Although researchers have identified the positive relationship between students academic literacy learning and dialogic discussiontalk about texts in which students build on and transform each others ideasthis pattern of discourse occurs rarely in most secondary English classrooms. Promising research on the varied multimodal literacies in which adolescents are engaged in their out-of-school lives suggests that these literacies may inform academic literacy practices such as dialogic discussions of literature, but little is known about how such literacies might be leveraged to make academic literacy instruction more effective. This dissertation study identified ways in which students out-of-school and multimodal literacies could be leveraged to shape their participation in dialogic discussions of literature in one secondary English classroom. To that end, this study comprised an empirical investigation of students participation in dialogic discussion after completing either collaborative multimodal or collaborative unimodal projects, and traced focal students participation across small group and whole class discourse contexts to investigate whether and how student learning was facilitated through multimodality. Drawing on classroom discourse analysis and ethnographic data collection techniques, this comparative study of two sections of one 12th-grade English course explored the centrality of semiotic mediation and transmediation as these processes supported students participation in dialogic discussions. Findings support the use of collaborative multimodal instructional activities to facilitate students internalization of dialogic discourse norms and scaffold students participation in discussions across discourse contexts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04242010-182808 |
| Date | 12 May 2010 |
| Creators | Chisholm, James S. |
| Contributors | Dr. Scott Kiesling, Dr. Amanda Haertling Thein, Dr. Amanda Godley, Dr. Richard Donato |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04242010-182808/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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