BREAKING BARRIERS: Multimodal & Media Literacy in the CfE

1. BREAKING BARRIERS: Multimodal & Media Literacy in the CfE Rick Instrell 14 May 2011 AMES Conference

2. Curriculum Potential Space • 4Rs (William Doll) • Richness • Recursion • Relations • Rigour Freedom 4 3 Post-modern curriculum (4Rs) (eg Drama, Art & Design) (CfE???) Integration Fragmentation Traditional subject-based curriculum (3Rs) (eg Media Studies) 1 2 (eg Mathematics, English) Control

3. 3Rs cf 4Rs • Richness (depth, breadth) • Recursion (spiral curriculum) • Relations (t-l, l-l, relevance) • Rigour (critical) • Narrowness • Linearity • Disconnection • Uncritical But 3Rs approach is required to achieve 4Rs: need 3Rs+4Rs

4. Contexts for AMES position paper • CfE (+concerns over possible disappearance of Media Studies and Computing courses) • Recent developments in Media Studies: • Multimodality • Social media • International educational thinking: • NLG on multiliteracies and need for cross-curricular metalanguage • Henry Jenkins on participatory culture

5. Proposals • Review of multimodal literacy across all curriculum areas (e.g. case studies: history, mathematics) • Review of multimodal literacy across all assessment (e.g. authentic assessment, multimodal rather than monomodal assessment) • Introduction of new NQs (e.g. Digital Media Production, Moving Image Arts, Digital Media Arts) • Multimodal literacy development programme • Good practice in Scotland and abroad • Pilot project in schools, FE, TEI • On-line CPD, teaching resources and assessment exemplars (Glow)

6. Review of Curriculum Areas • Need to engage and develop 21C pupils’ online competences • Holistic analysis of CAs can reveal absences/ enrichments (key aspects of Media Studies useful here as they provide a holistic heuristic) • Multimodality: all communication involves the orchestration of modes in rhetorical structures to construct meaning in cohesive and engaging texts • Pedagogic practices: shift from teacher-direction to dialogic collaborative enquiry • Assessment practices: holistic, authentic, multimodal

7. Response to David Buckingham 1 On participatory culture • Agree that there is a participation divide and that the numbers actively developing politically/artistically challenging user-generated content is limited • Agreed that Web2.0 is a business model with the user selling themselves to capitalism Consequently I would argue that new media NQs must: • Teach learners how to produce crafted and challenging UGC • Teach learners about the financing of internet resources and the ways in which old and new media interact in the WWW

8. Response to David Buckingham 2 On ten things that are wrong with multimodality: • Agreed that neologisms are difficult (original texts by Kress and van Leeuwen can be a heavy read; try David Machin instead) • Multibanality – obvious that media texts are multimodal – but it can remind analyst to attend to all aspects of a text (e.g. often in film analysis acting and audio are neglected); if it is banal so much the better because it should be easy to use its concepts to forge a cross-curricular metalanguage • Multimodality considers the orchestration of modes but also considers the role of interpretation and intertextuality

9. Response to David Buckingham 3 • From theory to evidence can be useful if moving from theory to dominant forms e.g. most film posters do have a top (ideal)- bottom (real) structure with reading path; even poor theory generates observations e.g. poster does not have top-bottom or left-right structure; so what is the structure? Even faulty theory can generate useful observations (cf. Karl Popper) • Formalist approaches are useful in identifying principal rhetorical structures and devices in particular media • Should the goal of intentional control of modes and modal interaction not be a goal for teacher/pupils? Surely this is needed to design and interatcively craft texts

10. Response to David Buckingham 4 • Multimodal analysis is but one tool – it needs to be supplemented by political economy, social theory, cultural studies perspectives which are the basis of media studies • Not empty gesture to audience; it tries to understand the social purpose of the communicator and how the attempt to affect an audience is implemented in modes/interactions • See 7,8 • Curriculum politics: we need a way of linking different disciplines if we are to encourage interdisciplinary work and escape from ‘silos’; multimodality/multibanality is the best tool for this!

11. Questions for Media QDT • Adjustment of key aspects • e.g. add Sociocultural Context • e.g. combine Language and Narrative into Rhetoric • need to think about institutional professional production and audience-initiated prosumer production • Adjustment of analysis unit content • multimodality better model than Barthesian semiotics for media production and analysis • learners will expect a media course to engage with social media and video games • the key problem for media organisations is how to utilise social media and monetise content; so we need to consider how old and new media interact • how do we ensure learners’ public sphere engagement? (that’s why non-fiction was included)

12. Questions for Media QDT • Adjustment of production unit content • need to emphasise that simulated professional production is creativity within constraints (compliance, cost, time, health & safety, …) • should there be a place for prosumer production and distribution? • all professional media production is now multimedia and uses old and new media so should Media Production reflect this? • especially as digital production can be so speedy and learners should have experienced production in P1-P7 and S1-S2 • Adjustment of assessment • division of Language and Narrative in course assessment unnatural (unify as Rhetoric?) • single text for all questions in Media Analysis is not authentic • assessing media production by written examination is not authentic

13. Dispositions of Digital Media Producers Research by Sheridan & Rowsell(2010) identifies the following dispositions across digital media producers: • Creativity (via active participative networks) • Design (research, evaluation, remixing, convergence) • Spin (how to rhetorically develop an idea – requires attention to form and arrangement) • Multimodality (choosing and combining modes to implement the spin)

14. How do we encourage these? • Collaboration (pupil-pupil; teacher-pupil; teacher-teacher) cf. Doll’s richness, relations • Interdisciplinarity (breaking subject boundaries) cf. richness, relations • Trial and error (iterative non-linear nature of process) cf. recursion, rigour • Production (open-ended production rather than closed reproduction) cf. richness, recursion, rigour

15. Implications • AMES involved in SQA QDTs and SWGs • How does AMES advise SQA to construct courses and assessment practices which foster desirable dispositions and provide a more meaningful and motivating experience? • How do we assist teachers at all levels to address multimodal & media literacy? • What are the implications for your practice? • What support mechanisms would help?

16. Bibliography AMES (2011) Breaking Barriers: Multimodal and Media Literacy in the Curriculum for Excellence. Accessed 14/05/2011 at http://www.mediaedscotland.org.uk/AMESPositionPaperFeb2011.pdf. Bearne, E. and Bazalgette, C. (eds.) (2010) Beyond Words: Developing Children’s Response to Multimodal Texts. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association. Doll, W. (1993) A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press,. Instrell, R. (2008) “Something Old, Something New, Something Excellent? – Part 1” in Media Education Journal, 43, Summer 2008, 9-16. Instrell, R. (2010) “Something Old, Something New, Something Excellent? – Part 2” in Media Education Journal, 48, Winter 2010/2011, 3-11. Instrell, R. (2011) “A Plain Language Guide to Multimodal Literacy” in Drinkwater. M. A. (ed.) Beyond Textual Literacy: Visual Literacy for Creative & Critical Inquiry. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Jenkins, H. et al. (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur Foundation. Accessed 01/01/2011 at http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF. Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Arnold. New London Group (1996) “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”. In Cope B. and Kalantzis M. (2000) Multiliteracies. London: Routledge. Also accessed 01/01/2011 at wwwstatic.kern.org/filer/blogWrite44ManilaWebsite/paul/articles/A_Pedagogy_of_Multiliteracies_Designing_Social_Futures.htm. Sheridan, M.P. and Rowsell , J. (2010) Design Literacies: Learning and Innovation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.