This case study of multimodal pedagogies within an intergenerational (IG) art class addresses questions about the learning opportunities that were created therein and what the fixing of participants' ideas within a semiotic chain said about their facility with communicative modes and media, interests, and identity options. Key findings include: when compared to the adults' work, the children's use of media was more elaborate, experimental, and less inhibited and their designs more complex; the content of the children's communication was multifaceted, and future-looking while some of the adults' were constrained by limited identity options related to their position in the life course; and the class's multimodal pedagogies provided occasion for the exploration of modes and media with support for working through key communicational decisions. My life as a child in an Italian-Canadian family was defined by intergenerational (IG) relationships where there was no great differentiation between immediate and extended family members. People lived intergenerationally with grandparents sometimes being primary caregivers and children in turn learning about responsibility to family. Today, however, trends common to many industrialized societies such as geographic dispersal and the increase in the use of out-of-home care for children (McCain and Mustard, 1999) and older adults (Jarrott and Bruno, 2007) have reduced IG opportunities. Much can be lost when people of different generations are segregated. Within the literacy literature alone, children have been found to develop important literacy practices through IG interactions (e.g. Gregory et al., 2004) which contribute to their communication and identity options. In North America in the early 1960s in response to the loss of familial IG opportunities, systematically planned IG programs emerged (Larkin and Newman, 1997). IG learning programs, an offshoot of general IG programs, cropped up shortly thereafter and focused specifically on providing learning opportunities within IG contexts. Benefits of IG learning programs include increased appreciation for diversity (Jarrott and Bruno
This exploratory case study considered the opportunities for print literacy learning within multimodal ensembles that featured art, singing and digital media within the context of an intergenerational programme that brought together 13 kindergarten children (4 and 5 years) with seven elder companions. Study questions concerned how reading and writing were practised within multimodal ensembles and what learning opportunities were afforded to the children while the participants worked through a chain of multimodal projects. Data were collected through ethnographic tools in the Rest Home where the projects were completed and in the children's classroom where project content and tools were introduced and extended by the classroom teacher. Themes were identified through the juxtaposition of field texts in a multimodal analysis. The results indicate that the multimodality of the projects and the reciprocal intergenerational relationships forged in and through text-making afforded children opportunities to improvise and refine their print literacy practices as part of multimodal ensembles. The study is designed to contribute to the nascent, yet growing, body of knowledge concerning print literacy practices and learning opportunities as conceptualized within multimodal literacy and intergenerational curricula.
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