Signs of literacy learning: An exploration of fourth -grade students' multimodal literacy practices and curriculum enactment

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand fourth-grade students' multimodal literacy practices and to explore what happened when a teacher and her students designed and enacted multimodal literacy curriculum in a pullout literacy support class. Specifically, this study explored the semiotic toolkits of a group of students who were-positioned as "struggling" readers/writers in their school literacy context, and their shifting positionings. Multimodal literacy theory and a conceptualization of literacy as a social practice framed this inquiry.;Conducted by a teacher-researcher in a suburban public school, this inquiry used action research and case study research methodologies. The teacher-researcher implemented two multimodal curricular projects, a Powerpoint slideshow and a digital movie, in two small-group pullout support classes. Data were collected over the course of a school year through observations, interviews with three focal students, their parents and teachers, and artifact collection. Data were organized into literacy events and analyzed to understand how students created texts and how students re-positioned themselves as literacy learners.;Preparation for state-mandated standardized testing greatly impacted the enactment of the multimodal literacy curriculum. Negotiating the verbocentric school literacy curriculum and the multimodal literacy curriculum produced ongoing tensions and led to more emphasis on written language than a multimodal perspective would suggest. The curriculum thus shifted from one that privileged written language and gave other modes a supporting role to one that allowed students to choose the semiotic resources (e.g., visuals, movement, sound, and/or language) they would use to communicate meaning.;As students engaged in the projects, they gained facility with digital technology tools. In each group, the students worked collaboratively to create a single text, but one student positioned himself as the leader of the group. While creating the slideshow and movie, students engaged multimodal resources not often utilized in their classroom literacy contexts. Students' reflections on their work in multimodal literacy curriculum suggested that they re-positioned themselves as literacy learners over the course of the school year. The study shows that multimodal literacy curriculum is complex and warrants further research in varied classroom contexts.