Music Disciplinary and Multimodal Literacy Practices

• In Event: 65.079 - Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 65.079-2 - Reconstructing Disciplinary Literacy From the View of Multimodal Literacy

Abstract

The challenges presented in teaching literacy to secondary preservice teachers have been well documented (Alger, 2007; Cantrell, David, & Callaway, 2009; Lee & Spratley, 2007; Moje, 1996; O’Brien & Stewart, 1990). In particular, the predominantly multiple modal disciplines such as music and physical education have been found to be most challenging to teach in the secondary literacy methods course (Begoray, 2008; Lesley, 2011). This is evident if literacy is viewed by the students as being only language based. In this study, therefore, we explore first the music literacy practices in use in music classrooms and determine the matching and mismatching discourses regarding literacy. Finally, we offer educational implications in relation to making the secondary methods course more meaningful to preservice teachers from different disciplines.

Several studies argue that the purpose of content area literacy courses is to emphasize teaching content areas using literacy strategies, which may not always align with the particular disciplinary epistemological approaches (Moje, 2008). In addition, the claim that literacy should be considered the “unique tools” (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012, p. 8) used by experts to participate in their disciplinary practices underscores the recent notion of disciplinary literacy (Draper, Smith, Hall, & Siebert, 2005; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). According to this view, literacy should not be viewed only as language-based reading, writing, and speaking, since most disciplines have multimodal characteristics (e.g., diagrams in science, visual images in art, and sounds in music). Rather, literacy should incorporate a broader scope which includes multimodal literacy practices dependent upon each particular discipline. Thus, we adopted both theoretical frames of disciplinary and multimodal literacies to guide this research.

The dataset for this qualitative research comprises classroom observations (16 undergraduate courses), interviews with 13 preservice music teachers and seven professors (six from music education and one from literacy education), video and audio recordings, and classroom artifacts collected during the academic year 2011-2012.

Analysis of the data reveals some important mismatching and matching discourses between music education and the current secondary literacy methods curriculum. For example, one of the researchers’ literacy methods courses equips preservice teachers with the knowledge of multimodal literacy and disciplinary literacy as primary concepts, yet there is no specific method to apply these concepts to teaching content areas with discipline-specific literacy practices. In addition, the most frequent literacy mode we observed was auditory/sound and construing the meanings and feelings attached to the particular multiple modes was found to be one of the essential literacy skills to be fully embedded in music disciplinary practices, which is different and unique.

Our study is, therefore, one of very few studies which examines both disciplinary and multimodal literacy practices in the music discipline. In particular, it enhances as well as expands the applicative boundary of the current disciplinary literacy perspective through considering multiple modes as essential literacy properties of all the disciplines. It is for this reason that exploring music disciplinary literacy paves the way for more informed disciplinary literacy instruction for secondary preservice teachers.

Author

• Hyun-ju Kim, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor