Brian V Street. Abstract

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Brian V Street. Abstract"

Transcription

1 Literacy and Multimodality: STIS Lecture: Inter-Disciplinary Seminars O Laboratório SEMIOTEC, da FALE/UFMG Faculdade de Letras, Belo Horizonte, Brazil March 9, 2012 Brian V Street Abstract I will provide an account of the epistemological framings of both multimodality and the New Literacy Studies, and outline the histories of each theoretical framework thus enabling each to be situated within their respective intellectual traditions. I firstly describe the tradition of the New Literacy Studies, and its connection with ethnography and then consider how literacy practices can be understood as being situated within wider domains of practice and links made with multi modality. I address the different epistemological framings of New Literacy Studies and the multimodal tradition; one rooted in an ethnographic perspective and the other more focused on systemic function linguistics, to ask what the New Literacy Studies can do to inform research premised on a multimodal perspective. By drawing on specific instances of practice and describing a number of research projects that brought an ethnographic understanding of events and practices to not only literacy events and practices, but also multimodal events and practices (Lancaster 2003; Street 2008) a wider application of the theoretical tradition of the New Literacy Studies can be achieved. Multimodality and New Literacy Studies, brought together, fills out a larger more nuanced picture of social positionings and communication by building an equal recognition of practices, texts, contexts, space, and time. Recent studies that straddle both traditions (E.g. Leung and Sgtreet, 2011) are presented along side some considerations for future research. Introduction I begin with an account of the epistemological framings of both multimodality and the New Literacy Studies, and outline the histories of each theoretical framework thus enabling each to be situated within their respective intellectual traditions. By doing this, I aim to outline where the intersections between the two fields lie, to identify points where the two traditions came together and then I will be in a position to describe research that sits within both traditions. The aim of the presentation is to provide an up-to-date account of what research looks like that sits within the intersection of the New Literacy Studies and Multimodality. I begin with an attempt to define through a historical analysis the way in which the two intellectual fields 1

2 have been constituted and then move to a placing of specific research within those two fields. Research that merges New Literacy Studies with multimodality takes equal account of where, how, and by whom a text is made as it does of the physical features of a text as signifiers of contextual meanings. By understanding that literacy can be understood as ideological (Street 1993) and that literacy is situated within a myriad social practices, I argue below that the New Literacy Studies offers a locating standpoint for researchers. By equally locating multimodality as being about a focus on the material qualities of texts, I argue below that multimodality offers a way of showing how locating standpoints materialize in texts (Kress, 2003). Historical perspectives Multimodality During the 1980 s and 1990 s two distinct but parallel theoretical movements were gaining strength within research into literacy, language and linguistics. In 1978 Michael Halliday published Language as Social Semiotic, a ground breaking argument for the need to situate language within its social context, and apply the insight that text could be understood as sign. The text could be understood in relation to the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions of the sign. Halliday s work enabled a layering and deepening understanding of text, form and function within a social context. Gunther Kress, firstly based in Australia and then moving to London in the 1990 s began to use these ideas in relation to social semiotics. In his early work he focused on an understanding of signs in society drawing on Halliday and started to map out the idea of the motivated sign (Hodge and Kress 1988). Social Semiotics drew heavily on Halliday and applied an understanding of signs to understand the way context shapes the making and receiving of a text. From this working with Theo Van Leeuwen, Kress drew on systemic function linguistics to create a new grammar of visual design, leading to his seminal work with Van Leeuwen Reading Images (2001). Kress s new understanding of how signs are made and re-made in society, came upon the education scene in the late 1990 s to explosive effect. His 1997 book, Before Writing, outlined a new theoretical perspective for understanding how children interpret and transform the signs available to them. The concept of the motivated sign, and the ensemble of resources children have to create new signs, made an understanding of children s drawings and writings suddenly accessible within a theoretical framework, which was identified with the concept of multimodality, that is, that all communication was multimodal. In this context a mode is defined as a regularised organised set of resources for meaning-making, which might include image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech, writing etc. In the research that Kress describes, for instance, children s drawings were made the focus as much as their writing. Multimodality, then, is an approach to communication wherein textual modes work in concert with each other without a necessary privileging of one over 2

3 another. Multimodality is guided by the interests of a sign-maker at given moment in time, place, and with particular ways of making the sign. The notion that a child s drawing can be formed powerfully by the visual and other senses and modes points to principles of meaning making that offered a different perspective on literacy. In this way, all texts show rationality, logic, human desire, and affect (Kress, 1997: 19) by manifesting the interest of the text producer in its materiality. Close analysis of signmaker interest and its materialization in objects gave Kress work prominence a merging of semiotics with literacy education that had not been explicitly coupled before. In later work, Kress (2003) looked more centrally at technology and how it has transformed our communicational landscape. The world told is a different world to the world shown comes out strongly in Literacy in the New Media Age wherein he explores how technological changes are transforming literacy as we know it. Kress here teases out many of the terms foregrounded in contemporary research, such as affordance and constraint; reading path; and materiality, and their implications for being literate. Numerous studies have taken this framework and found it useful for the understanding of children s text making (E.g. Pahl 1999 Kenner 2000, Lancaster 2003, Ormerod and Ivanic 2000, Jewitt 2006). Closely informed studies of children s meaning making could then draw on a theoretical perspective that allowed them to examine anew how children come to what they see afresh, and to recognize how they often draw on a number of different modes to create these new signs. The concept of Multimodality enabled a language of description to be applied to children s text making in a way that was generative, fresh and exciting for contemporary researchers. Multimodality has now developed into a field that is thick with descriptive studies of, for example, how science teaching can be enriched by an understanding of the motivated sign and reading path (Jewitt 2006) or the way newspapers work as signs (Machin,), and its usefulness as a language of description for non linguistic phenomena is now accepted. New Literacy Studies At the same time a parallel theoretical field was developing in the field of literacy. In 1983 Shirley Bryce Heath published her seminal Ways with Words that outlined the literacy practices of three communities in the rural Carolinas: Trackton, Roadville and Maintown. Heath recorded how each of these different communities lived, spoke and wrote in different ways. Drawing on ethnographic research methods, she was able to record these ways of speaking and writing and identify that each community carried distinctive ways with words. However, in only one community, Maintown, middle class residents in the town, did the children bring into the educational context literacy practices that were congruent with schooled literacy practices. Roadville children experienced different literacy practices in their homes, as did the Trackton children. Heath s work was published at about the same time as another key study by Brian Street of literacy practices in Iran, in which Street identified different literacy practices associated with different domains of practice. An understanding of the ideologically situated nature of literacy was borne from Street s ethnographic work in Iran (Street 1984; 1993). In his fieldwork in 3

4 Iranian villages during the early 1970s (Street, 1985), what began to emerge as literacy practices were uses and meanings of literacy that were identifiable around three domains of social activity: maktab literacy practices, associated with the primary Qur anic school; schooled literacy practices in the more secular and modernising context of the State school; and commercial literacy practices associated with buying and selling fruit for transport to the city and the market. The practices in this third domain of social activity were quite different from either of the other sets of literacy practices. Characterising them as literacy practices helped him to understand those differences, and he could then talk about whether there were certain identities associated with particular practices. In that context the identity associated with maktab literacy was derived from traditional authority in the village located in Qor anic learning and with a social hierarchy dominated by men. Schooled literacy, on the other hand, was associated with new learning and with modernisation, leading some village children to urban lives and jobs. Commercial literacy emerged in response to the economic activity of selling fruit to the nearby cities at a time of economic boom and involved writing notes, cheques, lists, names on crates and so on, to facilitate the purchase and sale of quantities of fruit. The framework for understanding literacy in such a context involved the concept of literacy practices (Street, 1985). This more social perspective on the uses and meanings of literacy aimed to provide an explanation for why commercial literacy was mainly undertaken by those who had been taught at the Qur anic school rather than those from the modern State school, even though at first sight one might have expected the literacy skills of the latter to be more functionally oriented to commercial practices. Those with Qur anic literacy had the status and authority within the village to carry on these commercial practices, whilst those trained in the State school were seen to be oriented outwards and lacked the integral relations to everyday village life that underpinned the trust necessary for such transactions. In this village context, then, literacy, was not simply a set of functional skills, as much modern schooling and many Literacy Agencies represent it, but rather it was a set of social practices deeply associated with identity and social position. It was, he claimed, by approaching literacy as a social practice that the researcher found a way of making sense of variations in the uses and meanings of literacy in such contexts rather than reliance on the barren notions of literacy skills, rates, levels that dominate contemporary discourse about literacy what he has referred to as the autonomous model of literacy. This approach by an English ethnographer also linked with work in the US tradition of the ethnography of communication which similarly identified ways in which everyday practice and ways of speaking and writing could be understood and interpreted, using ethnographic methodologies (cf Hymes 1996; Hornberger, 1987, 2002). Hymes like Halliday had made a move away from an autonomous model of language, in the way that Chomsky had somehow separated analysis of language structures from their social uses. The ethnography of communication brought together a ore sophisticated view of how language actually worked with an ethnographic perspective on how people actually used it in their everyday communicative practices. Gee likewise was examining the language practices of the 4

5 African American children he studied, and describing the need to situate everyday language within wider contexts of social practice, as described in Social Literacies (1996). Gee used the term The New Literacy Studies to describe the social turn that had taken place in the 1980 s and 1990 s as researchers had documented literacy practices in community context, often using ethnography to aid an understanding of these practices. Combined with an understanding of practice, this tradition focused strongly on context, a position articulated by Duranti and Goodwin (1992) in their edited collection, Rethinking Context. Scribner and Cole s Psychology of Literacy (1981) drew on their anthropological work with the Vai people in Liberia to further look at what counts as literacy in everyday settings and to consider ways in which an understanding of literacy is limited by a focus solely on schooled literacy. Scribner and Cole further asked researchers to focus on the social uses of literacy and the domains in which literacy was used. Street and Street likewise considered this in their paper on The Schooling of literacy which further identified the notion of schooled literacy practices as opposed to literacy practice undertaken as part of everyday life (Street and Street 1991). Barton and Hamilton s 1999 study Local Literacies was a thorough, sustained study that explored and mapped literacy practices across the domains where they were used, using ethnographic methodology to provide a rich textual account of these practices, focusing on one town, Lancaster. Indeed the Lancaster school of literacy studies has grown into one of the most significant in the social turn and many recent publications have extended the tradition (Tusting, 2012; ). All these studies had a common a focus on ethnography as a way in which repeated practices in everyday life could be accessed, understood and interpreted. The role of ethnography What united many of the researchers into literacy practices in everyday life was a focus on ethnography as a methodology. Street himself took from the British school of ethnography the interpretative methods that allowed him to observe and record literacy practices in Iran. Likewise Heath drew on the ethnography of communication, as developed by Hymes and others in the US, in order to locate and trace literacy and language practices in three communities in the rural Carolinas (Heath 1983), a perspective she has continued with a recent follow up study that maps the continuing experiences of people fom Roadville and Trackton as they left the area and moved across the USA (Heath, 2012). Researchers from the New Literacy Studies have drawn on the ethnographic fieldwork experiences of American anthropologists such as Cathy Hall (1999), and Wolcott (1994). Michael Agar (1996), in particular described both etic and emic perspectives in ethnography and thereby opened up the possibility of taking account of both external views of literacy the etic - perspective and of the way literacy practices were interpreted and understood by people themselves in local context the emic perspective. David Bloome and Judith Greene (1996) addressed the dilemma that this essentially anthropological approach 5

6 raised for many working in the field of language, education and communication, that whilst adopting ethnographic approaches they did not necessarily want to become anthropologists themselves. Green and Bloome drew a distinction among three approaches to ethnography that enabled many to overcome this problem, referring to the notion of: doing ethnography, adopting an ethnographic perspective and using ethnographic tools. They argued that doing ethnography involves the framing, conceptualizing. conducting. interpreting, writing and reporting associated with a broad. in-depth. and long-term study of a social or cultural group, meeting the criteria for doing ethnography as framed within a discipline or field, notably that of anthropology. But they opened up other possibilities too: By adopting an ethnographic perspective, we mean that it is possible to take a more focused approach (i.e.. do less than a comprehensive ethnography) to study particular aspects of everyday life and cultural practices of a social group. Central to an ethnographic perspective is the use of theories of culture and inquiry practices derived from anthropology or sociology to guide the research. The final distinction, using ethnographic tools. refers to the use of methods and techniques usually associated with fieldwork. These methods may or may not be guided by cultural theories or questions about the social life of group members (Green, J and Bloome, D. 1997). A recent book by Heath and Street (2008) has brought many of these threads together for those working in the field of language and literacy, invoking for instance the metaphor of juggling to characterize the ways in which the ethnographer has to keep in play many levels of reality: We think that learning ethnography is a lot like learning to juggle. Both call for practice, close observation, and the challenge of having to manage more and more balls in the air. Following these leads, a wealth of research and publications have drawn upon ethnographic perspectives to describe literacy practices across different cultural contexts (Aikman, 1999; Doronilla, 1996; Heath, 1983; Hornberger, 1997, 2002; Kalman, 1999; King, 1994; Robinson-Pant, 1997; Wagner, 1993), contributing to both academic research and theory and to policy and practice. Bringing the two traditions together We can now begin to identify overlaps and ways in which both traditions New Literacy Studies drawing upon ethnographic perspectives and Multimodality drawing especially upon System Functional Linguistics - can be said to speaking to each other and merging at times. In the latter years of the twentieth century, two traditions were developing. One, that of multimodality, placed text making within a tradition from social semiotics, and understood signs as being multimodal, imbued with intention and culturally shaped and constituted. The other, the New Literacy Studies, used ethnographic methodologies to look at ways of being and doing in communities and placed an understanding of literacy within a wider understanding of everyday life. What did these traditions have to say to each other? 6

7 In his inaugural lecture at King s College London Brian Street made a bridge between these traditions. He described Kress and Van Leeuwen s work, Reading Images (1996) and signalled that their work could be taken as bringing together work from linguistic perspectives on semiosis with work from an ethnographic perspective, thus leading to an understanding of multimodality in social context (Street 1999). His argument was that what is needed to understand contemporary texts, that often include both images and words in their presentation, is a combination of methods of analysis, an inter-disciplinary array of methods. These might include a focus on literacy events and practices of the kind he had advocated in a 1988 paper on Literacy Practices and Literacy Myths. Heath (1982:50) had described a literacy event as any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of the participants interaction and interpretative processes. The lens of literacy events was used by Moss, for instance, to look at children s reading in classrooms (Moss 2003). Maybin characterizes the development of the notion of literacy practices that helped New Literacy Studies moved into a more comparative phase: Street has employed the phrase literacy practices (Street 1984: 1) as a more general abstract term focussing upon social practices and conceptions of reading and writing, although he later elaborated the term to take account both of events in Heath s sense and of the social models of literacy that participants bring to bear upon those events and that give meaning to them (Street, 1988). The concept of a literacy practice, like that of other social practices (Bourdieu 1990), links individual agency in situated activities with broader social structures, a theme that has recently been pursued in a volume on New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu (Grenfell et. al., 2012). The distinction between events and practices was later taken up by Barton and Hamilton (1998) in Local Literacies, in which they described literacy events as activities where literacy has a role, and then literacy practices as regular repeated activities. Literacy practices, then, can be understood according to Barton and Hamilton as a set of social practices; these are observable in events which are mediated by written texts (Barton and Hamilton 1998). Street (2000) later added this commentary on the distinction:, we bring to a literacy event concepts, social models regarding what the nature of the event is and that make it work and give it meaning. Literacy practices, then, refer to the broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts. A key issue, at both a methodological and an empirical level, then, is how can we characterise the shift from observing literacy events to conceptualising literacy practices. (Street, 2000:1) Given these important conceptual developments in New Literacy Studies, it is significant that we now find the terms being used in the field of multimodality: as 7

8 Pahl has suggested: I extend the concept of literacy events and practices to the idea of multimodal events and practices as described by Lancaster to account for the way texts are multimodal (Pahl, 2007, p. 81). This links with Street s insight in the 1999 paper that alongside literacy events and practices a wider range of semiotic systems are needed to make sense of everyday life. In the context of a discussion about the changing context of education, he argues that, Employers realize this and in addition to the social characteristics they infer from observation and from references, they also implicitly or explicitly take into account awareness of the semiotic range required in their particular workplace and match that with the semiotic range indicated by applications. (Street 1998:16) Street, here signals that not to take account of multimodality would be problematic for schools as it would de-privilege children who are already drawing on a number of semiotic modes to make meaning and who are likely to be applying for jobs where the employer is quite aware of the importance of multiple modes in meaning making and communication. The school curriculum of today, heavily focused in the UK on a skills-based autonomous model involving a focus on print literacies, is in fact rapidly being superseded by the reality of contemporary communication, embedded as it now is within a range of technologies, often screen-based as in computers, mobile phones etc.. This argument, for new literacies was most forcefully put forward by Lankshear and Knobel in a series of books that critiqued contemporary curricula for their inability to cope with complex digital literacies emerging very rapidly (Lankshear and Knobel 2003; see also Gowen, 1994, on workplace literacies, ). Street s insight regarding the relationship of literacy events and literacy practices chimed with another, more globalised movement that had been developing under the guise of the Multiliteracies curriculum in Australia and described in an important article written by a group called the New London Group in This group included Kress, Gee, Lo Bianco, Cope and Kalantizis, and others who focused on the curriculum of tomorrow in the context of the changing digital landscape, changing multiliteracies context and the need to incorporate a multimodal perspective into the curriculum. This multiliteracies curriculum privileged the concept of Design and focused on learning in schools needing to be organized around a much wider concept of communicative practice and representation that was currently presented to children in schools around the world (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). This brings us to the final aspect that could be brought to bear on the intersection of multimodality and the New Literacy Studies, which is the concept of Discourses, from Gee (Gee 1996; 1999). Gee identified that there were two types of discourses - language in use which he saw as being little d discourses and big D Discourses which he identified as language plus other stuff, that is, 8

9 forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions and clothes. (Gee 1996:127) Studies that merged the insights of Kress, Street and Gee began to be published in the early twenty first century. Elizabeth Moje, for instacce, in her study of the literacy practices of gangsta adolescents used a lens that included multimodality, drawing on all three authors to examine the way these literacy practices sat within a much wider multimodal communicative landscape (Moje 2000). She argued that, Specific to my research, for example, are the works of art, music, dress codes, makeup, tattoos, body movements gestures, and hand signs that gang-connected adolescents use to identify themselves and to claim power and space in and out of their gangs. (Moje 2000:656) Street s (2005) edited volume Literacies across Educational Contexts includes a number of chapters on semiotic practices in and out of school, such as Bronwen Low s Sayin it in a Different Way: Adolescent Literacies Through the Lens of Cultural Studies set in a US context and Joanna Oldham s Literacy and Media in Secondary Schools in the United Kingdom. Pahl in her study of three London homes, found that the children in the study used print literacy alongside drawing to represent their worlds. It became impossible to isolate literacy practices from the much wider range of semiosis that was presented to her within homes. A number of articles on children s home communicative practices (Pahl 2001; 2002; 2004) outlined how these multimodal texts could be understood in relation to the social practices that were sedimented within them. In addition, an understanding of the multimodal text as betraying traces of the practices that went into its making made an understanding of multimodal texts as linked to social practice more visible. For example, Rowsell (1999) drew on Gee s concept of D/discourses together with Kress s account of multimodality to look at publishing practices as instantiated within textbooks used by children in the context of the UK s National Literacy Strategy. Using a lens from Street, of an ethnographic account of what went on when texts were used in practice, she was able to forge a link between Kress and Gee to understand how multimodal texts themselves instantiated Discourses of a particular kind. Moss, (2003) in her work examining boys interaction with non-fiction books, drew on Street s lens of literacy practices and events to interrogate their use of multimodal texts such as the Dorling Kindersley series. Rowsell s work described how D/discourses materialize in modalities in texts and reveal traces of ideas, values, and concepts that inform how we take up the text (Rowsell, 1999). The materialization of Discourses can reveal micro, meso, and macro traces from locating elements of a child s familial practices in a text; to location of community Discourses in signage; to locating global traces in textbooks or local newspapers. Textbooks, as I shall illustrate below with data from recent 9

10 classroom studies in the UK, are a good test case for locating the micro, meso, and macro, when analyzing how more local Discourses and turns of phrase materialize in texts to having textbook layouts simulate computer interface and global shifts to communication. The process of meaning making starts when meaning makers assemble Discourses, transform them, and materialize them in an artifact, another key term in the new conceptual array (cf Pahl and Rowsell, 2010). The conflation and intersection of Discourses become modalities in texts which serve as a window into meaning making. There are ways of deconstructing text so that you can identify the convergence of multiple, disparate Discourses in physical features in texts. In an article on sedimentation of Discourses in textual modalities, Rowsell and Pahl maintain that that conflation and intersection of Discourses become modalities in texts, which, alongside practices provide a formative picture of the meaning makers not only their pathway into literacy but also how they make meaning in certain contexts and engage in practice (Rowsell & Pahl, 2007: 392). With a focus on how D/discourses could be instantiated within multimodal texts (Rowsell), and a focus on the literacy events and practices when children are interacting with multimodal texts (Moss) the two fields were coming together and were being actively used by researchers across the globe. Instances of the synergy between the two fields will be now described in relation to how the intersections were formulated and mapped. New Literacy Studies and Multimodality- research studies In this section, I review some relevant studies that work within the intersection of the New Literacy Studies and Multimodality, both seminal collections that worked across the two fields as well as particular research projects that have drawn on both traditions. I will also signal new and emerging trends within the combined fields that could prove fruitful for researchers. The bringing together of the two fields was firstly achieved through a number of edited collections where researchers explored the intersection in their work. The first, Multimodal Literacy (Jewitt and Kress 2003) placed literacy within the wider field of multimodality, arguing that, The act of writing is itself a multimodal practice that draws on visual and actional modes, in particular resources of spatiality and directionality, (Jewitt and Kress 2003: 2) This collection argued that, a multimodal approach to learning starts from a theoretical position that treats all modes as equally significant for meaning and communication.. (2003:2). The book then considers the implications for practice of that approach. Some of the chapters in the book took an ethnographic perspective to understand the multimodal texts that were the subject of the research. An ethnographic lens, it was argued, gives multimodal analysis a social map. Like a map, ethnographies of contexts such as publishing companies or homes or prisons, give us 10

11 a deep sense of context and identities in contexts that serve as indexical tools in multimodal analysis. Pahl and Rowsell s (2006) edited collection, Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies, explicitly tried to link the two fields together. In their Foreword, Brian Street and Gunther Kress write of the New Literacy Studies and multimodality that while both approaches look at broadly the same field, from each of the two positions the field has a distinctive look: one that tries to understand what people acting together are doing, the other tries to understand about the tools with which these same people do what they are doing (Kress and Street 2006) Kress and Street identified a key point here, that while one focuses on practice (NLS) the other focuses on texts (multimodality). However, Pahl and Rowsell argued that seeing texts as traces of social practice and ethnography is essential to understanding the repeated practices that sediment into text making (Rowsell and Pahl 2007). In their introduction to Travel Notes, they argue that, We need the multimodal in the New Literacy Studies in order to understand texts as material objects. Multimodality gives an analytic tool to understand artifacts such as children s drawings, and to recognize how literacy sits within a much wider communicational landscape (Pahl and Rowsell 2006). However, they argue, the New Literacy Studies is important because, The New Literacy Studies ties the representation to social practice. (Pahl and Rowsell 2006). The volume crosses different domains of multimodality that show the potential of using ethnography to inform multimodal analysis from digital environments (Marsh, Alvermann, Davies, Lankshear & Knobel); to multimodality in the local (Janks & Comber, Stein & Slonimsky; Kell); to multimodality in corporations and the marketplace (Nichols, 2006; Rowsell, 2006); and finally, multimodality in pedagogical environments (Street & Baker, 2006; Millard, 2006). The volume looked at where we sit in terms of multimodality and New Literacy Studies today. Whilst it seems obvious from such work that multimodality is the way of the future, its potential may remain limited by an exclusive gaze upon the text. As Brandt and Clinton say at the end of Travel Notes, in the age of the internet, genres circulate for local use and innovation but also may stay more firmly tethered to centers of origin. Unlike Bibles that were set to sea in the holds of sailing vessels, electronic texts now reside in specific addresses (Brandt & Clinton, 2006: 257). In this way the multimodal enriches the ethnographic. Kress and Street, in a Foreword to this volume, recognize the relative contributions of the two fields: 11

12 The editors of this volume bring together work from two fields of study, both relatively recent arrivals: Multimodality and New Literacy Studies. In the former there has been an attempt to redress the emphasis on writing and speech as the central, salient modes of representation, in favour of a recognition of how other modes visual, gestural, kinaesthetic, three-dimensional play their role in key communicative practices. So one major emphasis in work on multimodality is to develop a language of description for these modes, that enables us to see their characteristic forms, their affordances and the distinctive ways in which they interact with each other. Likewise, those in the field of New Literacy Studies (NLS) have attempted to provide a language of description for viewing literacy as a social practice in its social environments. Again there is an intent to change many emphases of the past especially in educational contexts of the most varied kinds from literacy as a static skill and to describe instead the multiple literacy practices as they vary across cultures and contexts. One key question, according to Kress and Street, that is addressed by the writers in the volume (Pahl and Rowsell 2006), is how these approaches can speak to each other, in attempts to find correspondences and differences. All the authors, they argue, resist moves to polarize, looking instead for complementarities in theoretical aims and approach. For instance, in both approaches there is a worry about the stretching of the term literacy well beyond the NLS conception of social practices of representation to become a metaphor (and often much less than that) for any kind of skill or competence. One needs to ask whose interests are advanced and in what ways by the use of labels such as palpatory literacy (skills in body massage), emotional literacy (skills in affective massage?), cultural literacy (skills in social massage??), and so on. Of course, one clear effect of such moves is that where a literacy is identified, those with an interest in finding the corresponding illiterates are never far behind with their remedies. But even such uses where some aspects of literacy practices are involved computer literacy, visual literacy bring their own problems, not least of them the blunting of analytic and theoretical sharpness and power. Where there is a label there is already an answer; and where there is an answer, any need for questions has stopped. More significantly perhaps, there is the question of complementarity. This poses quite simply an as yet thorny question: where does the reach of one theory stop or, maybe better, begin to attenuate, fizzle out. A social semiotic theory (of multimodality), they continue, is interested in sign-makers, sign-making and signs; In being interested in signs it is interested precisely in what signs are made of, the affordances, the materiality and the provenance of modes and sign in that mode. In being interested in sign-makers and in sign-making necessarily it is interested in the social place, the history and formation of the sign-makers, and in the social environments in which they make their signs. A social semiotic theory of multimodality can attempt to expand its domain to include the features of the sign-maker and of the environment of sign-making; it would do so by treating all of the world as signs the practices, the characteristics of social organization, and so on. And at times that is necessary. In most cases it is better by far to say: but look, there are those whose work is concerned precisely with these 12

13 issues, who have their tools, different tools. Your own tools become ever less useful, and their tools are so much more effective whether those of sociology, of anthropology, or the varieties of ethnographic methods (Kress and Street, 2006). A theory of literacy as social practice addresses similar questions but with, perhaps, a focus upon a narrower range of semiosis the uses of reading and writing, although always in association with other modes, such as speech or visual representation. What New Literacy Studies has added to traditional approaches has been the recognition that reading and writing vary across cultural time and space the meanings associated with them vary for participants and are rooted in social relationships, including crucially relationships of power. Indeed, the very definitions of what counts as literacy already frame social relationships of literacy and what people can do with it as we see in increasingly narrow Government demands on curriculum and assessment. How these schooled literacies relate to those of everyday social life, with its multiple literacies across different cultural and institutional contexts, is a key question raised by NLS and for which, at present, schooled literacy advocates are not providing answers. Researchers in NLS, with their ever expanding vision of literacy in society, have developed research methods and concepts for addressing such questions. We can, for instance, as we have seen above, talk of schooled literacy practices, or of academic literacy practices in the domain of education and, more broadly, of religious literacy practices or commercial literacy practices. NLS, then, is developing a language of description for addressing literacy in all its social variety. Kress and Street conclude by asking what the different fields can contribute: But again the question arises of what are the limits and boundaries here and what does NLS not address that, for instance, a social semiotic theory of multimodality can better handle? Whose tools are better suited to different aspects of the broader task? The question of complementarity addresses itself to that not a matter of mere eclecticism, but of compatible competences. NLS and multi modality, in this sense, are well placed to explore each others strengths and weakness, to develop a conversation that facilitates new growth and more powerful tools. This is timely and necessary precisely because burning issues in representation and communication have proliferated along with the profound changes in the social, cultural, economic and technological world, issues for which there are as yet no answers. In that context the need is to open up questions; and bringing the compatible and complementary approaches of NLS and Multimodality to bear, offers one means of getting further. For one thing, while both approaches look at broadly the same field, from each of the two positions the field has a distinctive look: one that tries to understand what people acting together are doing, the other tries to understand about the tools with which these same people do what they are doing. Each has defined its objects of study practices, events, participants on the one hand, semiosis, modes and affordances, genres, signmakers and signs on the other. From each of these further questions follow, uncertainties open up. What is a mode, how do modes interact, how 13

14 can we best describe the relationship between events and practices, how do we avoid becoming the agents producing the new constraints of newly described and imposed grammars? This analysis of the key terms and of the potentially different contirnbutions of the two fields takes Kress and Street back to quite fundamental questions, asking old questions again, in the light of new givens and the new difficulties they bring. What are the cultural technologies which are at issue here the technologies of dissemination of meanings (the media), those of representation of meanings (the modes), and those of production of messages (print and paper; digitality and electronics)? How do they interact, what becomes possible for whom, where is power likely to shift, who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose, and what is our role as academics in all that? The authors in the Pahl and Rowsell volume are attempting just such a task, starting from their own experience as practitioners and researchers, trying to find ways of speaking across their fields, traditions and the data which they produce. They call on different methodologies some more semiotic and some more ethnographic in style - reflective and close to the ground, able to see two things more precisely: the specific social, cultural and individual reasons for the uses of particular resources (why speech and gesture for this part of the task, and why writing and image for that?), and the significance of the work of those who make their representations, always in interactions with others. Kress and Street conclude: In this, then, the book makes its contribution to a growing move, a part of an increasing awareness that the complexity and fluidity of the world of which the world of representation is but a part demands the joining of intellectual, theoretical resources, demands the fashioning of new tools from the old. As two people involved in just that kind of work, we welcome the contribution made by those whose work is represented here. New Literacy Studies focuses especially on the notion of power and how literacy practices carry more or less power when we move across contexts. In Street s study (1984),those who had learned literacy in maktab schools had the authority and social capital to then apply their literacy skills to new commercial practices. Understanding the relationship between texts and power is inherent to a bringing together of New Literacy Studies and multimodality. This has considerable implications for how education is designed in the enw media age. When doing ethnographic work in homes and communities, for instance, researchers have observed, that children draw on local objects and terms in their creation of such texts (Pahl, 2004). 14

15 How then might such home experience be built upon when children enter school? I will conclude this theoretical section by signaling recent work that has attempted to bring together New Literacy Studies and the theory and methods of the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (Grenfell et. al., 2012). Rowsell and Pahl note, texts as artifacts are sites where the habitus can be discerned (Rowsell & Pahl, 2007: 394). Uniting the local with the multimodal throws sedimentation into relief and in doing so, gives texts more salience in research contexts. Ways of bringing the intersection into play: A Classroom Vignette An example of how this approach can help us see aspects of classroom practice and the literacy involved, that might otherwise remain hidden, can be illustrated in the following account of a London classroom recently studied by Leung and Street (forthcoming). I describe these data in some detail in order to allow space for further exploration of the themes outlined above and my own comments are to be taken as initial signals of the kinds of directions the combination of NLS and MM might offer for understanding such situations. In many of the classes Leung and Street observed in an ethnolinguistically diverse London school, there was a complex mix of modes of information - written, spoken, visual - configured in different locations on the walls, in notebooks, on black/white boards involving different technologies and formats computer and internet sources displayed on a screen, text books, students note books, posters, folders, cards for writing on. One other frequently observed feature was that the teachers often mentioned examination requirements as part of the lesson objectives. The data is taken from observations of an Advanced Subsidiary level History class (17-year-olds, pre-university) in which students from a number of different language backgrounds were engaged with work on the topic of The origins of the equal rights movement for women. The teacher Donna took the students through a series of data sources and activities. The data sources included a powerpoint presentation with five slides on the day s topic and homework, two handouts, 21 information cards and a poster. There were seven students, four boys, three girls (all with head scarves); three of the students were using English as an Additional Language. As they came into the room, they chatted away in lively style amongst themselves and with the teacher. The walls were full of writing and images. The segment of the lesson reported here begins after the class had settled down and the teacher announced the start of her teaching by drawing attention to the powerpoint slide on the whiteboard. Pseudonyms are used for all participants in this vignette. 15

16 At the start of the lesson the teacher, Donna, draws the students attention to the information on a slide displayed on the whiteboard. The topic of the lesson is: The origins of the equal rights movement for women. After introducing the topic, the teacher asks the students to copy the information on the slide into their notebooks and to look up the meanings of the words infiltrate and 16

17 desertion in the dictionary, which has been placed on the table in front of the students. The students proceed with the copying task quietly; the teacher sits with the students and occasionally reminds them to use the dictionary. After five minutes the teacher stands up and introduces a set of key words on a new slide (Slide 2). The teacher tells the class that the main concept for the lesson is how life changed for women, and that the basic key words for this topic are on the left hand side of the whiteboard. The students are asked to find a matching definition for each of the key words from the right hand side of the whiteboard. The teacher asks the students to write the words down on the board. After the students have been working quietly on their own for about three minutes the teacher then nominates individual students to go up to the whiteboard to do a worddefinition match. The teacher nominates two other students to come up to the whiteboard to perform this matching exercise. The students nominated perform this task without speaking. After that the teacher completes the matching task for the last of the key words, pauper, herself. But the teacher intersperses the board work with recall questions related to a focal key word to the whole group. For instance, in relation to the last key word pauper the teacher refers to the meanings of pauper that she has discussed in previous classes: 17

18 At the end of this three-minute activity the whiteboard display is as follows: The teacher now switches to the next slide and a new focus: Women Today: The teacher divides the students into small groups to discuss the issues on the whiteboard one pair on work, another pair on marriage and divorce, and a group of three on education and sexuality. The students are given one minute to do this. 18

19 The students immediately engage in animated talk. At the end of the allowed time the teacher tells the class to come back together and initiates a whole class discussion. In total this segment is approximately 9-10 minutes (of a 60 minute lesson). There is constant interweaving between different modes of language (talk, writing, reading, listening) and literacy activities, involving a variety of multimodal material use. The lesson started with little or no spoken introduction into the topic; students had to copy key words displayed on the whiteboard and then use a dictionary to find out the word meanings for themselves. The nature of social participation shifted rapidly within minutes and often rested upon implicit rules and routines, e.g. concept (word) and definition (word strings) matching activities that included students performing at the white board. In terms of the knowledge and the time frames being invoked, the past and the present constantly ran into each other as the teacher referred, for instance, to earlier voting rights, and to contemporary laws regarding marriage and divorce and she also referred to earlier lessons, as in Extract 4 regarding her explanations of the word pauper. The lesson moved at a very fast pace the teacher moved from one slide to the next slide, asked questions, then instigated a discussion around key terms. There were rapid transitions between teacher-led discussion and short question and answer sessions; at the same time there was considerable student/student talk. Other activities in this lesson (not in the vignette reported here) involved student writing in their notebooks, often associated with looking at visual images and looking up words in dictionaries. Links between all of these activities were established via key words, teacher questions and students hands-on activities writing, matching and gluing word strips together. In the latter case, the shifts between modes and the use of material artifacts, a term invoked above (cf Pahl and Rowsell, 2010), involved reading short word strings from cards, selecting appropriate ones, then sticking them on to posters, which were then placed in their folders. As researchers interested in both language and literacy practices, particularly as it related to students from EAL backgrounds, Leung and Street s interest was guided by the conceptual frames indicated earlier notably New Literacy Studies and EAL learning from communicative perspectives with the question of how all of this related to multimodal communication. From the perspective of New Literacy Studies, we might say that we can observe all of the events described here, but recognise that this is not enough, we also need to ask how did the students and their teacher and the researchers make sense of them. In order to understand what s going on here, as the ethnographic perspective asks, we needed, as we noted above, to make the shift from events to practices, to begin to identify the meanings and concepts underlying the events, the relation of different modes and their location in social and institutional contexts. What social, cultural and ideological components were working here to construct meanings? For instance, the Academic Literacies research asks us to focus on the different genres, practices, social interactions involved in students engaging with formal requirements (Lea and Street, 1997, 2006). We might ask, in relation to 19

20 the data above, how did the students make links between the different sources of information, the different kinds of task, the words highlighted and the larger spoken and written accounts required? A key issue was how such activity and use of data sources linked with the examination tasks required, such as particular written genres. How were students learning the different genres of writing required for examination and how did their ordinary language usage relate to that required for these tasks? And the work in Multimodality (e.g. Kress 2000; Kress et al 2005) asks us to identify the meanings associated with different modes and different artefacts (Pahl and Rowsell, As the students moved from reading words on the white board to talking about them, and writing them into notebooks and folders, what contribution did the artifacts and the ways in which they were used make to the overall meaning making? At the same time, EAL literature draws attention to the varieties of English being called upon in these specific academic tasks, including how they may differ from those that students are familiar with in everyday communication. The data above, for instance, provides rich and complex examples of the focus on vocabulary and of the academic discourse the teacher is calling upon. Words such as pauper, not frequently encountered in everyday English today, were highlighted by the teacher and then associated with epithets used in specific legalistic and administrative frameworks, such as apprentice. And yet this focus on subject specific meanings and their language expressions was interspersed with talk concerned with classroom organisation and task management. English is both a constituent and an embodiment of such a flight of multifaceted meaning making Here we see subject-related vocabulary, what Halliday might refer to as register, and everyday language expressions interwoven in a way that Hymes might term appropriate by virtue of the fact that this communicative event happened. A practice view would allow us to see that English is considerably more complex and intricate than dominant pedagogic and prescriptive models would allow. English, in this case English in an educational context, is, among other things, the interweaving of everyday expressions and specialist register, such as academic English, uses of different sources of information embodied in different materialities and hands-on activities, and language resourcing in a broader sense. Above all, the content of the subject can be seen as a core meaning from which the various activities are developed, and to which they owe their pedagogic coherence in context. The vignette presented in this discussion provides a glimpse of the potential yield of looking at English as part of social, language and semiotic practices. Similar use of the MM and NLS perspective might be applied p other classroom events and practices, with different languages and registers in different subject areas. The bringing together of MM and NLS would seem to be a productive move which I would see as significant not only in terms of educational contexts of the kind described here but more broadly in terms of everyday communicative practices, for which the approach is only just beginning to unpack the often hidden meanings. 20

Multimodal Literacies in the Early Years

Multimodal Literacies in the Early Years Multimodal Literacies in the Early Years CREET The Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology Where can you find out more about the research? www.open.ac.uk/blogs/multimodalliteracies/

More information

Doctor of Education - Higher Education

Doctor of Education - Higher Education 1 Doctor of Education - Higher Education The University of Liverpool s Doctor of Education - Higher Education (EdD) is a professional doctoral programme focused on the latest practice, research, and leadership

More information

Guidelines for Integrative Core Curriculum Themes and Perspectives Designations

Guidelines for Integrative Core Curriculum Themes and Perspectives Designations Guidelines for Integrative Core Curriculum Themes and Perspectives Designations The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines for faculty wishing to have new or existing courses carry Themes and

More information

Course Guide Masters of Education Program

Course Guide Masters of Education Program Course Guide Masters of Education Program Note: 1 course = (3) credits Students need 12 credits (4 courses) to obtain Graduate Diploma Students need 30 credits (10 courses) to obtain M.Ed. or M.A Graduate

More information

Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research

Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research J. T. M. Miller, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham 1 Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research Much of the apparent difficulty of interdisciplinary research stems from the nature

More information

Preface. A Plea for Cultural Histories of Migration as Seen from a So-called Euro-region

Preface. A Plea for Cultural Histories of Migration as Seen from a So-called Euro-region Preface A Plea for Cultural Histories of Migration as Seen from a So-called Euro-region The Centre for the History of Intercultural Relations (CHIR), which organised the conference of which this book is

More information

How To Take A Minor

How To Take A Minor Make a Major difference to your degree. Flexible Learning at Southampton 2 Studying a Minor subject allows you to broaden your educational experience Make a Major difference to your degree by choosing

More information

Scholarship Programme

Scholarship Programme Department of Children and Youth Affairs Scholarship Programme Note No. 7 Research Briefing Consuming Talk: Youth Culture and the Mobile Phone 1. What is the study s background? This study was the subject

More information

How To Build Connection With New Arrival Students

How To Build Connection With New Arrival Students Building connection in working with new arrival immigrant and refugee students Jenny Barnett, University of South Australia, South Australia Rosie Antenucci, Department of Education and Children s Services,

More information

PROGRAMME AND COURSE OUTLINE MASTER S PROGRAMME IN MULTICULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION. 12O ECTS credits. The academic year 2013/2014

PROGRAMME AND COURSE OUTLINE MASTER S PROGRAMME IN MULTICULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION. 12O ECTS credits. The academic year 2013/2014 PROGRAMME AND COURSE OUTLINE MASTER S PROGRAMME IN MULTICULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION 12O ECTS credits The academic year 2013/2014 Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences Faculty

More information

Course Guide Masters of Education Program (UOIT)

Course Guide Masters of Education Program (UOIT) Course Guide Masters of Education Program (UOIT) Note: 1 course = 3 credits Students need 12 credits (4 courses) to obtain Graduate Diploma Students need 30 credits (10 courses) to obtain M.Ed. Or M.A

More information

Chapter 2 Conceptualizing Scientific Inquiry

Chapter 2 Conceptualizing Scientific Inquiry Chapter 2 Conceptualizing Scientific Inquiry 2.1 Introduction In order to develop a strategy for the assessment of scientific inquiry in a laboratory setting, a theoretical construct of the components

More information

Who we become depends on the company we keep and on what we do and say together

Who we become depends on the company we keep and on what we do and say together International Journal of Educational Research ] (]]]]) ]]] ]]] Who we become depends on the company we keep and on what we do and say together Gordon Wells Department of Education, Crown College, University

More information

MA Knowledge and Interaction in Online Environments

MA Knowledge and Interaction in Online Environments MA Knowledge and Interaction in Online Environments A new, fully online course for professionals in online education, communication and information to be launched in October 2009 What is this course about?

More information

2014-15 College-wide Goal Assessment Plans (SoA&S Assessment Coordinator September 24, 2015)

2014-15 College-wide Goal Assessment Plans (SoA&S Assessment Coordinator September 24, 2015) 2014-15 College-wide Goal Assessment Plans (SoA&S Assessment Coordinator September 24, 2015) College-wide Goal 1: Intellectual Engagement PG1 Students will demonstrate the ability to think critically and

More information

Academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design

Academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design Studies in Higher Education Vol. 29, No. 6, December 2004 Academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design Mary R. Lea * Open University, UK This article examines how research findings from the field

More information

History. Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment target (This is an extract from The National Curriculum 2007)

History. Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment target (This is an extract from The National Curriculum 2007) History Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment target (This is an extract from The National Curriculum 2007) Crown copyright 2007 Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2007 Curriculum aims

More information

Abstraction in Computer Science & Software Engineering: A Pedagogical Perspective

Abstraction in Computer Science & Software Engineering: A Pedagogical Perspective Orit Hazzan's Column Abstraction in Computer Science & Software Engineering: A Pedagogical Perspective This column is coauthored with Jeff Kramer, Department of Computing, Imperial College, London ABSTRACT

More information

Shifting Paradigms: Assessment and Technology in the Composition Classroom

Shifting Paradigms: Assessment and Technology in the Composition Classroom R e v i e w s Shifting Paradigms: Assessment and Technology in the Composition Classroom Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing. By Carl Whithaus. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence

More information

Ph. D. Program in Education Specialization: Educational Leadership School of Education College of Human Sciences Iowa State University

Ph. D. Program in Education Specialization: Educational Leadership School of Education College of Human Sciences Iowa State University Ph. D. Program in Education Specialization: Educational Leadership School of Education College of Human Sciences Iowa State University The purpose of the doctoral program in Educational Leadership is to

More information

REGULATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF EDUCATION (MEd)

REGULATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF EDUCATION (MEd) 215 REGULATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF EDUCATION (MEd) (See also General Regulations) Any publication based on work approved for a higher degree should contain a reference to the effect that the work

More information

COMMUNICATION COMMUNITIES CULTURES COMPARISONS CONNECTIONS. STANDARDS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING Preparing for the 21st Century

COMMUNICATION COMMUNITIES CULTURES COMPARISONS CONNECTIONS. STANDARDS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING Preparing for the 21st Century COMMUNICATION COMMUNITIES CULTURES COMPARISONS CONNECTIONS STANDARDS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING Preparing for the 21st Century Language and communication are at the heart of the human experience. The

More information

Executive Summary Principles and Standards for School Mathematics

Executive Summary Principles and Standards for School Mathematics Executive Summary Principles and Standards for School Mathematics Overview We live in a time of extraordinary and accelerating change. New knowledge, tools, and ways of doing and communicating mathematics

More information

MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 2015/16

MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 2015/16 MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 2015/16 Programme structure full time students Full time students must complete the programme in one year. All students complete the following

More information

The American College of Greece: Academic Vision. David G. Horner, Ph.D. President The American College of Greece April 14, 2011 (Edited July 2013)

The American College of Greece: Academic Vision. David G. Horner, Ph.D. President The American College of Greece April 14, 2011 (Edited July 2013) The American College of Greece: Academic Vision David G. Horner, Ph.D. President The American College of Greece April 14, 2011 (Edited July 2013) Before presenting my recommendation for ACG s future academic

More information

PhD Studies in Education in Italy within the European Research Framework and the Bologna Process: an Overview. Maura Striano

PhD Studies in Education in Italy within the European Research Framework and the Bologna Process: an Overview. Maura Striano PhD Studies in Education in Italy within the European Research Framework and the Bologna Process: an Overview Maura Striano A partire da una analisi delle sfide e degli orientamenti che cararerizzano la

More information

Case Study: Public Relations

Case Study: Public Relations Internationalisation of the Curriculum in Action Case Study: Public Relations This case study was developed as part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council National Teaching Fellowship, Internationalisation

More information

MA APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND TESOL

MA APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND TESOL MA APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND TESOL Programme Specification 2015 Primary Purpose: Course management, monitoring and quality assurance. Secondary Purpose: Detailed information for students, staff and employers.

More information

What is the impact of multisource learning on History at Key Stage 3?

What is the impact of multisource learning on History at Key Stage 3? What is the impact of multisource learning on History at Key Stage 3? Researchers: Lloyd Brown and Rolf Purvis Date of research: September 2000 August 2001 Contact details: Chesterton Community College,

More information

AG418 Public Sector Accounting. Brief description of honours classes 2012/2013. AG424 Accounting Theories

AG418 Public Sector Accounting. Brief description of honours classes 2012/2013. AG424 Accounting Theories Brief description of honours classes 2012/2013 AG424 Accounting Theories To offer an advanced course on the historic foundations of, and contemporary theoretical issues in, accounting. The course builds

More information

Introduction. Michael Grenfell and Frédéric Lebaron

Introduction. Michael Grenfell and Frédéric Lebaron Michael Grenfell and Frédéric Lebaron Introduction Interest in the work of the French social theorist, Pierre Bourdieu, has continued to grow since his untimely death in 2002. At this time, Bourdieu had

More information

Supporting the Implementation of NGSS through Research: Curriculum Materials

Supporting the Implementation of NGSS through Research: Curriculum Materials Supporting the Implementation of NGSS through Research: Curriculum Materials Janet Carlson, BSCS/Stanford University Elizabeth A. Davis, University of Michigan Cory Buxton, University of Georgia Curriculum

More information

JOINT MASTER OF ARTS IN LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION CHANGE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

JOINT MASTER OF ARTS IN LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION CHANGE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS JOINT MASTER OF ARTS IN LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION CHANGE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS A. CORE COURSES MALC 801 Perspectives in Educational Leadership Educational leadership is a complex concept, both in theory and

More information

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership. DM 004 Requirements

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership. DM 004 Requirements School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership The mission of the Doctor of Management in Organizational Leadership degree program is to develop the critical and creative

More information

Which elements of digital competence should be acquired at school?

Which elements of digital competence should be acquired at school? 1 Which elements of digital competence should be acquired at school? Liisa Ilomäki, Anna Kantosalo and Minna Lakkala The authors of these documents or materials ("the works") are Liisa Ilomäki, Anna Kantosalo

More information

Standards for Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science

Standards for Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science Standards for Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science One of the most important messages of the Next Generation Science Standards for teachers, parents, and students is that science is

More information

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Education In Educational Leadership With A Specialization In Educational Technology. EDD/ET 003 Requirements

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Education In Educational Leadership With A Specialization In Educational Technology. EDD/ET 003 Requirements School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Education In Educational Leadership With A Specialization In Educational Technology The mission of the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership degree program

More information

College of Agriculture, School of Human Environmental Sciences

College of Agriculture, School of Human Environmental Sciences 251 PERSONAL AND ILY FINANCE. (3) Management of personal and family financial resources throughout the lifespan. A study of individual and family finances as related to planning, credit, savings, investment,

More information

Choosing to do a Doctorate in Education

Choosing to do a Doctorate in Education 01-Burgess-3353.qxd 1/31/2006 7:02 PM Page 1 1 Choosing to do a Doctorate in Education Choosing to study for a professional doctorate is a major decision and, for many, it is often the first step of a

More information

Masters of Reading Information Booklet. College of Education

Masters of Reading Information Booklet. College of Education Masters of Reading Information Booklet College of Education Department of Teaching and Learning Bloomsburg University's Masters in Reading/Reading Certification degree program provides theoretical, analytical

More information

A. The master of arts, educational studies program will allow students to do the following.

A. The master of arts, educational studies program will allow students to do the following. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DEGREES OFFERED MASTER OF ARTS, EDUCATIONAL STUDIES (M.A.); MASTER OF ARTS, SCIENCE EDUCATION (M.S.); MASTER OF ARTS IN GERMAN WITH TEACHING LICENSURE (M.A.);

More information

Critical Inquiry in Educational Research and Professional Practice

Critical Inquiry in Educational Research and Professional Practice DOCTOR IN EDUCATION COURSE DESCRIPTIONS A. CORE COURSES NEDD 800 Professionalism, Ethics, and the Self This introductory core course will explore and interrogate ideas surrounding professionalism and professionalization.

More information

Educating in the 21st Century

Educating in the 21st Century SASPA Discussion Paper June 2015 Draft Educating in the 21st Century This paper captures the best work of current practitioners in South Australian secondary schools. These educational leaders understand

More information

Integrating the Common Core Standards into the Music Curriculum

Integrating the Common Core Standards into the Music Curriculum Place Photo Here, Otherwise Delete Box Integrating the Common Core Standards into the Music Curriculum Tom L. Foust January 24 th, 2013 Illinois Music Educators Conference Peoria, Illinois What is the

More information

London School of Commerce. Programme Specification for the. Cardiff Metropolitan University. Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Business Studies

London School of Commerce. Programme Specification for the. Cardiff Metropolitan University. Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Business Studies London School of Commerce Programme Specification for the Cardiff Metropolitan University Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Business Studies 1 Contents Page 1. Aims and Objectives 3 2. Programme Learning Outcomes

More information

Kansas Board of Regents Precollege Curriculum Courses Approved for University Admissions

Kansas Board of Regents Precollege Curriculum Courses Approved for University Admissions Kansas Board of Regents Precollege Curriculum Courses Approved for University Admissions Original Publication April 6, 2011 Revision Dates June 13, 2011 May 23, 2012 Kansas Board of Regents Precollege

More information

Study program International Communication (120 ЕCTS)

Study program International Communication (120 ЕCTS) Study program International Communication (120 ЕCTS) Faculty Cycle Languages, Cultures and Communications Postgraduate ECTS 120 Offered in Skopje Description of the program The International Communication

More information

Beacon s Education Program:

Beacon s Education Program: Beacon s Education Program: Why it works 2101 Livingston Street Oakland, CA 94606 510.436.4466 beaconday.org Part One: Curriculum Spirals Beacon s Education Program is based upon a system which we call

More information

D R. R O B E R T S M A R T Q U I N N I P I A C U N I V E R S I T Y 3 J U N E 2 0 1 0 S O U T H E R N C O N N E C T I C U T S T A T E U N I V.

D R. R O B E R T S M A R T Q U I N N I P I A C U N I V E R S I T Y 3 J U N E 2 0 1 0 S O U T H E R N C O N N E C T I C U T S T A T E U N I V. The Double Helix: WAC and Critical Thinking, A History D R. R O B E R T S M A R T Q U I N N I P I A C U N I V E R S I T Y 3 J U N E 2 0 1 0 S O U T H E R N C O N N E C T I C U T S T A T E U N I V. Critical

More information

Teaching institution: Institute of Education, University of London

Teaching institution: Institute of Education, University of London PROGRAMME SPECIFICATION MA Geography in Education Awarding body: Institute of Education, University of London Teaching institution: Institute of Education, University of London Name of the final award:

More information

Creativity and Critical Thinking

Creativity and Critical Thinking Creativity and Critical Thinking Could creativity be the key to more authentic reflective writing in technology education? Could creative writing tools used effectively in a design & visual arts context

More information

Session Title: Teaching Computational Thinking through Mobilize and the New Big Data Explosion

Session Title: Teaching Computational Thinking through Mobilize and the New Big Data Explosion Session Title: Teaching Computational Thinking through Mobilize and the New Big Data Explosion MSP Project Name: MOBILIZE: Mobilizing for Innovative Computer Science Teaching and Learning Presenters: Jane

More information

Literacy Standards Articulated Across AQF Qualification Levels

Literacy Standards Articulated Across AQF Qualification Levels Literacy Standards Articulated Across AQF Qualification Levels Writing Standard 1. Writes routinely, over extended time frames, in order to fulfil the requirements of a range of written tasks and assessments.

More information

1.1 The subject displays a good level of craftsmanship and a significant focus on technical expertise.

1.1 The subject displays a good level of craftsmanship and a significant focus on technical expertise. Recommendations to the Higher Arts Education Institutions, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Ministry of education and Science, Lithuania Overview Report of the Applied Arts Accreditation

More information

Learning and Teaching

Learning and Teaching B E S T PRACTICES NEA RESEARCH BRIEF Learning and Teaching July 2006 This brief outlines nine leading research-based concepts that have served as a foundation for education reform. It compares existing

More information

Morris College Teacher Education Curriculum Changes Elementary Education

Morris College Teacher Education Curriculum Changes Elementary Education EDU 200 Introduction to Education (3) Introduction to Education provides an introduction to the nature of education and its place in our society. An overview of the historical background of systems of

More information

Key characteristics: Definition of single components (i.e. disciplines)

Key characteristics: Definition of single components (i.e. disciplines) Definition Humanities The Humanities are a group of disciplines including but not limited to History, English, Foreign Language, Music, Art, Classics, Philosophy, Religious Studies that examine the ways

More information

Professor Shaaron Ainsworth (shaaron.ainsworth@nottingham.ac.uk)

Professor Shaaron Ainsworth (shaaron.ainsworth@nottingham.ac.uk) The following PhD vacancies and research topics within the were compiled in November 2013 and were correct at the time of publication. For further guidance on pursuing a PhD in any of these areas, please

More information

MASTER OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

MASTER OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EARLY CHILDHOOD 01 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EARLY CHILDHOOD The University of Canberra The University of Canberra (UC), established in 1968, is located in Australia s national

More information

English. Stage 6 Syllabus. English (Standard) English (Advanced) English as a Second Language (ESL) English (Extension) Fundamentals of English

English. Stage 6 Syllabus. English (Standard) English (Advanced) English as a Second Language (ESL) English (Extension) Fundamentals of English English Stage 6 Syllabus English (Standard) English (Advanced) English as a Second Language (ESL) English (Extension) Fundamentals of English Original published version updated: Nov/Dec 1999 Board Bulletin/Official

More information

Modern foreign languages

Modern foreign languages Modern foreign languages Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment targets (This is an extract from The National Curriculum 2007) Crown copyright 2007 Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2007

More information

This chapter introduces the Structure of Process the complement to the

This chapter introduces the Structure of Process the complement to the 4 The Structure of Process This chapter introduces the Structure of Process the complement to the Structure of Knowledge. The Structure of Process shows the relationship of Processes, Strategies, and Skills

More information

THE BACHELOR S DEGREE IN SPANISH

THE BACHELOR S DEGREE IN SPANISH Academic regulations for THE BACHELOR S DEGREE IN SPANISH THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES THE UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS 2007 1 Framework conditions Heading Title Prepared by Effective date Prescribed points Text

More information

CALIFORNIA S TEACHING PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS (TPE)

CALIFORNIA S TEACHING PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS (TPE) CALIFORNIA S TEACHING PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS (TPE) The Teaching Performance Expectations describe the set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that California expects of each candidate for a Multiple

More information

THE BUSINESS OF THE DESIGN DOCTORATE A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF AIMS, INTERACTIONS AND IMPACTS Martin Woolley, University of the Arts, London

THE BUSINESS OF THE DESIGN DOCTORATE A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF AIMS, INTERACTIONS AND IMPACTS Martin Woolley, University of the Arts, London THE BUSINESS OF THE DESIGN DOCTORATE A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF AIMS, INTERACTIONS AND IMPACTS Martin Woolley, University of the Arts, London This paper examines the aspirations of research students, whether

More information

Graduate Courses. 713 PERFORMANCE CRITICISM (3). Introduction to the critical analysis and interpretation of performance events.

Graduate Courses. 713 PERFORMANCE CRITICISM (3). Introduction to the critical analysis and interpretation of performance events. Graduate Courses 700 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH AND THEORY IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES I (3). Prerequisite, admission to graduate program or permission of the chair. Considers theory and philosophy in the study

More information

In the workshops, eight fundamental precepts about writing are presented:

In the workshops, eight fundamental precepts about writing are presented: The Writer s Block Project by Dr. Jane K. Dominik When writing papers for their college courses across disciplines, students often get stuck at various stages in the writing process: as they struggle to

More information

HOW DRAWING IS USED TO CONCEPTUALIZE AND COMMUNICATE DESIGN IDEAS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN: EXPLORING SCAMPING THROUGH A LITERACY PRACTICE LENS

HOW DRAWING IS USED TO CONCEPTUALIZE AND COMMUNICATE DESIGN IDEAS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN: EXPLORING SCAMPING THROUGH A LITERACY PRACTICE LENS CHAPTER 18 HOW DRAWING IS USED TO CONCEPTUALIZE AND COMMUNICATE DESIGN IDEAS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN: EXPLORING SCAMPING THROUGH A LITERACY PRACTICE LENS Lynn Coleman Most students in higher education are typically

More information

Australian ssociation

Australian ssociation Australian ssociation Practice Standards for Social Workers: Achieving Outcomes of Social Workers Australian Association of Social Workers September 2003 Contents Page Introduction... 3 Format of the Standards...

More information

French Language and Culture. Curriculum Framework 2011 2012

French Language and Culture. Curriculum Framework 2011 2012 AP French Language and Culture Curriculum Framework 2011 2012 Contents (click on a topic to jump to that page) Introduction... 3 Structure of the Curriculum Framework...4 Learning Objectives and Achievement

More information

BS Environmental Science (2013-2014)

BS Environmental Science (2013-2014) BS Environmental Science (2013-2014) Program Information Point of Contact Brian M. Morgan (brian.morgan@marshall.edu) Support for University and College Missions Marshall University is a multi-campus public

More information

New Age Thinking and Worldview Attribution

New Age Thinking and Worldview Attribution Myodicy, Issue 10, August 1999 New Age Thinking and Worldview Attribution by Theodore Plantinga From time to time someone asks me for the lowdown on "new age" thinking. Since I teach a course in Asian

More information

Nottingham Trent University Course Specification

Nottingham Trent University Course Specification Nottingham Trent University Course Specification 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Basic Course Information Awarding Institution: School/Campus: Final Award, Course Title and Modes of Study: Normal Duration: UCAS Code: Nottingham

More information

Introduction to Academic Writing from an Academic Literacies Approach

Introduction to Academic Writing from an Academic Literacies Approach Introduction to Academic Writing from an Academic Literacies Approach Maria Eklund Heinonen; Ika Jorum School of Culture and Learning; University Library, Södertörn University Abstract In our paper we

More information

Thai Language Self Assessment

Thai Language Self Assessment The following are can do statements in four skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Put a in front of each description that applies to your current Thai proficiency (.i.e. what you can do with

More information

How To Write A Curriculum Paper On Arts Education In Nsw

How To Write A Curriculum Paper On Arts Education In Nsw NSW Response to the Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts Background The Office of the Board of Studies has conducted consultation on the draft Arts Shape paper in order to provide feedback

More information

By DEBORAH ROWLAND and MALCOLM HIGGS

By DEBORAH ROWLAND and MALCOLM HIGGS By DEBORAH ROWLAND and MALCOLM HIGGS A huge amount of change initiatives fail. Based on a combination of 4 years rigorous research and practical application of the emerging findings, the book explores the

More information

During a meeting with a variety of education stakeholders about early career

During a meeting with a variety of education stakeholders about early career Commentary Shifting Teacher Education From Skilling Up to Sustaining Beginning Teachers C. Aiden Downey, Lee Schaefer, and D. Jean Clandinin ABSTRACT Early career teacher attrition is a serious concern.

More information

Standards of Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Preparation Programs APPENDIX A

Standards of Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Preparation Programs APPENDIX A APPENDIX A Teaching Performance Expectations A. MAKING SUBJECT MATTER COMPREHENSIBLE TO STUDENTS TPE 1: Specific Pedagogical Skills for Subject Matter Instruction Background Information: TPE 1. TPE 1 is

More information

TRANSITION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM IN VICTORIA

TRANSITION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM IN VICTORIA TRANSITION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM IN VICTORIA We cannot wander at pleasure among the educational systems of the world, like a child strolling through the garden, and pick off a flower from one bush

More information

Dept of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Fall 2015 Graduate Classes

Dept of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Fall 2015 Graduate Classes Dept of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Fall 2015 Graduate Classes **For permission codes to enroll in TEAC 889, 895, 899, 995, 996, 997, or 999 email Shari Daehling, Grad Coordinator sdaehling1@unl.edu

More information

EMBRACING A CULTURE OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION. Ilse PRINSLOO. Abstract

EMBRACING A CULTURE OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION. Ilse PRINSLOO. Abstract EMBRACING A CULTURE OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION Ilse PRINSLOO University of Johannesburg Abstract Citizenship implies association and involvement in a community. Even though the

More information

In this paper, three areas of importance to computer coordinators in the schools are discussed: support by walking

In this paper, three areas of importance to computer coordinators in the schools are discussed: support by walking SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS: THE ROLES OF COMPUTER COORDINATORS David M. Marcovitz Loyola College, Maryland In this paper, three areas of importance to computer coordinators in the schools are discussed:

More information

Best Practices in Teaching Writing Charles Whitaker, Ph.D.

Best Practices in Teaching Writing Charles Whitaker, Ph.D. Best Practices in Teaching Writing Charles Whitaker, Ph.D. Following is a list of selected teaching practices that are well recognized in the profession as being effective in helping students develop as

More information

REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCES OF THE TEACHER INDUCTION SCHEME

REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCES OF THE TEACHER INDUCTION SCHEME REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCES OF THE TEACHER INDUCTION SCHEME September 2005 Myra A Pearson, Depute Registrar (Education) Dr Dean Robson, Professional Officer First Published 2005 The General Teaching Council

More information

Catherine Montgomery (and Val Clifford)

Catherine Montgomery (and Val Clifford) Catherine Montgomery (and Val Clifford) Dramatic demographic changes in the cultural and linguistic diversity of people are occurring in many nations. These changes have challenged higher education institutions

More information

Asking Essential Questions

Asking Essential Questions The Miniature Guide to The Art of Asking Essential Questions by Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul Based on Critical Thinking Concepts and Socratic Principles The Foundation for Critical Thinking The

More information

Defining Culture and Organizational Culture : From Anthropology to the Office. by: Bruce M. Tharp

Defining Culture and Organizational Culture : From Anthropology to the Office. by: Bruce M. Tharp Defining Culture and Organizational Culture : From Anthropology to the Office by: Bruce M. Tharp The topic of organizational culture is increasingly understood as a company asset that can be used to increase

More information

Standards for Certification in Early Childhood Education [26.110-26.270]

Standards for Certification in Early Childhood Education [26.110-26.270] I.B. SPECIFIC TEACHING FIELDS Standards for Certification in Early Childhood Education [26.110-26.270] STANDARD 1 Curriculum The competent early childhood teacher understands and demonstrates the central

More information

PRESCHOOL. Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98

PRESCHOOL. Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 PRESCHOOL Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 Revised 2010 Orders to: Fritzes kundservice SE-106 47 Stockholm Telephone: +46 (0)8 598 191 90 Fax: +46 (0)8 598 191 91 E-mail: order.fritzes@nj.se www.fritzes.se

More information

What will I study? Year One core modules currently include:

What will I study? Year One core modules currently include: What will I study? Year One core modules currently include: Introduction to Psychology You will examine how psychology research is conducted and interpreted; a range of perspectives in psychology, including

More information

TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN SOLOMON ISLANDS: ENHANCING TEACHERS PERCEPTIONS AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES

TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN SOLOMON ISLANDS: ENHANCING TEACHERS PERCEPTIONS AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN SOLOMON ISLANDS: ENHANCING TEACHERS PERCEPTIONS AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES D. Sade 1, J. Moreland 2, A. Jones 3 1. CSTER, University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ 2.

More information

Managing new relationships: design sensibilities, the new information and communication technologies and schools 1.

Managing new relationships: design sensibilities, the new information and communication technologies and schools 1. Managing new relationships: design sensibilities, the new information and communication technologies and schools 1. Chris Bigum Central Queensland University On- Line Paper & Copyright This draft paper

More information

SISU IC MA Curriculum and Core Course Description

SISU IC MA Curriculum and Core Course Description SISU IC MA Curriculum and Core Course Description All English MA Program Summary: Currently offered by the SII for the: College of English Language and Literature (CELL) [CELL IC major 08 Intercultural

More information

THE STANDARD FOR DOCTORAL DEGREES IN LAW AT THE FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF TROMSØ

THE STANDARD FOR DOCTORAL DEGREES IN LAW AT THE FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF TROMSØ THE FACULTY OF LAW THE STANDARD FOR DOCTORAL DEGREES IN LAW AT THE FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF TROMSØ Guidelines for the Faculty of Law in Tromsø, adopted by the Faculty Board on 31 May 2010. 1 Background

More information

PENNSYLVANIA COMMON CORE STANDARDS English Language Arts Grades 9-12

PENNSYLVANIA COMMON CORE STANDARDS English Language Arts Grades 9-12 1.2 Reading Informational Text Students read, understand, and respond to informational text with emphasis on comprehension, making connections among ideas and between texts with focus on textual evidence.

More information

2015 2016 preparatory courses foundation year

2015 2016 preparatory courses foundation year 2015 2016 preparatory courses foundation year undergraduate programmes preparatory course foundation year 02 1. Level Centre: Istituto Marangoni, London Course Title: Foundation Year Programme: Foundation

More information

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership/information Systems And Technology. DM/IST 004 Requirements

School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership/information Systems And Technology. DM/IST 004 Requirements School of Advanced Studies Doctor Of Management In Organizational Leadership/information Systems And Technology The mission of the Information Systems and Technology specialization of the Doctor of Management

More information

Schools. Table of Contents. 1. Challenges. 2. The Value of Search. 3. Our Approach. 4. Identify, Engage, Secure. 5. Our Experience

Schools. Table of Contents. 1. Challenges. 2. The Value of Search. 3. Our Approach. 4. Identify, Engage, Secure. 5. Our Experience Schools 2 Schools Table of Contents SECTION PAGE 1. Challenges 2. The Value of Search 3. Our Approach 4. Identify, Engage, Secure 5. Our Experience 6. Our Commitment to Diversity 7. Our Invitation 04 06

More information