courses three years ago. Many of my middle school ELs were placed in these courses once they moved to the high school, and I wondered why they simply were not placed in mainstream Spanish courses if the goal was to improve their formal Spanish language skills.
One bilingual Latina EL teacher, Esperanza (pseudonym), who had been a colleague of mine for many years, was recruited to teach two SNS courses- one that focused on Spanish grammar and one that focused on Spanish literature for native
speakers of Spanish exclusively. During informal conversations with Esperanza, I learned that she had not had access to a formal published curriculum to support the SNS courses she taught, and therefore, had to develop her own curriculum. However, by the time this study began, the state department of education had issued standards and a framework for this course. Nevertheless, she continued to struggle to develop meaningful curriculum in part due to the limited access to materials, another critique of heritage language programs (Lynch, 2003). As a literacy specialist and the former EL teacher of many of Esperanza‟s students, she asked me for support and ideas in developing strong engagements that addressed the needs of her SNSs.
Esperanza‟s need for a more thoughtful and concrete curriculum became more imperative. Several of her students had dropped out in the past and returned to school when they heard that they would be able to take the SNS course with her. She was very active in their community and in their lives and embodied a pedagogy of care (Gay, 2000; Noddings, 1992, 1993; Valenzuela, 1999). Pedagogy of care extends beyond simple feelings of concern and involves teachers incorporating instructional practices which use
their knowledge of students‟ experiences to foster effort, achievement, action, and self- determination.
Over the past few years, Esperanza and I had talked about lessons that would be more engaging and meaningful for her students. She expressed often the desire to create a curriculum that would have a transforming effect on her students whom she said
struggled to see the relevance of a high school education in their lives. We discussed the possibilities of an arts-infused curriculum. From our conversations and my previous successful experiences incorporating the visual arts as a significant communication system in my own EL classes as well as experience analyzing the content and thoughts that underpin visual texts (Albers & Frederick, 2009), I began to wonder how we could collaborate to create a transformative experience for her students.
As I began exploring possibilities for such a curriculum and for this study, I also theoretically contemplated how the intersections of social semiotics, identity work, and third space theories would inform my work in this potential site of study. I will present the theoretical framework and define key terms and concepts used in the study after providing an overview of the study.
Overview of the Study
The primary purpose of this study was to understand how SNS students negotiated meaning and identity within an arts-infused multimodal SNS curriculum where the use of multiple communication (sign) systems was encouraged. Further, this study also examined the discourses that emerged within students‟ visual texts over time to more fully understand how they made sense of their lives at the time of text making
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and across the year (Albers, 2007a, 2007b; Albers & Frederick, 2009; Albers, Frederick & Cowan, 2009, in press; Rowsell & Pahl, 2007).
Research questions guiding this study were the following: (1) What factors were considered as the teacher and the researcher co-planned this arts-infused multimodal curriculum, and how did the consideration of those factors shape the curriculum?; (2) How did students enrolled in this SNS class make and negotiate meaning and identity as they worked within this arts-infused multimodal SNS curriculum?, and (3) What
discourses around students‟ meaning making practices and identities emerged within their visual texts over time and across texts?
Participants in this study were nine multi-age, multi-grade level Latino high school students enrolled in a SNS course and their teacher. Data collection occurred during the 2008-2009 academic year. Data included audio-taped and written documents from collaborative curriculum planning sessions, initial questionnaires, interviews with participants, informal conversations with participants, selected audio and videotaped class discussions, student participant journals and work samples, photographs, teacher participant journal, researcher journal and fieldnotes, and member checks. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method to determine categories and themes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) in addition to visual discourse analysis (Aiello & Thurlow, 2006; Albers, 2007b; Albers & Frederick, 2009; Albers, Frederick, & Cowan, 2009, in press; Albers & Murphy, 2000; Bang, 2000; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).
Significance of the Study
A consideration of how multiple communication (sign) systems, including the visual arts, may be used as significant tools of thought for meaning making and identity
negotiation within a SNS course is significant and relevant to literacy and language education because the visual arts may offer significant ways of representing and
communicating thought, knowledge, and self, and may offer possibilities for educators to more fully understand and help their bilingual learners. While I was able to locate
research on the use of multiple sign systems in English Language Arts classes (Albers, 2006; Siegel, 2006; Whitin, 2006) and in French foreign language courses (Kern & Schultz, 2005), I did not find any that specifically addressed this topic with SNS students as participants. Furthermore, Potowski and Carreira (2004) explained that many SNS courses are taught from a foreign language framework, and therefore, they do not
adequately meet the needs of SNS students. As such, this study fills a gap in the literature by examining how a SNS class taught from a humanities framework utilizing an arts- infused multimodal curriculum provided multiple paths to meaning making.
Theoretical Framework
As a result of my growing understanding of social semiotics, I became acutely aware that if culturally and linguistically diverse students were to be given enhanced opportunities to develop their cognitive potential, a critical awareness of themselves and the worlds in which they live, then their teachers must provide them with multiple paths for meaning making. Therefore, I chose critical pedagogy, theories of identity, social semiotics, and theoretical concepts of third space as my theoretical framework. Taken together, these theoretical constructs provided a comprehensive lens for examining and understanding meaning making and identity construction across sign systems in the SNS class.
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Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is most often linked to Paulo Freire (1970, 1994) who
envisioned literacy as a path to liberation for the illiterate peasants of Brazil. Out of this vision and experience, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) was born. Later, Freire revisited this 1970 work and explored the need for hope within such pedagogy. The result was Pedagogy of Hope (Freire, 1994). Freire insisted that, “hope, as an ontological need, demands an anchoring in practice. As an ontological need, hope needs practice in order to become historical concreteness. . . . Without a minimum of hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle” (1994, p. 9). I grounded my own work for this study on his insistence on hope.
Other educational philosophers and theorists have taken up Freire‟s work and continue to elaborate on it. For me, the importance of education is its liberating potential. Giroux and McLaren (1991) explained:
Fundamental to the principles that inform critical pedagogy is the conviction that schooling for self- and social empowerment is ethically prior to questions of epistemology or to a mastery of technical or social skills that are primarily tied to the logic of the marketplace (p. 153-154, italics in original).
Many of my former middle school ELs dropped out of high school citing the lack of relevance of the curriculum to their lives. Many of them believed that they already had the skills they needed to get the factory, landscaping, carpentry, stone-masonry, or painting jobs readily available to them. Therefore, school for them held little promise. They did not experience a school curriculum that provided a vision of transformation or one of hope.
Importantly, Giroux and McLaren (1991) posed the following question: “How does one redefine the purpose of public schooling and rethink the role of teaching and learning in emancipatory terms?” (p. 156). Giroux and McLaren challenged critical educators to move beyond “a language of critique to a language of possibility” (p. 156). I undertook this study as a partial response to this challenge in the hope (from the Freirian sense) that the participants as co-collaborators would find means for transforming their lived realities by gaining access to the power and potential that multiple literacies promise.
Theories of Identity
Theories of identity evolved from the work of sociocultural theorists whose ideas originated with anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies and education (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Debate on identity ranges from the essentialist theorizing of anthropologists such as Margaret Mead who believe that identity is stable and “internally homogeneous” to postmodern theorizing that negates identity as a meaningful construct altogether (Moya, 2000). The construct of identity is widely studied in education with foci on general identity theory, identity and narrative, identity and race, identity and response to literature, identity and class, and identity and gender/sexual diversity (Beach, Thein, & Parks, 2007).
In an attempt to reclaim identity as a meaningful concept that can be used to understand how people situate themselves and others in their worlds, postpositivist realists have offered a “realist theory of identity” (Moya, 2000, p. 17). This theory is consistent with a “practice theory of self and identity” as posed by Holland et al.‟s (1998)
17 and to a degree Goffman‟s (1959) theory of the presentation of self in everyday life. The tenets of these theories of identity include the following:
1. Identities are subjective and particular, and as such we need to interact with them and understand them rather than “to transcend or subvert” them (Moya, 2000, p. 17);
2. Identities are plural, multiple and may be referred to as selves or subjectivities (Holland et al., 1998; Moya, 2000);
3. Identities are constructed through the relationship between social, cultural, and historical location and experience. Our interpretations of our experiences are continuously being refined as we are involved in daily practice, activity, and performance of ourselves with others (Goffman, 1959; Holland et al., 1998, Moya, 2000);
4. Knowledge is generated as we live and act in the world and depends on our cognitive, historical, and social locations (Moya, 2000, p. 18);
5. Individual agency comes before and provides a sound foundation for collective agency (Moya, 2000, p. 19);
6. Subjectivities shift as we are positioned by the discourses in which we participate (Holland et al., 1998, p. 26).
Three theoretical texts, in particular, helped me think about how identities are negotiated during attempts at meaning making of ourselves and of others from semiotic resources available that are used to compose a variety of texts, and specifically visual texts created in the SNS class. They are Goffman‟s (1959) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Holland et al.‟s (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, and
Rowsell and Pahl‟s (2007) “Sedimented Identities in Texts: Instances of Practice.” I will briefly explain the first two and how they helped me theoretically frame this interpretive study. I will present the third text as a potential bridge between theories of identity and social semiotics as a way of understanding the use of visual texts in the SNS class.
Identities are negotiated through the relationship between social, cultural, and historical location and experience. Humans‟ interpretations of their experiences are continuously being refined as they make meaning in daily practice, activity, and during the performance of ourselves with others. Goffman (1959) in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life employed the metaphor of theatrical performance to explore how
individuals make choices about the ways in which they present themselves or perform their subjectivities to others depending on the social context of the moment. As they interact with others, they not only seek information about them, they also attempt to control the kinds of information they give to others about themselves. Their motives influence the ways in which they attempt to control the information they give, which in turn affects their performances through the various techniques they use to manipulate their audience or the others with whom they interact. Among the techniques used during their performances are "maintenance of expressive control," "misrepresentation," and "mystification" (p. 51-70). All three of these techniques allow individuals to present themselves as they wish others to see them even if that means presenting themselves as more of who they are not rather than who they are. In projecting who they are, they can act alone or in a team; however, they lose control of their performance once they have to negotiate their role within the team and its view of reality.
19 Goffman‟s idea of performance of selves can be applied to a SNS class where students may be asked to respond in multiple modes such as an essay, a visual artwork, a poster, a PowerPoint, a play, etc. When students are involved in those kinds of activities, they make choices based on how they wish others to see them. In visual texts, the
textmakers may use techniques such as gaze or vectors to attempt to control the viewer by directing where the viewer attends to the canvas. If painting, one may vary
brushstrokes to convey more or less detail, etc. If the learner works in a group and is seeking affiliation with the group, she may choose to use similar techniques or themes in her own visual texts (Albers, Frederick & Cowan, in press). In these ways, Goffman‟s idea of performance can be translated into the performance that surrounds the creation of any text, especially visual texts, in the SNS class.
Identities are plural, multiple and may be referred to as selves or subjectivities. Holland et al. (1998) provided a framework within which to situate the performance of visual texts as representations of selves. Visual texts created within language classrooms are created in what they call a figured world, which is similar to Goffman‟s (1959) theater metaphor. They based their theory of “identity in practice” on the works of Bakhtin (1981), Bordieu (1985), Vygotsky (1978), and on the findings from their own ethnographic studies from around the world. Identity is formed in process; it is
improvised, and it is continuously created. Thus, identity is not singular but plural and best termed subjectivities as we negotiate the worlds we inhabit. They call this process "identity in practice" and outline four contexts of activity of which “practiced identities” can be constructed: 1) the figured world, 2) positionality, 3) space of authoring, and 4) making worlds. First, the context of the figured world relates to the worlds that people
create in and through their participation. People come to figured worlds by invitation of others, become involved stakeholders in these worlds, and form understandings of themselves through their participation. The members of these worlds create the figures which shape and determine the meanings associated with their roles and participation. Positionality is the second context of identities in practice and is determined by power. Hierarchies are formed based on the prestige given to markers such as gender, beauty, race, wealth, language, etc. as determined by the members of the figured worlds and is often related to the context of a larger figured world in which it is contained. Third, space of authoring refers to the world that we must all face and answer. Authorship involves calling on the resources one has (social discourses, voices, histories, etc.) to respond to others within the given time and context. Holland et al. calls this "the art of
improvisation" (p. 272), and it makes human agency possible. The fourth context of identities in practice is the making of worlds. As members interact and begin to take new directions in their interactions and imagine new possibilities for their lives either
individually or collectively, they may form new figured worlds. Therefore, identities are constantly being formed and reformed as the self moves fluidly between worlds.
Several researchers in the field of literacy education have utilized this concept of figured worlds or examined positionality within the literacy classroom to better
understand how students negotiate literacy practices in the social worlds of classrooms and schools (Dagenais, Day, & Toohey, 2006; Fairbanks & Broughton, 2003; Hawkins, 2005; Luttrell & Parker, 2001). The findings of these studies and this concept apply to learners creating visual texts in a language classroom because they make choices and use them in their visual texts based on the narratives that are created in the figured world of
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the classroom. So, if teachers convey the message that stick figures are fine because they themselves feel they cannot draw, then learners read that narrative, internalize it, and may appropriate it to their own artworks. They may then become positioned and/or position themselves through such discourses as artists or non-artists. Either way, when visual texts are offered as significant ways to communicate together with other communication systems such as written texts, then multiple spaces for authoring become available. Educators must learn how to enter those worlds and how to read and compose in them. Finally, as learners move in and out of the worlds of home, school, web spaces, etc., they bring to their visual texts integrations, understandings, and even possibly resistances to those worlds. The visual text becomes a space for re-figuring, re-imagining, and re- conceptualizing their worlds.
Visual texts have a grammar and design and serve ideational and functional purposes in ways similar to yet different from written text (Albers, 2007a, 2007b). To fully understand the messages communicated, one has to have a more comprehensive analytic framework so as to be able to move beyond a psychological or aesthetic reading of the visual. For this reason, I will present and consider the potential that social
semiotics offers as a theoretical lens for reading and understanding the discourses present in visual texts created in the SNS class.
Social Semiotics
Social semiotics evolved from semiotics which can be traced to the two founding fathers, the French linguist Ferdinand Saussure and the American pragmatist Charles Peirce (Chandler, 2002; Hodge & Kress, 1988). While semiotics, the study of signs, is used in fields such as linguistics, social semiotics is found most often as a framework in
communication studies. Literacy studies using social semiotics or semiotics as a frame are few in number and often explore either a single communication system such as drama (Medina & Campano, 2006), the visual arts (Albers, 1996, 1997, 2007a, 2007b), or two or more sign systems such as drama, dance, movement or visual language and art (Berghoff, 1995; Sipe, 1998). Most often literacy studies that consider multiple sign systems are referred to as multimodal (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jewitt & Kress, 2003).
Mainstream semiotics offers a frame for studying communication as a whole, but