Ethical dilemmas in representation: engaging participative youth

Multimodal Pedagogies for Teacher Education inTESOL

“…For instance, when Yi initially conceptualized a multimodal learning project for teachers in her applied linguistics course, she had to carefully consider (a) whether what teachers gain from designing multimodal projects is significant teacher knowledge and (b) whether multimodal literacies that teachers engage in through this project are legitimate academic literacies in a graduate level course. Further, she reconsidered “what counts as legitimate representation” (Romero & Walker, , p. 213) when she asked teachers to represent their SLA knowledge multimodally. Yi grappled with these questions partly because she as a researcher and teacher educator had been familiar with academic literacy practices at institutions where the linguistic and print‐based modes of meaning making and communication tended to be considered more rigorous and legitimate than new representational forms and multimodality.…”

Assessing Students’ Multimodal Texts in the Subject of English: Synthesising Peers’ and Teachers’ Recognition of Semiotic Work

“…For example, Godhe (2014) observed students appearing uncertain as to whether their out-of-school literacies counted in the multimodal text they produced as a school assignment. This suggests a need to explicitly discuss with the students what counts as representation of knowledge (Romero & Walker, 2010) and cast a wide net to sample students' knowledge and skills relevant to the subject. Findings from the present study indicate that out-of-school literacies feed into teenagers' multimodal literacy, evidenced by the students' readiness and potential to identify and assess transformation of signs in their peers' multimodal communication.…”

No Child Left With Crayons

“…(p. 5) Using the arts as research can help us understand more pointedly the experiences of the young people in classrooms, particularly as researchers use multimodality and new literacy approaches similar to those students are using daily in classroom life (Albers & Harste, 2007;Chappell & Faltis, in press). For example, Romero and Walker (2010) describe how youth media productions provided insights into young people's meaning making, while also raising ethical questions about doing educational ethnography in the new media era, as well as presenting new media findings in traditional scholarly publications. By redefining the purposes and roles of research through arts-based practices, we can "walk the talk"-redefining literacies and their values in K-12 classrooms, as well as envisioning new modes of arts-based research and spaces for public interaction.…”