Sensory Literacies: The Forgotten Role of the Feet and Locomotion in Multimodal Design

• In Event: 53.080 - And Then What? Aesthetics, Ethics, and the Senses in and After the Visual and Digital Turns

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation opens up a revitalized understanding of literacy practices as interrelated with the other senses, involving an expanded sensorium that includes movements of the feet and other senses in concert (Mills, Comber & Kelly 2013). Aligned with the conference theme, “Knowledge to Action: Achieving the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity”, this paper also demonstrates how sensory literacies can uncover the role of sensory hierarchies in societies – the valuing of one sense over another - that may marginalize certain cultural groups.

Theoretical framework
This paper argues that the sensory turn is only just beginning to demonstrate the possibilities for transforming educational research. Sensory literacies is an original theory proposed by the author (Mills 2016) that foregrounds the forgotten role of the body and the senses in literacy practices. It extends recent theories of sensory studies in the history and cultural anthropology of the senses, applying these principles to literacy education (Howes, 2014; Classen 2014). From a sensory literacies perspective, the mind is not seen as separated from the body, but both mind and body are integral to literacy practices (Mills & Park, 2015). Previous conceptions of literacy have focused on the visual-linguistic representations of meanings in texts and literacy practices, which is associated historically with ocularcentrism - the dominance and privileging of the visual - across many disciplines in Western societies.

Modes of inquiry and data sources
The author highlights examples of the multi-sensoriality of literacy practices drawing from participatory community research with Indigenous and non-Indigenous school communities. Applying multimodal semiotic analysis to texts created by primary school students, such as film and other visual and artistic compositions, the researcher interprets students’ embodied sense-making activity (Mills, 2016). These include examples of filmmaking and Indigenous dance in which the feet and locomotion are central to meaning making.

Conclusions and Significance
The aim of this paper is significant for international scholarship, and in relation to the conference theme, because the regulation of the bodies and the senses in education, and the privileging of certain modes is often to the detriment of equitable literacy learning. Similarly, movement of the feet has been relegated outside theories of communication.

References
Howes, D., & Classen, C. (2014). Ways of sensing: Understanding the senses in society. London, UK: Routledge.
Mills, K. A. (2016). Literacy theories for the digital age: Social, critical, multimodal, spatial, material and sensory lenses. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Mills, K. A., Comber, B., & Kelly, P. (2013). Sensing place: embodiment, sensoriality, kinesis, and children behind the camera. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 12(2), 11-27.
Mills, K. A. & Dreamson, N. (2015). Race, the senses, and the materials of writing practices. In J. Turbill, C. Brock, & G. Barton (Eds.), Teaching writing in today's classrooms: Looking back to look forward (pp. 298-312). Norwood, SA: Australian Literacy Educators' Association.

Author

• Kathy Ann Mills, Australian Catholic University