As readers encounter visual images, design elements in addition to the written language incorporated into contemporary picturebooks, the repertoire of strategies students need to draw upon must ...expand to deal with the aspects of these texts beyond decoding of written language. The study reported here was designed to investigate how students interpreted contemporary picturebooks, the meanings they constructed during their readings and discussions, and the instructional approaches used to support the development of students’ interpretive strategies for comprehending the visual and design features of multimodal texts, in particular contemporary picturebooks.
The texts that adolescents encounter today are often multimodal, meaning they incorporate a variety of modes, including visual images, hypertext, and graphic design elements along with written text. ...Expanding the perspectives readers use to make sense of the multimodal texts is an important aspect of comprehension instruction. Moving beyond the traditional cognitive strategies often incorporated in instruction frameworks for comprehending written texts, this article presents three additional perspectives for comprehending visual images. Examples from each perspective are included to help middle and high school teachers expand the strategies students draw from to interpret and understand visual images and multimodal texts.
Freebody and Luke proffered an expanded conceptualization of the resources readers utilize when reading and the roles readers adopt during the act of reading. The four resources model, and its ...associated four roles of the reader, expanded the definition of reading from a simple model of decoding printed texts to a model of constructing meaning and analysing texts in sociocultural contexts. This article continues the reconceptualization of the four resources model to four resources or social practices for reading-viewing multi-modal texts. Drawing on research and theories from visual culture, semiotics, critical media studies, grammars of visual design and multi-modal analysis, the expanded four resources or social practices are reader-viewer as (1) navigator, (2) interpreter, (3) designer and (4) interrogator. Each resource-practice is described in detail and the interpretive repertoires required of reader-viewers transacting with multi-modal texts from each perspective are considered.
This article presents a tripartite framework for analyzing multimodal texts. The three analytical perspectives presented include: (1) perceptual, (2) structural, and (3) ideological analytical ...processes. Using Anthony Browne’s picturebook
Piggybook
as an example, assertions are made regarding what each analytical perspective brings to the interpretation of multimodal texts and how these perspectives expand readers’ interpretive repertoires. Drawing on diverse fields of inquiry, including semiotics, art theory, visual grammar, communication studies, media literacy, visual literacy and literary theory, the article suggests an expansion of the strategies and analytical perspectives readers being to multimodal texts and visual images. Each perspective is presented as necessary but insufficient in and of itself to provide the necessary foundation for comprehending texts. It is through an expansion of the interpretive strategies and perspectives that readers bring to a multimodal text, focusing on visual, textual, and design elements that readers will become more proficient in their interpretive processes.
This study investigates the ways in which first graders utilised a variety of semiotic resources when authoring nonfiction compositions during a nonfiction genre writing unit of study. Grounded in ...social semiotics and multimodality theories, the study uses a case study approach to explore the text, image and design resources used in students' multimodal compositions as a group followed by an in‐depth examination of two students' compositions. The data collection includes student compositions, video of classroom interactions and video recorded student composition/artefact elicitation interviews in which students discussed their composition process, authorial decision making and final composition. A multimodal approach to data analysis examines the semiotic resources used by the children, their meaning potential and purposes for inclusion in their nonfiction compositions. Findings suggest students drew upon a range of modalities, including visual images, graphic design features and movable text, in addition to written language to share their ideas and present their information through multimodal compositions. Implications include a need for curricular and instructional advancements with a greater focus on multimodal composing techniques to create inclusive spaces where students can more fully represent what they want to communicate.
Research methods and analytical approaches that support inquiry in the social sciences need to respond to continual changes in the theoretical frameworks, research methods, and technologies used to ...support data collection and analysis in contemporary research frameworks. This article describes a variation of qualitative content analysis, termed ‘multimodal content analysis’, that draws upon previous iterations of qualitative content analysis, interpretivist research designs, deductive and inductive reasoning, qualitative data collection and analysis methods, and theories of multimodality for conceptualizing and analyzing a selected corpus of multimodal phenomena. In addition, the analysis of selected commercial wine labels is presented to offer researchers an example of multimodal content analysis to guide future research and open up a dialogue focusing on the potential advantages and challenges to researching multimodal phenomena.
Wordless picturebooks may be better defined by what they do contain – visually rendered narratives – rather than what they do not contain. This column challenges traditional ways of looking at ...wordless picturebooks and offers a few approaches for integrating wordless picturebooks into a wider range of classrooms, preschool through middle school.
There has been a close association between picturebook illustrations and works of fine art since the picturebook was first conceived, and many ways these associations among works of fine art and ...picturebook illustrations and design play out. To make sense of all the various ways picturebook illustrations are associated with works of fine art, three categories of appropriation have been constructed that may help teachers organize and discuss the connections among fine art and picturebook illustrations. The three categories are: 1) Reproduction, 2) Transfiguration, and 3) Stylization. Helping students interpret works of fine art leads to deeper understandings of the picturebooks they experience and carries over into other areas of the language arts curriculum.
Many picturebook artists have been formally trained in specific artistic styles, movements, and techniques. These artists appropriate and transform works of fine art to varying degrees to fit the ...themes and designs of the stories they illustrate and publish, and to increase the significance and impact of their illustrations. The intertextual-intervisual associations among picturebook illustrations and works of fine art are important considerations for understanding the meaning potentials of the designs and illustrations of contemporary narrative picturebooks. This paper focuses on the appropriation and transformation of works of fine art into contemporary narrative picturebook illustrations. The analysis of numerous picturebooks asserts three forms of appropriation, namely: (1) reproduction, (2) transfiguration, (3) stylization. These three forms of appropriation may be further conceptualized as falling along a continuum ranging from
faithful reproductions
to
stylistic conventionalizations
.
Reproduction
is conceptualized as a mimetic reproduction of an original work of fine art. It is a
faithful rendering
of an original artwork, most frequently achieved through a photographic or digital rendering process. In the second form of appropriation,
transfiguration
, a single work of fine art is identifiable but the picturebook artist has transformed the image to fit the context and purpose of a particular picturebook narrative and design. In
stylization
, a specific work of art is not readily identifiable, but a particular art movement, for example cubism, surrealism, or folk art is drawn upon by the illustrator.
Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks to illuminate various aspects of visual and textual representations, this study analyses the ways museums, museum visits, and museum exhibits and ...activities are represented in contemporary narrative picturebooks featuring a child character going to a museum for a variety of reasons. Analysis of approximately fifty museum picturebooks using a multimodal content analysis tool led to the construction of findings in the following themes: representations of museums; representations of museum exhibits; museum visitors; reasons for museum visits; museum activities and events; children’s attitudes while visiting museums; and metaleptic transgressions in picturebook representations. The findings suggest the potential implications of these multimodal texts in the hands of teachers and young readers.
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