Reanimation: Multimodal Discourse Around Text

• In Event: 64.060 - Participation in Interaction: Multimodal Understandings of Interaction in a Range of Education Settings

Abstract

Objectives
This paper offers a multimodal analysis of spontaneous, improvisatory interactions between pre-service teachers as they engage with various material resources they have created, such as digital films and computer games.
Theoretical Perspectives
In our transmedia work with students and texts, we adopt Burn & Durran’s (2007) productive perspective, an understanding that ‘the development of a critical grasp of the systems of meaning-making which operate in media texts is best achieved by making them’ (p.169). We take the view that the way learners move from one mode to another (e.g. from drama to creative writing, from film-making to computer game-making) lends a more critical emphasis to their work, requiring them to adapt their approaches according to the possibilities and limitations afforded by the specific semiotic modes at their disposal (Mills, 2016).
As we reviewed our video data, we became increasingly interested in the social spaces formed by learners as they physically interact with material resources (Potter & McDougall, 2017) and in the ways students negotiate their identities as learners, particularly through the adoption of roles for different purposes in response to images in material and virtual form. Our examination of these interactions is informed by Goffman (1974), Heathcote (2015) and Kress’s (2010) attention to the frame.
Methods
This case study forms part of a larger externally-funded project focusing on processes involved in producing transmedia adaptations of a canonical literary text (in this instance, the Old English poem Beowulf). The data presented here were collected during a two-day workshop conducted with pre-service English/Drama teachers. Data sources included field-notes, video recordings, photos, student artefacts and focus group interviews, which were transcribed, coded and analysed thematically (Miles & Huberman, 1994). For this paper we offer a multimodal analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2010) of three short episodes, video recordings of students’ collaborative engagement with still images, digital filmmaking and computer gaming.
Findings
Through a creative, transmedia approach to Beowulf we encouraged learners to adopt critical positions to the source text. What surprised us was the extent to which the learners continued to shift in and out of roles at transitional moments across the two-day workshop, for example reviewing films they had made, or playing each other’s’ computer games. A multimodal lens enabled us to draw attention to social spaces created around the material artefacts (still images, iPad, computer screen/game) through this creative process.
Significance
We draw attention to the kind of spontaneous, situated discourse that arises out of transmedia approaches to literary texts. We explore the interplay between social actors and technology in a particular context and underline the significance of role as a form of re-animation.

Authors

• Jane Coles, IOE, University College London

• Theodora Bryer, UCL