Imagining Writing Futures: Photography, Writing, and Technology

Abstract

The article examines high school students' writing composition practices in multimodal instructional environments. We use Rosenblatt's transactional theory to look across the findings of 2 studies that blend traditional and digital modes of instruction in order to explore how modal switching can support students' reading and writing. We also address the tensions and challenges faced when attempting to create multimodal learning environments that use traditional texts to improve students' composition.Two photographs are featured as a preface to our article: one by Cassidy Kramer (all names are pseudonyms) titled Madness (see Figure 1) and the other one by Kiasha titled Plantation Pain (see Figure 2). These two visuals from our classroom research studies represent these adolescents' complex use of their new literacies and also illustrate how students use multimodal practices to communicate and make meaning in a classroom environment that promotes multimodal pedagogies. One of the many challenges of teaching English literature to secondary school students is not so much a lack of technology or digital presence per se; instead, it is the stark contrast between how readers experience a traditional printed book and other texts (many of which are on screens). How do English teachers and English teacher educators respond to a paradigm shift from a print mindset to a digital mindset when teaching literature? Granted, it has never been a simple task to teach

Exploring multimodal writing in secondary English classrooms: a literature review

“…Students first created arguments on websites using links, images and videos; they then drew on the thinking they did multimodally to compose a print-based argumentative essay. McLean and Rowsell (2015) flipped this structure, asking students to generate ideas in print to support their thinking as they created their own photographs. Two studies (McClay et al , 2007; Oldaker, 2010) made comparisons between storytelling in video games and in print, with authors of both pointing to differences between these forms and raising questions about the degree to which the forms supported each other.…”

“…Pantaleo (2012, 2013) located engagement at the intersection of explicit analytical knowledge of a form and social participation within a community; as students in her studies learned to navigate graphic novels and compose their own, they were increasingly engaged in the process. Engagement was also framed as a form of aesthetic transaction with visual texts (Leigh, 2012; McLean and Rowsell, 2015) as students responded more emotionally when multiple modalities were present. Across studies, engagement was also connected to collaboration and sharing work publicly, aspects of classroom practice discussed in the following section.…”

“…127-128) in a multimodal personal essay project. Students composing multimodally engaged in “complex identity work” (Chisholm and Trent, 2013, p. 313), sharing personal stories with classmates and peers that had not previously emerged in the classroom community (McLean and Rowsell, 2015). Across projects, students often re-envisioned themselves through multimodal textual worlds; Curwood and Gibbons (2009, p. 59) emphasized the role that multimodality played in this re-envisioning as they focused on one student’s “counternarrative” about the intersections of his race and sexuality.…”

“…Across studies, multimodal composition took the form of: composition that mixed print and non-print modes fluidly (e.g. creating comic books); and composition in which printed text and non-print modes were incorporated in supporting ways; for example, in Mclean and Rowsell’s (2015) study, students created photographs and later wrote about them using alphabetic print. …”

“…composition in which printed text and non-print modes were incorporated in supporting ways; for example, in Mclean and Rowsell’s (2015) study, students created photographs and later wrote about them using alphabetic print.…”