| This study examines how language arts instruction at the secondary level might be re-envisioned to better engage students in the types of contextually-based, multimodal literacy practices they are increasingly called upon to perform. Using the New London Group's (2000) theoretical concept of multiliteracies, this study examines how one eleventh and twelfth grade language arts course reframes the concept of text to explore multiple semiotic modes besides print, with the larger goal of helping students think critically about how producing texts in various semiotic modes influences the communication of meaning.;The researcher spent the 2004-05 school year in this classroom, gathering data in the form of field notes, teacher, focal student, and administrator interviews, and course artifacts to better understand how the teacher and his students were experiencing this course throughout the year. Key themes under which data were coded included issues of rigor, efforts to articulate the purpose of the course, growing frustrations about the course, and disconnects between various parties about the goals of language arts instruction. It also became apparent as the study progressed that the teacher was experiencing dissonances not only with outside sponsors of the course but within himself about the role of non-print texts in a language arts classroom. Student responses to the course were equally complex, with some students benefiting from the thinking opportunities offered in the course and others rejecting multimodal texts as irrelevant to their futures.;This study presents a complicated picture of multiliteracies-oriented instruction, demonstrating the need for teachers and other literacy sponsors to work together to better understand how to balance a network of influences so they can help students learn to adapt to the increasingly complex world in which they live. Deeper issues that arose from this study include how language arts is defined, how teachers communicate their instructional goals with students and other parties within their schools and communities, and how students might be better prepared for lifelong literacy tasks. A multiliteracies-oriented shift of focus from literacy as a product to literacy as a semiotic process offers one way to invite more students into such thinking and practice. |
