Analyzing Modal Assemblage and Collaborative Production in Children's Play and Making

• In Event: 70.032 - Possibilities and Challenges in New Methods and Frameworks for Multimodal Research

Abstract

Overview/Purpose: The latest electronic technologies offer powerful opportunities to reimagine literacy as accessible, “increasingly multimodal…[and] closely connected with visual, spatial, tactile, gestural, audio and oral modes of meaning” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to identify the potential and challenges of video analysis tools for illuminating children’s nonverbal actions as “printless literacies”.
Theoretical Perspectives: This work builds on previous research on play (Author4, 2011, 2013), drawing on New Literacy Studies (Gee, 1996; Street, 1995; Scollon, 2001) and Vygotskian (1935/1978) mediation and using a framework that relates multimodal and textual dimensions of play and printless literacies to children’s collaborative learning and co-constructed meaning production. Children’s play with digital technologies offers immediate feedback and modal resources to support collaborative and improvisational storytelling that merges multiple possible storylines as children co-construct shared meanings (Author4, 2011; in press).
Data Sources/Methods: Drawing from a one-year study of play, electronics, and storytelling with 44 3- to 5-year-old children in a university preschool, I will present data excerpts from 7 hour-long craft sessions that document children’s play with toy figurines, conductive playdo, decorative materials, and LED kits. In this paper, I focus on methods for capturing and analyzing children’s use of multimodality in their collaborative production of “electric snakes”.
Data sources include video of children’s activity, digital photographs of artifacts, and screenshots of timelines and drawing windows created with digital analysis software. Video and photos were tagged and coded for children’s practices (i.e., play, crafting, collaboration, circuitry production) using StudioCode. Drawing windows recorded multimodal microanalysis of video clusters where all 4 domains of practices overlapped, creating high modal density (Norris, 2004). For example, in a drawing window, arrows marked children’s gaze and circles marked their proximity to one another; children’s shared gaze and proximity materialize collaboration as children bend over a playdo snake to decide next steps.
Findings: Video analysis of children’s play entailed syncing closeup stills of children’s projects with video capture of their interactions with materials and other children. This syncing capability facilitated easy comparison of children’s meaningful artifact construction and social bonds among young children are constructed through a sustained shared gaze on the same toy or screen, posture that leans in and maintains close proximity, or gestures that helpfully point out next steps in a shared project. Video analysis of interactions can locate and compare children’s coordination of various modes to co-construct material meanings and social relationships. Multimodal analysis enabled tracking a mode across multiple shots, revealing that a child who appeared to be distracted and wandering with no completed artifact, actually worked productively across a succession of collaborative projects. Identified challenges included masking faces in moving video while showing gaze, conveying moment-to-moment collaboration adequately in print, and other dissemination limitations.
Significance: We need to clearly understand the potential and challenges of researching multimodal literacies which could document the collaborative meaning-making in play. This understanding could radically change early literacy education by opening more opportunities for interactive composing, storytelling, and other collaborative work.

Author

• Karen E. Wohlwend, Indiana University - Bloomington