The Impact of Literacy-Based Schooling on Learning a Creative Practice: Modal Configurations, Practices and Discourses

Abstract

Building on the argument that practices between teacher and learners in classrooms may differ (Scollon and Scollonat how literacy focused school classroom teaching/learning practices instilled into an individual have a long-term effect. Using a multimodal (inter)action analytical approach (Norris, 2004 and the site of engagement as my analytical tool that brings together concrete actions, practices and discourses as a coherent whole, I examine actions, practices and discourses produced and reproduced by an art teacher and a new art student in a small private art school in Germany. While the art teacher draws on and re-produces the practice of painting, the new art student draws on and reproduces the practices and discourses that she learned in formal schooling, forcing her to produce and understand modal configurations that do not align with the creative practice that she is learning. This paper has potential educational and social ramifications as it illustrates that formal schooling may have a negative effect upon creativity by focusing the schooled individual upon results and on language/ listening. These foci directly translate into modal behaviour which disadvantages the individual when trying to learn a creative practice, where the process and showing/seeing are emphasised. As the world becomes more multimodal and creative, we may want to engage in more research to rethink what and how children are taught.

Communicating knowledge, getting attention, and negotiating disagreement via videoconferencing technology: A multimodal analysis

“…Multimodal (inter)action analysis is a holistic analytical framework that understands the multiple modes in (inter)action as all together building one system of communication (Norris, 2004(Norris, , 2011(Norris, , 2013a(Norris, , 2013b(Norris, , 2014a. (Inter)action in this analytical framework is written with parenthesis around 'inter' in order to highlight that all actions, no matter if they are taken with another human being, or objects within the setting, or the environment, are interactions.…”

“…(Inter)action in this analytical framework is written with parenthesis around 'inter' in order to highlight that all actions, no matter if they are taken with another human being, or objects within the setting, or the environment, are interactions. With this notion, the theory/methodology emphasizes the connection between social actors and environment (Norris, 2013a(Norris, , 2014a.…”

Multimodal Communication in an Early Childhood Bilingual Education Setting: A Social Semiotic Interaction Analysis

“…That is, communication is comprised of far more elements than just the spoken or written linguistic codes. Rather, communication encompasses countless resources and modes with which semiotic systems are created, configured, and deployed (Franks & Jewitt, 2001;Goldin-Meadow, 2000;Norris, 2014;Roth, 2001), including the bilingual child's two languages. In that sense, semiotic resources are the materials, elements, actions available to create meaning, while communicative modes are the ways in which such resources are configured, organized, and deployed to create, shape, and reshape meaning in interaction.…”

Facilitating Student Engagement in Undergraduate Mathematics Lectures: A Multimodal Investigation

“…Norris uses parenthesis around "inter" in order to emphasize the idea that all actions are interactions. Norris (2014b) explains that even when an individual acts alone, she always acts with or through multiple and multimodal "physical and cognitive/psychological/embodied/socio-cultural mediational means as they interact with objects and the environment" (p. 184). In her earlier work, Norris (2004Norris ( , 2011Norris ( , 2012 presents MIA as a methodological framework for the analysis of human (inter)action, and later refers to multimodal mediated theory (2013) as the theoretical framework behind MIA.…”

“…In her earlier work, Norris (2004Norris ( , 2011Norris ( , 2012 presents MIA as a methodological framework for the analysis of human (inter)action, and later refers to multimodal mediated theory (2013) as the theoretical framework behind MIA. In subsequent publications the focus returns to MIA, or "multimodal mediated (inter)action analysis" (Norris, 2014b, p. 182), as both a theoretical and methodological framework (Norris, 2014b(Norris, , 2015, or analytical approach (Norris & Makboon, 2015;Norris, 2014a). While the terminology may still be in the process of development, multimodal mediated theory and MIA are nonetheless extremely useful contributions to multimodal theory and research.…”