as she did in September and was sorely disappointed at
the results—Carol used rubrics and other authentic assessment tools, such
as analysis of their discussions, to determine if they not only learned the
material of the course but were also consistently appropriating it in their
discussions, their projects—especially the poetry interpretations—and their
writing.
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For their part, the students seemed to better learn the mandated curriculum, a point often confirmed in my discussions with Carol during our
frequent talks. When I talked to Carol at the end of the school year, moreover,
she told me that students’ scores on the end-of-the year district English 9
exam were, overall, the best that she has ever seen from her classes. She was
thrilled and determined to continue to build her new literacies curriculum.
On a simple questionnaire that Carol allowed me to ask students to
complete on the last day that I observed in their class in early February, I
asked if they had changed in any way, especially in regard to how they understood or felt about reading and writing. Every student wrote about some
kind of personal growth or new understanding of literacy processes. Many
strongly indicated that they saw themselves as real readers and writers and
important members of a learning community. For example, Max wrote, “Now
we have seen so many different ways to understand reading. This class has
opened up my eyes.” Monika expressed feelings similar to those of many of
her classmates when she said, “I learned that sometimes reading can be
fun.” She also added, “I learned more about interpreting poems, and my
already strong feeling for writing poems and stories increased.” Helena said
that she had learned that “writing is basically words written into paragraphs
that represent your life.” Brian, who was often quiet in class, wrote, “I’ve
changed. I’m not afraid to talk in class anymore.” And Little Willy said, “[In]
8th grade I really didn’t understand English. I really didn’t pay attention.
Now I pay attention and try to figure out stuff” (Questionnaires, 2/1/06).
In discussing video games and projective identities, Gee (2004) says, “If
learners in classrooms carry learning so far as to take on a projective identity,
something magic happens. . . . The learner comes to know that he or she
has the capacity, at some level, to take on the virtual identity as a real world
identity” (p. 302). The statements of Carol’s students—those quoted here as
well as told to me directly, written in reflections they gave to Carol, or said
to each other while working together on projects—strongly suggest that some
of the “magic” that Gee mentions was at play in Carol’s classroom. These
students seemed to see themselves as possessing new powers brought about
by their growing understanding of literacy as a social practice and mastery
of literacy as a medium of self-discovery and self-expression.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the Stone House Writers
for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
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“It Makes It More Real”: Teaching New Literacies in a

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