The Image as Material, Digital Artifact in Children's Digital Videos

• In Event: 43.053 - Materiality Meets Multimodality: The Forgotten Role of Material Objects in Digital Literacies

Abstract

Objective
The objective of this paper is to analyze images children ages 8-10 used in digital videos made on iPads. When examined through a socio-material lens on digital practices, their image use reveals children’s flexible approach to image creation and use.

Theoretical framework
This analysis is undergirded by a sociocultural perspective on digital composing as a communicative practice (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986; Hymes, 1994) through which we make and share ideas. It is fundamentally social, and requires the use of technologies (e.g., pen and paper, computer and screen) to create texts (Vygotsky, 1986). Much research on digital composing examines the multiple modes in which children make meaning (Burn, 2015; Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Research has also shown the ways in which children enact the inherently multimodal quality of written text (cf. Dyson, 2008). A second, related theoretical framework is socio-material literacies (Author 3, 2016; Barton, 2001; Haas, 1996), with a focus on the artifacts--in this case, images--used in videos. Artifacts, Cole (1996) writes, “coordinate human beings with the world and one another in a way that combines the properties of tools and symbols” (p. 144). In this paper, I address this gap, asking:
● What combinations of mode and media are salient in each image, and what are its attendant meanings?
● What pre-existing historical and cultural inheritances shape images? What might we learn about children’s meaning-making by tracing these inheritances?

Methods and Data Sources
Esperanza Elementary (all names are pseudonyms), the research site, was a Spanish-English dual immersion, public charter school in southern California. In the larger 4-year study of children's digital video composition, from which these data are drawn, children ages 8-10 created 2-3 videos per year on a variety of topics as part of the regular curriculum (Author 2, 2018). Data for this paper include 1) semi-structured, in-depth interviews (Weiss, 1994) with children conducted after they made videos; and 2) the images themselves, captured in multimodal transcripts (Flewitt, Hampel, Hauck, & Lancaster, 2008), from 90 videos about which children had been interviewed. After cataloging images, I conducted a thematic analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) of the entire interview corpus, from which emerged several codes around images. Artifact analysis of children’s images was informed by multimodal and design-based frameworks (Jewitt, 2008; Rowsell, 2013). I focused on the combination of modes and media salient to each image, the meaning of images themselves and in relation to the whole text and the larger school context, and image sources.

Results
Children used a wide array of images, many of which they modified in free drawing apps. Image use within and across children’s videos, and their own discussions of image choice and purpose, revealed children’s desires to craft identities in texts (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010) and experiment with image use and overall orchestration of meanings.

Significance
As Serafini (2015) notes, we must support students and teachers in working with multimodal literacies. Understanding visual grammars (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), as well as the reasons children make the choices they do in multimodal composing, is critical to this work.

Author

• Jessica Zacher Pandya, California State University - Long Beach