Seeing Academically Marginalized Students’ Multimodal Designs From a Position of Strength

This article examines multimodal texts created by a cohort of academically marginalized secondary school students in Singapore as part of a language arts unit on persuasive composition. Using an interpretivist qualitative approach, we examine students’ multimodal designs to highlight opportunities t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWritten communication Vol. 34; no. 2; pp. 104 - 134
Main Authors Anderson, Kate T., Stewart, Olivia G., Kachorsky, Dani
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2017
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Authors
Design
Educationally Disadvantaged
Foreign Countries
Language Arts
Learning Processes
Literacy
Literacy Education
Literary Styles
Multimedia Materials
Multimodality
Multiple Literacies
Opportunities
Persuasive Discourse
Qualitative Research
Rhetoric
Secondary School Students
Secondary Schools
Semiotics
Student Developed Materials
Students
Writing (Composition)
Singapore
authorial stance
social semiotics
rhetorical force
Singapore
multimodality
lower tracked students
multiliteracies
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Summary:This article examines multimodal texts created by a cohort of academically marginalized secondary school students in Singapore as part of a language arts unit on persuasive composition. Using an interpretivist qualitative approach, we examine students’ multimodal designs to highlight opportunities taken up for expanding literacy practices traditionally not available to lower tracked students. Findings examine the authorial stances and rhetorical force that students enacted in their multimodal designs, despite lack of regular opportunities to author complex texts and a schooling history of low expectations. We extend arguments for the importance of providing all students with opportunities to take positions as designers and creators while acknowledging systematic barriers to such opportunities for academically marginalized students. This study thus counters deficit views of academically marginalized students’ literacy practices by demonstrating their authoritative stance taking and enacting of layered positionalities through multimodal designs in which they renegotiated ways of knowing and doing in their classroom.
ISSN:0741-0883
1552-8472
DOI:10.1177/0741088317699897