abstract: This interpretive dissertation study sought to understand what happened when a seventh-grade teacher introduced multimodal concepts and texts into his English Language Arts classroom. Multimodal texts contain linguistic features (words and sentences) but also images and graphic design features. The classroom teacher described himself as a novice with regards to multimodal literacies instruction and had previously focused predominantly on written or spoken texts. Motivating his decision to design and enact a multimodal literacies pedagogy was his belief that students needed to garner experience interpreting and composing the kinds of texts that populated his students’ social worlds. Therefore, I asked: What happened when multimodal narratives were used as mentor texts in a seventh-grade English Language Arts classroom? Drawing from ethnographic and case study methods, I observed and gathered data regarding how the teacher and his students enacted and experienced an eight-week curriculum unit centered on multimodal concepts and multimodal texts. My findings describe the classroom teacher’s design decisions, the messiness that occurred as the classroom was (re)made into a classroom community that valued modes beyond written and spoken language, and the students’ experiences of the curriculum as classroom work, lifework, play, and drudgery. Based on my findings, I developed six assertions: (1) when designing and enacting multimodal literacies curriculum for the first time, exposing students to a wide range of multimodal texts took precedence; (2) adapted and new multimodal literacy practices began to emerge, becoming valued practices over time; (3) literacy events occurred without being grounded in literacy practices; (4) in a classroom dedicated to writing, modes of representation and communication and their associated tools and materials provided students with resources for use in their own writing/making; (5) the roles of the teacher and his students underwent change as modal expertise became sourced from across the classroom community; and (6) students experienced the multimodal literacies curriculum as play, classroom work, lifework, and drudgery. The dissertation study concludes with implications for teachers and researchers looking to converge multimodality theory with pedagogical practices and maps future research possibilities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2020

Multiliteracies theory extends the notion of literacy well beyond the traditional linear text-based definition of reading and writing (New London Group, 1996). It addresses the saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity and the multiplicity of communication channels and media available in our rapidly changing world. Multiliteracies involve engagement with multiple design modes, linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal being a combination of the different modes. This research emerged from the need to open a space for students in an international languages school teaching Arabic language to engage in creative, aesthetic, alternative, and multimodal forms of literacy that involve the integration of the various semiotic resources in their meaning-making and design of texts. It is about a lived teaching-learning journey that draws on the concept of living pedagogy and dwelling in the in-between spaces of curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-live(d) (Aoki, 1991). In this research journey, I share the possibilities that opened up when students between the age of eleven and fourteen years old engaged with multiliteracies in an international languages classroom that teaches heritage language. This research journey also presents how the participative type of inquiry and collaboration between the researcher and classroom teacher contributed to the enhancement of their knowledge and learning about multiliteracies practices. After listening to and discussing a literary text presented by the teacher, students responded by creating their own texts to show their understanding of the narrative genre. They produced multimodal arts-based (Barton, 2014; Sanders & Albers, 2010) and digital based texts (Knobel & Lankshear, 2013). Through a multiliteracies/multimodalities theoretical, epistemological, and methodological perspective (Albers, 2007; Jewitt & Kress, 2008; Morawski, 2012; Rowsell, 2013), and drawing from approaches such as participatory action research (Chevalier & Buckles, 2013), and bricolage (Kincheloe, 2004), I developed this research story through a process of braiding and interweaving of various modes of texts and genres to produce a métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009) of the live(d) narratives of my research praxis. This inquiry offers a glimpse as to how opening the space for creative approaches in the teaching of literacy engages students in the design of texts using both linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic resources and incorporating multiple modes of representation from which they produce arts, digital, and multimodal texts.

The goal of this research is to examine how zines--self-published alternative magazines that are part of Do It Yourself (DIY) independent media scenes-- are used to assert subjectivities. This research examines the entire bodies of work of five zinesters. It situates the work in New Literacy Studies, narrative research, and other zine scholarship. By exploring zinesters' works as they use it to perform literacy over time, this research redefines zines. It moves zines away from being seen as simply a way for young women to be active cultural producers and situates zines in autobiographical writing where life narratives are created and recreated as zinesters perform differing subjectivities over time. Through narrative analysis, this research looks at the following five zinesters and the subjectivities they perform at different stages in their zine career. Cindy Crabb creates a confessional space within her zines to tell secrets and stories around her body: specifically survivor narratives. Alex Wrekk positions herself as part of the punk scene and transforms her personal identity as she participates in the zine and punk scenes. Kelly Shortandqueer asserts transgender subject positions throughout his zines and the writing of his transnarrative. Lauren Martin creates autographic zines through her artist subjectivity. Davida Breier shares small stories throughout her zines, as is exemplified in her Intros. The results of this work allows for exploration into zines as a cultural literacy practice. More importantly, it examines and defines zines as life-long literacies--those literacy sites that people choose to participate within during varying times of their lives and not only during specific situational occurrences such as school or work--and zine creators as permanent writers. Zines allow a better understanding of what it means to perform literacy work in meaningful ways which permit participants to examine and reexamine, define and redefine, and construct and reconstruct subjectivities as they move through time and various social, cultural, and personal scenes. / Urban Education