Integrating Multimodal Arguments Into High School Writing Instruction

Abstract

We conducted a formative experiment investigating how an intervention that engaged students in constructing multimodal arguments could be integrated into high-school English instruction to improve students' argumentative writing. The intervention entailed three essential components: (a) construction of arguments defined as claims, evidence, and warrants; (b) digital tools that enabled the construction of multimodal arguments; and (c) a process approach to writing. The intervention was implemented for 11 weeks in high-school English classrooms. Data included classroom observations; interviews with the teacher, students, and administrators; student reflections; and the products students created. These data, analyzed using grounded-theory coding and constant-comparison analysis, informed iterative modifications of the intervention. A retrospective analysis led to several assertions contributing to an emerging pedagogical theory that may guide efforts to promote highschool students' ability to construct arguments using digital tools.

Scaffolding Progressive Online Discourse for Literary Knowledge Building

“…Commensurate with recent scholarship in formative and design-based experiments (see, for example, Colwell et al, 2013;Howell et al, 2017), results are presented first as retrospective analysis, evaluating overall student progress made toward accomplishing the pedagogical goal. Afterward, I discuss the enhancing factors and modifications made during the intervention and what the data suggest for modifying the intervention for future iterations.…”

“…How can the intervention be modified in light of those factors? (Colwell, Hunt-Barron, & Reinking, 2013;Howell et al, 2017).…”

“…However, there is a dearth of research investigating how these challenges might be met together. What is lacking, and what the present study addresses, is research investigating how instructional activities designed to develop 21st-century literacy skills might be integrated into conventional ELA instruction (Howell, Butler, & Reinking, 2017).…”

Expanding Argument Instruction: Incorporating Multimodality and Digital Tools

“…Formative interventions may entail a single or multiple essential elements aimed at improving a problem or transforming learning (Reinking & Bradley, ). These essential elements define the intervention, and although they can be implemented in a myriad of ways, fidelity to these elements is necessary for the integrity of the formative experiment (Howell, Butler, & Reinking, ). The essential elements of this intervention included the constitution of argument; its digital, multimodal construction; and a process approach.…”

“…By implementing a specifically recursive process and its application to writing with digital tools and multimodality, this aspect of the intervention aligned with the need to contextualize the process approach in light of new genres of writing as suggested by perspectives such as postprocess theory (Dobrin, Rice, & Vastola, ). However, the process approach also has provided needed familiarity to teachers as they moved between print‐based and digital, multimodal composition (Dalton, ; Howell et al., ).…”