BREAKING BARRIERS:
Multimodal & Media Literacy in the CfE
Rick Instrell
14 May 2011
AMES
Conference
Curriculum Potential Space
Freedom
4
3
4Rs (William Doll)
• Richness
• Recursion
• Relations
• Rigour
Post-modern
curriculum (4Rs)
(eg Drama,
Art & Design)
(CfE???)
Integration
Fragmentation
Traditional
subject-based
curriculum (3Rs)
1
(eg Mathematics,
English)
(eg Media Studies)
2
Control
2
3Rs cf 4Rs
•
•
•
•
Narrowness
Linearity
Disconnection
Uncritical
•
•
•
•
Richness (depth, breadth)
Recursion (spiral curriculum)
Relations (t-l, l-l, relevance)
Rigour (critical)
But 3Rs approach is required to achieve 4Rs:
need 3Rs+4Rs
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Contexts for AMES position paper
1. CfE (+concerns over possible disappearance
of Media Studies and Computing courses)
2. Recent developments in Media Studies:
– Multimodality
– Social media
3. International educational thinking:
– NLG on multiliteracies and need for crosscurricular metalanguage
– Henry Jenkins on participatory culture
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Proposals
1. Review of multimodal literacy across all curriculum
areas (e.g. case studies: history, mathematics)
2. Review of multimodal literacy across all assessment
(e.g. authentic assessment, multimodal rather than
monomodal assessment)
3. Introduction of new NQs (e.g. Digital Media
Production, Moving Image Arts, Digital Media Arts)
4. Multimodal literacy development programme
– Good practice in Scotland and abroad
– Pilot project in schools, FE, TEI
– On-line CPD, teaching resources and assessment
exemplars (Glow)
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Review of Curriculum Areas
• Need to engage and develop 21C pupils’ online
competences
• Holistic analysis of CAs can reveal absences/
enrichments (key aspects of Media Studies useful here
as they provide a holistic heuristic)
• Multimodality: all communication involves the
orchestration of modes in rhetorical structures to
construct meaning in cohesive and engaging texts
• Pedagogic practices: shift from teacher-direction to
dialogic collaborative enquiry
• Assessment practices: holistic, authentic, multimodal
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Response to David Buckingham 1
On participatory culture
1. Agree that there is a participation divide and that the
numbers actively developing politically/artistically
challenging user-generated content is limited
2. Agreed that Web2.0 is a business model with the user selling
themselves to capitalism
Consequently I would argue that new media NQs must:
1. Teach learners how to produce crafted and challenging UGC
2. Teach learners about the financing of internet resources and
the ways in which old and new media interact in the WWW
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Response to David Buckingham 2
On ten things that are wrong with multimodality:
1. Agreed that neologisms are difficult (original texts by Kress
and van Leeuwen can be a heavy read; try David Machin
instead)
2. Multibanality – obvious that media texts are multimodal –
but it can remind analyst to attend to all aspects of a text
(e.g. often in film analysis acting and audio are neglected); if
it is banal so much the better because it should be easy to
use its concepts to forge a cross-curricular metalanguage
3. Multimodality considers the orchestration of modes but also
considers the role of interpretation and intertextuality
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Response to David Buckingham 3
4. From theory to evidence can be useful if moving from theory
to dominant forms e.g. most film posters do have a top
(ideal)- bottom (real) structure with reading path; even poor
theory generates observations e.g. poster does not have
top-bottom or left-right structure; so what is the structure?
Even faulty theory can generate useful observations (cf. Karl
Popper)
5. Formalist approaches are useful in identifying principal
rhetorical structures and devices in particular media
6. Should the goal of intentional control of modes and modal
interaction not be a goal for teacher/pupils? Surely this is
needed to design and interatcively craft texts
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Response to David Buckingham 4
7. Multimodal analysis is but one tool – it needs to be
supplemented by political economy, social theory, cultural
studies perspectives which are the basis of media studies
8. Not empty gesture to audience; it tries to understand the
social purpose of the communicator and how the attempt to
affect an audience is implemented in modes/interactions
9. See 7,8
10. Curriculum politics: we need a way of linking different
disciplines if we are to encourage interdisciplinary work and
escape from ‘silos’; multimodality/multibanality is the best
tool for this!
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Questions for Media QDT
• Adjustment of key aspects
– e.g. add Sociocultural Context
– e.g. combine Language and Narrative into Rhetoric
– need to think about institutional professional production and
audience-initiated prosumer production
• Adjustment of analysis unit content
– multimodality better model than Barthesian semiotics for media
production and analysis
– learners will expect a media course to engage with social media and
video games
– the key problem for media organisations is how to utilise social media
and monetise content; so we need to consider how old and new
media interact
– how do we ensure learners’ public sphere engagement? (that’s why
non-fiction was included)
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Questions for Media QDT
• Adjustment of production unit content
– need to emphasise that simulated professional production is creativity
within constraints (compliance, cost, time, health & safety, …)
– should there be a place for prosumer production and distribution?
– all professional media production is now multimedia and uses old and
new media so should Media Production reflect this?
– especially as digital production can be so speedy and learners should
have experienced production in P1-P7 and S1-S2
• Adjustment of assessment
– division of Language and Narrative in course assessment unnatural
(unify as Rhetoric?)
– single text for all questions in Media Analysis is not authentic
– assessing media production by written examination is not authentic
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Dispositions of Digital Media Producers
Research by Sheridan & Rowsell (2010) identifies
the following dispositions across digital media
producers:
• Creativity (via active participative networks)
• Design (research, evaluation, remixing,
convergence)
• Spin (how to rhetorically develop an idea –
requires attention to form and arrangement)
• Multimodality (choosing and combining modes to
implement the spin)
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How do we encourage these?
• Collaboration (pupil-pupil; teacher-pupil;
teacher-teacher) cf. Doll’s richness, relations
• Interdisciplinarity (breaking subject
boundaries) cf. richness, relations
• Trial and error (iterative non-linear nature of
process) cf. recursion, rigour
• Production (open-ended production rather
than closed reproduction) cf. richness,
recursion, rigour
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Implications
• AMES involved in SQA QDTs and SWGs
• How does AMES advise SQA to construct courses and
assessment practices which foster desirable
dispositions and provide a more meaningful and
motivating experience?
• How do we assist teachers at all levels to address
multimodal & media literacy?
• What are the implications for your practice?
• What support mechanisms would help?
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Bibliography
AMES (2011) Breaking Barriers: Multimodal and Media Literacy in the Curriculum for Excellence. Accessed
14/05/2011 at http://www.mediaedscotland.org.uk/AMESPositionPaperFeb2011.pdf.
Bearne, E. and Bazalgette, C. (eds.) (2010) Beyond Words: Developing Children’s Response to Multimodal Texts.
Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association.
Doll, W. (1993) A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press,.
Instrell, R. (2008) “Something Old, Something New, Something Excellent? – Part 1” in Media Education Journal,
43, Summer 2008, 9-16.
Instrell, R. (2010) “Something Old, Something New, Something Excellent? – Part 2” in Media Education Journal,
48, Winter 2010/2011, 3-11.
Instrell, R. (2011) “A Plain Language Guide to Multimodal Literacy” in Drinkwater. M. A. (ed.) Beyond Textual
Literacy: Visual Literacy for Creative & Critical Inquiry. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Jenkins, H. et al. (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st
Century. MacArthur Foundation. Accessed 01/01/2011 at
http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9CE807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF.
Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Arnold.
New London Group (1996) “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”. In Cope B. and Kalantzis
M. (2000) Multiliteracies. London: Routledge. Also accessed 01/01/2011 at
wwwstatic.kern.org/filer/blogWrite44ManilaWebsite/paul/articles/A_Pedagogy_of_Multiliteracies_Desig
ning_Social_Futures.htm.
Sheridan, M.P. and Rowsell , J. (2010) Design Literacies: Learning and Innovation in the Digital Age. London:
Routledge.
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