New Times for Multimodality? Confronting the Accountability Culture

Abstract

As new times become hard times, there may be little time for multimodality in school unless educators confront the accountability culture. This commentary reviews the arguments for multimodal transformations of school literacy curricula and explores the potential of reflective talk about multimodal meaning‐making as an assessment practice. Talking about how multimodality works may enable educators and students alike to talk back to an accountability culture that limits what counts as literacy.

Interdisciplinary Literacy Through Social Media in the Mathematics Classroom: An Action Research Study

“…Valuing social and cultural practices connects well with my study, and, following Siegel (), I assert that three main reasons argue for including this type of learning in school literacy curricula: Literacies are changing, and so must school literacy curricula. Youths bring multimodal practices to school. Multimodal practice can reframe at‐risk students as learners of promise. …”

Reading with Eyes Wide Open: Reflections on the Impact of Multimodal Texts on Second Language Reading

“…Siegel (2012) has mentioned that policies are slow to include multimodal transformations of school literacy and adds that "standards, including the Common Core, offer little coverage for teachers seeking to justify their attention to multimodality" and, citing Johnson & Kress, 2003, she adds "to dislodge the 'pedagogies of conformity'" (p. 675). However, the new emphasis on informational texts with increased numbers of photographs, graphs, and charts in second language reading education demands that teachers engage readers in visual reading.…”

“…The introduction of a semiotic approach to texts that multimodality brings to reading has revolutionized our understanding of the new meaning-making processes in which citizens in today's world engage. In her thought provoking article, Siegel (2012) sets the context for multimodality with references to youth and their new literacy capabilities: "It is tempting to suggest that this is the time of multimodality: A time when the privileged status of language is being challenged by the ease with which youth can access semiotic resources of all varieties -visual, aural, gestural, and spatial-to assemble meanings" (p. 671).…”

Latino Undergraduate Perspectives on Traditional and Collaborative Culminating Presentations

“…Although we stand on the shoulders of theorists and practitioners before us, such as to R. Dunn (1993) for learning styles and H. Gardner (1999) for multiple intelligences, multimodalities reflect our current understanding. Multimodalities involve sounds, visuals, movements (Kress, 2003) and diverse semiotic sign systems to make and share meaning (Siegel, 2012). Cooperative multimodal activities and assessments relate to cognitive and social constructivism because they involve people's thinking, problem solving, and teamwork.…”