Connecting Theory and Practice in Middle School Literacy

Critical Conversations

Jason DeHart, Carla K. Meyer, Katie Walker, Jason DeHart, Carla K. Meyer, Katie Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000511901
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation secondaire

Bringing together the voices of researchers and teachers, this volume addresses how teachers connect theory to practice in the middle school English Language Arts education setting and explores how to teach and engage with young adults in a way that treats them as ethical and thoughtful citizens. The book bridges the gap between educational theory and real-world implementation and covers a range of timely topics in middle level education through a focus on text choice, identity, and practice. Contributors acknowledge and balance the challenges associated with the reality of teaching, including time constraints, sudden shifts, and fast-paced work, with real-world guidance on key topics, such as supporting multilingual students, queering middle grade pedagogies, teaching diverse texts, examining racial bias in the classroom, and critical digital literacy.

Ideal for courses on middle level education and literacy education, this book encourages and equips pre-service teachers to engage in meaningful conversations with their students that foster reflection and transformative learning.

Section 1 Troubling Notions of Text

1 Using Theories in the Classroom to Read and Conceptualize Digital Children’s Comics

Dani Kachorsky, Alexandria Perez, and Johnathan Hill

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171508-2

Visual culture, or the way in which images and other visual artifacts are now central to the social, cultural, and meaning-making practices of human beings (Duncum, 2001), has had a powerful influence on the literature designed for youth (Short, 2018). This is demonstrated in the increased publication and popularity of multimodal/illustrated books, wordless texts, and comics/graphic novels (Short, 2018). Multimodal texts, or texts that combine multiple modes of communication (e.g., written language and visual image), such as these, have become a key component in how people understand their social worlds (Rose, 2016).

When individuals engage with multimodal texts, they construct meanings within their individual social, cultural, and historical contexts (Rose, 2016) and enact a wide range of literacy practices (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 1991; Knobel & Lankshear, 2014). Thus, being literate today requires skills beyond reading and writing written language (Kress, 2010; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006; Luke, 1995). It has become increasingly important for educators to address visual culture and visual literacy in school curricula (Reid, this volume). Expanding instruction to include visual and multimodal literacies in classroom spaces is necessary if education is to keep pace with the demands of the 21st century (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010; Hicks, 2009; Serafini, 2012).

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how different theoretical perspectives can be used by teachers and students to engage with and construct meaning with various forms of digital comics. This chapter reflects insights gained from a qualitative content analysis of three digital comics that were available in three variations (e.g., digital immigrant, guided view, and motion book): My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP) Issue 1 (Cook, 2013), Transformers: Autocracy (TA) Issue 1 (Metzen & Dille, 2013), and Overwatch: McCree Train Hopper (OW) (Brooks, 2016). Most of the variants for each issue are available for free through various digital applications (e.g., Comixology, Madefire, and IDW). Because we do not have permission to replicate the images here, it is recommended that you access copies of these issues on a tablet, smartphone, or other compatible devices.

Comics in the Classroom

Historically viewed as low-quality popular reading material (Jiménez & Meyer, 2016), recent years have seen educators acknowledging the literary value and inherent complexity of comics (Short, 2018). Librarians, teachers, and scholars have all made the case for utilizing comics in classroom spaces for a variety of instructional purposes. Comics have proven beneficial for generating reading motivation, interest, and engagement (Gavigan, 2011; Jennings et al., 2014) and useful for teaching traditional literacy skills such as sequencing and predicting (Chase et al., 2014; Martinez-Roldan & Newcomer, 2011). Research has also demonstrated that comics can be used to support content area learning and disciplinary literacy as well as critical literacy (Dallacqua & Sutton, 2014; Hosler & Boomer, 2011; Lin & Lin, 2016; Low, 2015).

While comics can be a valuable instructional tool for a wide range of common classroom practices and learning outcomes, they are an invaluable resource for supporting visual literacy development. Comics are a form of visual text, and therefore visual culture, in which images are essential to understanding the narrative or information (Paligaro, 2014). The medium traditionally combines images with text in the form of panels and arranges these panels in a sequence. Additional conventions, such as speech bubbles and gutters, require readers to apply reading strategies and skills beyond those traditional skills and strategies necessary for reading print-text (Jiménez & Meyer, 2016; Low, 2012; Meyer & Jiménez, 2017; Paligaro, 2014). As readers engage with comics, they develop new, visually oriented reading skills (Brenna, 2013) which better prepare them to be literate in the 21st century.

Digital Comics

One form of comics that has garnered little attention in classrooms but offers rich visual literacy potential is digital comics. Digital comics is an umbrella term used for a range of digital texts that employ comic book conventions (Kachorsky et al., 2020). While some digital comics are original works, most are digital immigrant (DI) texts (Stichnothe, 2014) which are essentially digitized renderings of their print counterparts. However, moving a text from a print to a digital platform alters the transaction between reader and text in a significant manner (Serafini, 2014, 2015b). While the underlying narrative or information shared is the same, how that narrative or information is presented differs.

Most digital texts are accessed through dedicated software or digital devices (Aguilera et al., 2016; Serafini & Youngs, 2013; Yokota & Teale, 2014) which require readers to have a certain level of familiarity in order to successfully read and navigate the texts. Furthermore, certain digital applications allow the reader to customize the reading experience through a guided-view (GV) which presents individual panels of the comic in sequence (Kachorsky et al., 2020). Still other variants such as motion books (MBs) incorporate additional conventions and modes. Panels, gutters, and speech bubbles are joined by sound effects, musical tracks, animated transition, and within panel motion (Kachorsky et al., 2020). Each additional feature requires additional skills and strategies on the part of the reader in order to construct meaning with the text. As such, educators and readers need theoretical lenses for analyzing these texts and for developing pedagogy around them (Serafini, 2015a).

Theoretical Framework

In this section, we describe three theoretical lenses that can be used to analyze and understand digital comics. Specifically, we discuss a social semiotic approach to multimodality, film analysis, and game studies. Each lens offers different insights about digital comics but also presents different limitations.

Social Semiotics

A social semiotic approach to multimodality is a theoretical perspective that helps conceptualize different forms—or modes—of communication. Modes are resources that humans use to communicate and make meaning such as speech, writing, gesture, and image (Kress, 2009). When more than one mode is combined into a single text, the result is a multimodal text. For example, digital comics combine the mode of image with the mode of text and, in some instances, include the modes of sound and music. Within a multimodal ensemble, each mode communicates and represents potential meanings in different ways (Kress, 2009). Readers of multimodal texts must work across the available modes to construct meaning. For a further discussion of multimodality, refer to Chapter 4 in this volume.

Within a social semiotic view of multimodality, scholars have paid particular attention to ways in which readers make sense of images. In particular, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) developed a visual grammar that offers a starting place for analyzing multimodal ensembles. Adapted from Halliday’s (1978) systemic functional linguistic framework, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) posited that images could be understood according to three metafunctions or systems of choices: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the compositional.

Ideational System

The ideational system offers choices about the different ways that objects/characters and their relationships with each other are presented (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). In OW, for example, the passengers on the train are consistently represented as cowering in fear. Furthermore, the vectors—the “imaginary lines formed between participants, objects, and viewers” (Serafini, 2014, p. 63)—created by the victims looking up connect them with their attackers. Such representation emphasizes the roles of the different characters in the story.

Interpersonal System

The interpersonal system consists of design choices that create a relationship between the reader and the content of the image (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). These include point of view, interpersonal distance, and gaze. Point of review is the perceived angle (i.e., straight on, above, or below) at which a reader views objects and/or participants within an image (Serafini, 2014). Looking up at a participant imbues that participant with power and importance (Serafini, 2014). In TA, there are several panels (e.g., pg. 3 panel 3) in which the reader is positioned as looking up at Orion Pax. This point of view emphasizes Orion Pax’s authority and power. In contrast, when a reader is positioned as looking down on a participant, the opposite effect is achieved (Serafini, 2014).

Interpersonal distance is the perceived distance between the reader and the objects/characters in an image (Serafini, 2014). According to Serafini (2014), “more intimate relationships are developed by bringing the world in for a closer look; whereas depicting people at a distance makes the viewer feel less connected” (p. 64). For example, on the first page of TA, the final panel contains an extreme close up of Orion Pax’s face. This close up works to establish a close connection between the reader and the character making us empathize with him.

Gaze is the degree to which the actors or participants represented in an image appear to be looking at the reader (Serafini, 2014). Demands—when characters look at the reader (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Serafini, 2014)—invite the reader into the story and insist that the reader connect with and participate with the character. In contrast, offers—when characters look away from the reader (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Serafini, 2014)—position the reader as an outsider. In MLP, the majority of the panels feature offers which makes the few demand gazes—all found on page 9—incredibly impactful. In the first of these, Twilight Sparkle looks directly at the reader while stating that the characters cannot go outside because of the danger presented by the Changelings (i.e., evil copies of other ponies). By demanding the reader’s attention in this way, Twilight Sparkle invites the reader to share in the danger and fear the ponies are experiencing. By examining gaze, interpersonal distance, and point of view as part of the interpersonal system, readers are able to consider how digital comics position them to relate to content.

Compositional System

The compositional system offers choices made in how an image is organized (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). This includes where different visual elements are located in an image and how specific visual elements are emphasized. Information values zones—top, bottom, left, right, and center—can indicate a certain value or characteristic of a visual element (Serafini, 2014). Centering an object/character suggests a degree of importance while objects in the periphery are not. For example, Orion Pax is centered 12 times in TA. This emphasizes his role as the main charact...