Pathways to multiliteracies: student teachers' critical reflections on a multimodal text.

Hamston, Julie

Introduction

In recent years, Australian educators have engaged in important dialogue about the need for students in schools to develop broad repertoires of literacy practice (ACDE, 2001; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Luke, 2000, 2003; Luke & Freebody, 1999; The Victorian Essential Learning Standards, 2005). Likewise, educators have aimed to develop pedagogic approaches that account for how contemporary, multimodal texts combine visual, spoken, audio and non-verbal forms of expression (Beavis, 2002; The New London Group, 2000; Kalantzis and Cope, 2001; Kress, 1997; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Luke, 2002; Unsworth, 2001). Such efforts are captured in Luke and Carpenter's (2003 p. 20) insistence that students require a 'tool kit' for 'analysing, critiquing and engaging with the global "flows" of image, representation and text' that they encounter on a daily basis.

Notwithstanding these intentions and motivations, some educators point to a potential dissonance between the kinds of literacy practices traditionally valued by society and schools and the textual universes that young students inhabit in their lives outside of school (see for example, Knobel, 1999; Lankshear, Snyder & Green, 2000; Luke & Luke, 2001). Consequently, the task of encouraging both student teachers and experienced teachers to explore contemporary texts that they themselves might not necessarily read, or to teach literacy practices around multimodal texts that they might not equate with reading, becomes problematic. This is especially so when some student teachers continue to define literacy in terms of foundational skills alone because they have not witnessed the use of multimodal texts for instructional purposes during school practicum placements.

To address these issues, final year Bachelor of Education, Primary students [approximately 100] at The University of Melbourne complete a compulsory subject that focuses on critical approaches to analysing, critiquing and designing multimodal texts such as animations, websites, and CD ROMs. Through their engagement with such texts as adult readers, it is anticipated that the student teachers learn how the multiple elements of contemporary texts combine to create meaning. In turn, it is anticipated that they bring this informed understanding to their teaching of multimodal texts to young learners in primary schools, and thus contribute to the design of comprehensive literacy curriculum in their future schools.

The student teachers are introduced to a range of theoretical and conceptual frameworks that allow them to achieve these aims. They analyse how the various visual, aural and linguistic elements of a multimodal text such as pathways (ACMI) create meaning (Kalantzis & Cope; 2001; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001), and are encouraged to reflect on their personal readings of this text. They analyse the design and aesthetics of popular culture texts for children (Misson, 1999), such as The Lego website, Manga-inspired animations and the covers of Total Girl magazine, to understand the role of context in understanding these texts. They are also required to apply critical literacy approaches to these texts using accessible frameworks developed for use with students in the primary classroom (for example, Callow, 1999; Knobel & Healy, 1999; Luke, Comber & O'Brien, 1996; O'Brien, 1999). Finally, the student teachers are required to design a poster / oral presentation that demonstrates how they, in turn, would scaffold their own students' understandings of how a multimodal text is constructed, the meanings that are embodied in such a text and the cultural knowledge a reader might bring to the text, or need in order to read the text. This final task aims to place student teachers in the role of text creator, with the capacity to transform their understanding of multimodal texts into the design of pedagogic possibilities that support first and second language learners in primary classrooms (Kalantzis & Cope, 2001). Particular emphasis here is given to the teacher's role in scaffolding language/culture for ESL learners as a means of providing access to the powerful ideologies of popular culture texts (see Duff, 2002).

The main sources of data for this paper are the assessment tasks that three students--Melissa, Adam and John--completed for the subject. These students opted to use the pathways text for all three assessment tasks, and so I approached them for an interview-conversation (September 17, 2003) to find out more about their continued engagement with a text that challenged them on various levels, and yet opened up new possibilities for them as readers and as teachers. For these student teachers pathways represented a problem to be solved; an aesthetic to appreciate; a cultural/political issue to understand. This was seen as significant in that not all of their fellow student teachers related to pathways in a positive sense, and varied in their willingness to look for the meaning in a multimodal exhibition that privileged non-linearity, metaphor, and symbol. Notably, pathways was not readily accessible to the majority of the students (see Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), and this could be attributed to the 'high art' genre of the exhibition that contrasts with other forms of popular multimodal texts such as computer games, music videos and internet sites with which the students are more familiar. It appeared that the intricate relationship between multiple meanings, multimodality and genre in pathways tested many student teachers' meaning-making resources and their cultural and linguistic empathies. Although this initial confusion dissipated for many, the linguistic barriers established through the text continued to frustrate some. In addition, some students seemed unmoved by the political content of the text that made a demand for respect and acknowledgement from the reader, whilst initially confronting the reader as 'other'.

Other data referred to here include the teaching and learning activities that Melissa, Adam and John designed around pathways for primary students and written analyses of pathways volunteered by these and other students in the cohort.

Outside, looking in

pathways is a multimodal exhibition, or installation, designed to give voice to the Ngarinyin people of the Kimberley. Created by the Ngarinyin elders in collaboration with artist-filmmaker Jeff Doring, pathways records historical narratives of spirituality, law and art through film, sound, image and print (www.acmi.net.au). It also aims to record cultural and historical evidence of art--known as the Gwion Gwion paintings--in an effort to claim native title for the Ngarinyin as the indigenous peoples of the region, and to counter arguments to the contrary. (2) The intricacy of pathways is described in John's analytical paper:</p>

<pre> Unlike other installations at ACMI, 'Pathways' is relatively

enclosed. The visitor must step into the world of the Ngarinyin

people, 'into their home.' After entering, he [sic] winds his way

down a river, passing two screens featuring a montage of scenes of Ngarinyin country [Wanjina]. Water, a hallmark of this monsoonal

land, predominates. Soundscapes of the natural environment permeate

the air. The visitor/outsider is taken through these lands, invited

to become familiar with the landscape, and then delivered into a

central clearing, where three screens immerse him in Ngarinyin

Wunan. Further on, a cave is visible. It encloses a screen telling

stories of the Gwion [art]. In this way, the outsider is introduced

to Ngarinyin culture. This is, of course, a highly abstracted account of my visit to 'Pathways'. There is no tangible river, clearing or cave. These meanings are encoded by the spatial design

of the text. [John, April 2003] </pre> <p>The motivations for the student teachers to view pathways were several. Firstly, it was an excellent example of a holistic multimodal text that combined audio, visual film and print-based elements to present a complex and nuanced portrait of the Ngarinyin people and their claims to native title. In this important regard, pathways resonated with the complexity, diversity, and global and local themes that underpin multiple texts and multiple literacies (Kalantzis & Cope, 2001; The New London Group, 2000).

Secondly, pathways presented a challenge in terms of its linguistic and cultural content in that it positioned the reader as outside the text, yet also invited the reader in to sacred space, sacred symbol. The Indigenous language spoken by the Ngarinyin elders in the screens located in the Wanjina and Wunan sections of the installation was only occasionally peppered with an English word. This feature of pathways reflects Nakata's (2001) concern that an Indigenous standpoint needs to be given by Indigenous people because it is they who are located at the centre of their lives. Further, it gives student teachers who predominantly live in suburban Melbourne and who, in the main, operate with the dominant linguistic forms and Discourses of English (Gee, 1999), first-hand experience in cultural and linguistic 'border crossing' (Giroux, 1992). Significantly, pathways provided many of these student teachers the experience of creating a relationship with the Ngarinyin people through image and sound. In turn, they were able to seriously engage with the issues of colonisation, land rights and the ideologies of historical narrative. pathways thus added these complex layers to the demands involved in reading a multimodal text.

Finally, it was important for student teachers to experience screen literacy in a cultural site that has been specifically dedicated to the moving image. The ACMI embodies multimodality and the principles of design, critique and transformation at the heart of multiliteracy pedagogy (see Cope & Kalantzis, 2000 and Kalantzis & Cope, 2001 as examples).

Active meaning-makers

It does need to be pointed out that the student teachers encountered many new aspects of literacy in the task that required them to analyse and critique pathways. The ultimate aim was for them to become actively involved in a meaning-making process using a range of resources and, ultimately, to interpret the intention of the text (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatarelis, 2001). In addressing this aim, the student teachers were scaffolded before, during and after their initial readings of pathways. This deliberate form of support was also necessary because in the publication material that accompanies pathways (Author Unknown), the Ngarinyin Elders urge patience in understanding their stories of spirituality, law and art. Melissa recalled in interview-conversation with me that each time she returned to view pathways she would come up with more questions that she wished to solve. Adam said that he wanted to give pathways time, effort and patience and John wanted to develop deep and continued engagement with the text. To satisfy his desire to 'get inside' pathways, John once spent 4.5 hours at the installation.

Melissa, John and Adam therefore brought different cultural resources and extraordinary persistence to their readings of pathways. Melissa claimed that she was determined to crack the code of the text; she wanted to solve the problems that the text presented to her and she wished to get inside the text. Her own personal experience as an Italian-Australian, she said, provided her with first-hand experience as a cultural and linguistic outsider. Now that she was positioned similarly by pathways, and given her acknowledgement that linguistic and cultural borders exist, Melissa wanted to develop the analytic tools to get 'into' the text and to be in her words 'a knowing person'. Melissa said:</p> <pre> It felt a bit overwhelming at first ... It all seemed to be over my head and I thought to myself ... 'why is it so?', and I thought 'I've got to make sense from [sic] and this and I've got to work it out because I don't know why I don't understand it'. </pre> <p>John reported that he was initially drawn to the powerful images and the language of the Ngarinyin people. He said that he found the analytic frameworks provided to him useful for reading the technical aspects of the text, but felt that there was 'so much more to pathways that communicates to something a bit deeper, whether it's the soul or whatever you want to call it' that goes further than such an analysis can provide. In important ways, John claimed, engaging with pathways is 'beyond words', suggesting that the meanings are implied and resonant (Misson, 2003).

According to Adam, his previous life experience as a visual artist and his work in schools in an Indigenous community in Central Australia motivated his emotional connection with pathways. Adam said he related to the visual elements of pathways and that he was able to apply other artistic analyses to supplement his analysis of the text. Importantly, Adam also argued that the element of affect was missing from analytic frameworks provided to him. Adam also rested quietly with the unknown elements of the text. He said:</p> <pre> I was also comfortable not knowing a lot of aspects that were then presented ... that, you know, after a few hours, if I only have a few little bits of information, then ... that's fine by me. I understood to some extent that a lot of the information that was being shared--it was quite exceptional. </pre> <p>From their self-reports Melissa, John and Adam appear to be confident and competent users of the various tools of analysis provided to them. Likewise, their informed analyses of both the multidimensional form and complex content of pathways reveal how they became real makers of meaning in this context. It was also evident that although Melissa, John and Adam approached pathways from divergent entry points and were attracted by different aspects of the text (see Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). They also accepted the motivated nature of the text and the motivated nature of the task required of them. In all these respects they presented as 'ideal' multiliteracies learners and teachers; confident with the analysis and critique of multiple meanings in a multidimensional text and the design of appropriately supportive pedagogy.

Locating the affective domain

Although it must be stated that Melissa, John and Adam had the incentive to do well in their assessment tasks, their impetus to understand pathways, their sophisticated readings of the text, and their appreciation of its value as a multimodal text for primary students, are potentially informative for teacher education and for teacher professional development.

Importantly for this purpose, their work with pathways reveals a positive and empathic disposition towards the cultural/political knowledge embodied in the text. Melissa, John and Adam experienced 'empathy with ... [the Ngarinyin] and ... were led to engagement with significant and profound concepts' (Misson, 2003, p. 7) accordingly. In this way, Melissa, John and Adam built up the kind of 'imaginative empathy' that 2Searle (1998) argues is fundamental to the critique of texts and textual practices. John and Adam particularly demonstrated a strong appreciation of the political nature of pathways. They interpreted issues of power, inclusion and colonisation through their analyses, and established intertextual links between pathways and other texts and modes of meaning with which they had previously engaged. This kind of critical reading underscores many of the original framings of critical literacy (see for example, Giroux, 1992; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993, following Freire, for example, Freire & Macedo, 1987) that focus attention on issues of power, exclusion and marginalisation of oppressed peoples, and the transformative potential of literacy. This is important to stress, as John and Adam appropriated the cultural and political meanings in pathways without question. However, their detailed and sophisticated analyses of the meaning-making systems embodied in pathways and the time and energy they devoted to negotiating these meanings counteracts any sense that they might have approached the text in an uncritical manner.

Interestingly, the affective responses that Melissa, John and Adam developed in response to pathways reflect the relationship between critical literacy practices and the aesthetic, as proposed by Misson (2000, 2003) and Morgan and Misson (in preparation). Misson (2000, 2003) sees the development of affect as part of a reader's aesthetic repertoire, and describes the aesthetic dimension of reading as involving tensions between the emotional / rational, material / spiritual, inspiration / control, originality/tradition, content/form. Like Kress (1997) and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001), Misson (2000) argues that it is impossible to ignore the affective domain of reading because it cannot be separated from knowledge, cognition and skills. In contrast, however, it seems that Misson assumes [as did Melissa, John and Adam] that a complex dialectic emerges between intellect and emotion, between what is concrete and what can only be sensed perhaps, as John says, 'in the soul.' According to Misson, movement in and between these dialectical positions allows the reader to analyse the affective dimensions of a text in ways that are both resonant with Gardner's (2001) triptych of the 'true, the beautiful and the good' (see Misson, 2000, 2003) and reflective of the struggle and uncertainty that Weston (1997) and Carlson (1997) argue is fundamental to ethics.

It appears then that Melissa, John and Adam intuited this complex interplay between analysis, critique and ethical interpretation. Thus, they were able to make important connections between the form and the content of pathways. They respected the centrality of 'voice' through the value they attributed to the use of Indigenous language, symbol and metaphor and read the Ngarinyin as narrators of their own lived culture and experience. They were able to analyse the semiotics of the material texts [film, print, soundscape, image, etc.], and link this to the content of what the elders were saying about Gwion Gwion art, about the spirituality of Wanjina, about sacred knowledge and law, or Wunan. They were able to live with the stylistic tensions between the ultra modern site in which pathways is located and the traditional culture that was being narrated in this site. In many significant ways they engaged in a reflexive dialogue between their own lived experience and that of the Ngarinyin, as it is now and was in the past. This dialogue enabled them to be taken into the 'heart of both what is possible and what is not yet' (Luke, 2003, p. 21).

Pedagogic possibilities

In considering the pedagogic possibilities of pathways for the primary classroom, Melissa, John and Adam fundamentally drew upon their aesthetic awareness of the text, and in notably different ways. In sharing these possibilities with other student teachers in the form of a poster presentation, Melissa focused student-learning activities on the beauty of the landscape; John wished to engage his prospective students in ethical questions of Native Title and other Indigenous issues; and Adam aimed for his students to explore the potency of symbol.

Melissa planned to focus early years students on the entrance of the exhibition, Wanjina, where the landscape of the Kimberley region and the Ngarinyin people's interrelationship with land and spirituality is represented largely through a soundscape. Melissa argued the importance of sensory activities that would enable young learners to take time to look, to hear and to comprehend through the resonances that the soundscape produced. She planned to elicit students' prior knowledge about Indigenous peoples and their relationship with the land, and extend students' knowledge of this through guided discussions. During the visit, Melissa aimed to allocate to students specific sections of Wanjina to observe and to reflect upon. These observations and reflections would then be recorded in the form of a storyboard, whereby students would recall the images, colours and moods of those textual elements had studied closely. After viewing, Melissa intended that her students would document and discuss the purpose and significance of Wanjina. In interview, Melissa spoke of her motivations for focusing on the beauty of this aspect of pathways:</p> <pre> What intrigued me was [sic] all the sounds of nature and all the beautiful colours in the beginning. It was kind of like an orientation to the room and I felt, I really enjoyed that bit ... The symbol of the Wandjina was something that played on my mind for a while. I wasn't sure what it was or what it represented. The hand holding the algae; I didn't know why that was put there and what that represented and I just, I filled it with images of reflection ... [and I thought] oh I understand. This means reflection and the algae means new life. </pre> <p>John's activities for primary students focused on the Wunan section of the exhibition, which is the central feature of pathways. Three screens in Wunan show continuous film footage of Ngarinyin elders explaining their relationship to land, art and spirituality. It is here that the Ngarinyin language is emphasised and meanings are conveyed through sound, image and gesture. John designed activities for middle years students that required them to watch a five minute film sequence several times. In this way students would examine the most overtly political part of the exhibition that focused on the issue of Indigenous land rights. Prior to viewing pathways, John planned to build students' knowledge of the contextual field of Wunan, using shared knowledge about Indigenous culture; an incursion with a guest speaker; and the lyrics from the song 'From little things, big things grow' (Kelly & Carmody, 1992), which highlights issues of Native title. He then planned to develop students' knowledge of the linguistic field of Wunan by teaching about the elements of multimodality in Table 1.

John would then have his students record their observations during and share these when back at school, using the framework presented in Table 2.

Finally, John would invite his students to transform their understandings of pathways by constructing their own multimodal text about Indigenous peoples and land rights issues. John shared he reasons for focusing on the political content of pathways thus:</p> <pre> ... you really need to engage children with the big issues, and as far as Australia is concerned, I don't think that there's a bigger social justice issue than the way that Indigenous people have been treated since the time that Europeans arrived, the invasion of what was their country, the you know, the list is endless and up to this time we've got a representative of the government who still won't take any responsibility for the past actions of the institution he represents and refuses to say sorry when an apology is most definitely required. </pre> <p>Adam aimed to build his middle years students' understanding of pathways through concentrating their attention on the significant image of the Elder's hand that appeared in the advertising material for the pathways exhibition. Adam argued that this hand was a potent symbol of the Ngarinyin's claim for native title, and through an in-depth focus on this one particular element of pathways, he wished to emphasise to students that they can learn a lot from a little. During viewing, Adam planned to create a task sheet for his students to record their observations of the Wanjina entrance to the exhibition. This task sheet would feature thumbnail sketches of selected images and symbols from Wanjina so that students could be guided in what elements of Wanjina to look out for and what to reflect upon. After viewing pathways, Adam's students would develop a sequence of images to represent their observations of Wanjina, discuss their representations, and then move to consideration of pathways as a constructed text. They would analyse why the text had been made, and what beliefs and values about spirituality, art and nature they thought were conveyed in the text. Adam spoke of the inspiration for his activities as stemming from his desire to:</p>

<pre> track this one image until it got to the point of being the face-to-face interaction between me and the Elder who was looking

at me, so it would change from being an image of just a hand you're looking at ... I guess to view this to you know, as a face-to-face interaction. A demand for, you know, an acknowledgment of land rights, of whatever. So I focused on that experience when I thought about what I'd want students to take from it. </pre> <p>Implications for pedagogy

This intuitive application of affect and ethics is important to note, because it says something about the framing of the task required of the student teachers as individual readers of pathways. Although the task required all student teachers to integrate personal reflection with analysis, it appears that some may have operated with a more definitive opposition between the emotional/rational, material/spiritual, inspiration/ control, originality/tradition, content/form (cf. Misson, 2003). This may be the result of several factors that conspired to reinforce such an opposition. First, it could be argued that the analytic frameworks provided to the student teachers privileged the intellectual, rational and sensory analysis over the emotional, affective and ethical domains of a text. Second, in my effort not to foreground my own reading of pathways and overwrite the readings of individual students, I did not deal with the emotional and affective domains of analysis and critique to the extent that might have helped other students locate the ethical space that Melissa, John and Adam discovered. Third, it appeared that the multimodal form of pathways overrode the content for some students, in the sense that the material nature of what one student, Daniel, called 'an excessively industrialised space' negated the spiritual dimensions of pathways.

In spite of these potentially limiting conditions, Melissa, John and Adam persevered with understanding the multiple and complex meanings of the words, symbols and metaphors of the Ngarinyin Elders. It appears significant that the strong emotional connection that Melissa, John and Adam developed with the cultural and political content of pathways strengthened their motivation to engage with the non-linearity and multiple modes of meaning central to the text. For them, the [multimodal] medium functioned as only as part of the message. Importantly, their emotional connection with the text operated as the starting point for their design of appropriate teaching and learning tasks for students in primary classrooms. Using familiar pedagogic frameworks with an unfamiliar and challenging text, Melissa, John and Adam aimed to support primary students to 'unlock the secrets' [Misson, 2005] of pathways that they too had discovered.

Consequently, there are important lessons for teacher education and professional development to be gained from understanding how Melissa, John and Adam navigated their way through pathways. In connecting future student teachers with multimodal texts, it will remain important to choose a text that challenges them intellectually and emotionally. However, it will be necessary to support these students in terms of their affective readings of such a text and to connect the aesthetic/ethical more strongly with the process of analysis and critique. Perhaps, therefore, a framework that integrates informed analysis with the affective domain of reading, such as the one developed by Misson (2003) and Misson and Morgan (in preparation), and which acknowledges the ethical dimensions of critical literacy (see Luke & Carpenter, 2003), is timely.

Raising the aesthetic awareness of experienced teachers in professional development contexts will also be worthy of consideration. Motivating experienced teachers who may have limited experience in reading multimodal texts, or who may be disinclined to see their value in the literacy curriculum might be more possible if they are connected to lifeworld texts that draw on their emotions, feelings, imagination, and spirituality.

Conclusion

In keeping with the metaphor of pathways, different journeys around and through this text have been revealed above. Melissa, John and Adam, as highly engaged readers of a complex text, discovered ways of appreciating the aesthetics offered to them and empathised with the political content that the text demanded. In so doing, they uncovered some of the limitations of the analytic frameworks provided to them. For many of the other student teachers, perhaps the potential for appreciating pathways on such a deeply aesthetic level might reside in the future dialogues they have about multimodal texts and/or Indigenous issues (see Bakhtin, 1981).

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following people for their generous support in the preparation of this paper: Adam Beck, Melissa Di Fabio, John Drake, Sandra Holland, Merle Iles, David McCall, Sally Meadham, Annemaree O'Brien, Peter Olm, Merissa Pickford Dan Riley, Angel Shek On Ki, Kate Spoor, Sarah Sypkes, Sarah Thorne.

Special thanks to Ray Misson for his constructive and insightful feedback on key elements of this paper.

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(1.) The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, located at Federation Square in Melbourne, provides educational support to teachers and students in the development of screen literacy.

(2.) The human figures named by the Ngarinyin people as the Gwion Gwion, have been referred to in historical records as the 'Bradshaw figures'. Named after the explorer who discovered these paintings in 1892 and then revealed these paintings to the world, the Bradshaw figures have been used by some to discredit the Ngarinyin people's request for land and native title. Table 1. Verbal Visual Gestural Technical vocabulary Exploration of visual Using drama to such as Wanjina, elements: framing, jointly construct Wunan and Gwion Gwion juxtaposition, camera a class guide to angles. This would be gestural language done using the still With a focus on image of reconciliation modality, or on where Gough Whitlam, The degree of Prime Minister, is force/ intention pouring dirt into attached to the Vincent Lingiari's gesture. hands, as a symbol of giving back land to the Gurindji people. Table 2. Study of gesture and Text analysis Exploring production body language elements Modality Points of view Role of multimodal presented in Wunan format Recurring symbolism Role of dialogue and Editing and subtitles sequencing Inherent values in body Intended audience Juxtaposition of language and gestures elements Use of the body Exploration of Layout of stereotypes and installation challenges to these in Wunan Role of soundscape Role of cultural knowledge