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(Re)designing writing in English class:

a multimodal approach to teaching
writing
a b
Jennifer Rowsell & Eryn Decoste
a
Department of Teacher Education , Brock University , St.
Catharines , ON , Canada
b
Toronto , ON , Canada
Published online: 24 May 2012.

To cite this article: Jennifer Rowsell & Eryn Decoste (2012) (Re)designing writing in English class: a
multimodal approach to teaching writing, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 7:3, 246-260, DOI:
10.1080/1554480X.2012.685226

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 Pedagogies: An International Journal
Vol. 7, No. 3, July–September 2012, 246–260

(Re)designing writing in English class: a multimodal approach

to teaching writing
Jennifer Rowsella* and Eryn Decosteb
a
Department of Teacher Education, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada; b Toronto, ON,
Canada
(Received 4 May 2011; final version received 9 October 2011)
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Based on a 2-year ethnographic study in an urban secondary school in Toronto, the

article presents how a teacher and a researcher teach Grade 11 students through a
design-based approach to teaching and learning in English class. Built on research and
pedagogy on design, the authors designed a programme of study as an alternative to
more traditional approaches to writing. After framing five core principles of design, stu-
dents completed a series of writing assignment that focused on particular modes such
as sound, visuals and materials. Focusing on specific modes for each lesson, students
considered design concepts and design epistemologies to complete assignments about
texts covered as a part of their programme of study. The authors conclude the article by
summarizing the theoretical and methodological orientations that were developed while
adopting design principles and the pitfalls of taking such an approach.
Keywords: writing; design; high school; multimodality; case studies

Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular
purpose.
Charles Eames

Introduction
Design is a plan for arranging elements as best to accomplish a purpose, Charles Eames
(Neuhart, Neuhart, Eames, & Eames, 1989) claimed, making it sound so simple, when in
fact, design is complicated, honed with skill and felt sensibilities. There are conventions
and senses that guide the design that professionals and novices alike acquire with training
over time. The following article is based on a study that uses design and design episte-
mologies to guide the teaching of writing in a Grade 11 English class. Built on voluminous
research arguing for a rethinking of literacy and English teaching in multimodal times
(Alvermann, 2006; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 1997, 2003; Kress et al.,
2005; Lancaster, 2001; Stein, 2007; Walsh, 2003), we present a 2-year study of design epis-
temologies as a pedagogical frame for literacy learning. To expand notions of composition,
there is a need to not only introduce other modes such as visuals, sounds and interactive

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1554-480X print/ISSN 1554-4818 online

© 2012 Taylor & Francis
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 Pedagogies: An International Journal 247

modes, but also develop frameworks, activities and lesson ideas to actually teach other
modes of representation and expression.

Design and design epistemologies

Design is an established field of study crossing diverse fields such as architecture, graphic
design, film studies, visual methodologies and many other fields. For the purposes of this
article, we opt for a simple definition of design returning to Eames’s epitaph at the begin-
ning: “Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a
particular purpose”. The definition works because in the high school study featured in the
article, we taught, modelled, and worked with the arrangements of elements so that students
could craft a message and achieve effects that capture their desired meanings in a text.
A mode is an element, unit, channel that expresses and/or represents an idea. Students
responded well to thinking about elements that they arranged and assembled to produce
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a multimodal text, so in this article, we privilege the language of the study and the lan-
guage that made the most sense to students. We did not use terms such as “mode” or
“multimodality” with students, instead we asked students to combine elements based on
some general rules and practices of design.
A more daunting task for us was to have students acquire a meta-awareness and deeper
appreciation and application of design principles. In other words, we set out to answer two
central questions: What is “design” knowledge? And, what practices are involved to com-
plete design work? Our notion of design knowledge derives from three sources: definitions
of design within visual arts and other fields; curriculum and policy documents on design;
and, a research study and resultant book by Mary P. Sheridan and Jennifer.
To understand design knowledge, we relied on Bryan Lawson’s work (2004) on design
and what designers know to piece together what “a designerly way of knowing is” (p. 95).
As an architect and a design scholar, Lawson unravels the design process by featuring
a model developed by Vinod Goel. Goel (1995) calls the first phase of design knowl-
edge, problem structuring or what Lawson calls “problem solving”. Problem solving works
from a concept that materializes through elements or modes. Goel’s model is as follows:
(1) problem structuring; (2) preliminary design; (3) refinement of design; and (4) detail
design. In other words, a designer gets a problem: for example, designing an extension for
an art gallery in an urban area. From this problem, designers brainstorm and improvise a
preliminary design and then a designer meets with the client to refine the design. Finally,
at the end of the process (before production takes place), designers create detailed designs
to be executed. Design relies heavily on details. Design knowledge is about inhabiting this
process of working a problem through iterations, resulting in a set of elements.
In conjunction with Lawson’s book, we built on Jennifer’s empirical study with Mary
Sheridan on design literacies (Sheridan & Rowsell, 2010). Their study offers a framework
and accompanying dispositions. The design process begins with an idea that is spun or is
materialized into a multimodal design; and these designs often remix into something else
by the user/reader/viewer. Sheridan and Rowsell spoke of attendant dispositions natural-
ized by designers that should be acknowledged by educators as is evident in student literacy
practices. For instance, producers use trial-and-error to find the right or best design. With
the high school study in mind, teenagers exhibited many of these dispositions during their
composition process.
Finally, our understanding of design relied on some curriculum and policy support
and Eryn’s own research on teaching design principles in the classroom. In the Appendix,
there is a criterion that Eryn developed based on her research alongside the curriculum
and professional development. For every lesson, students consistently applied these design
 248 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste

principles: balance (what elements work together evenly?); rhythm (what are the patterns
and how do these patterns work together?); proportion (what role does size play in the
design?); dominance (what does the composition look like and does anything stand out?);
and unity (how do you see the “text” as an entity?). We returned to these five principles
time and time again depending on what mode/element that we featured. Sometimes a mode
would be sound and we would analyse the design of music videos, or sometimes the mode
would be image and we interpreted photography. In the case of design in this article, we
interpret students’ analyses of existing designs and of their own compositions.
The language of the rubric and regular signalling of the terms helped students have a
common framework for thinking about design.

(Re)designing writing: theoretical context

With an explosion of media and digital “texts”, secondary English classrooms have been
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ushered into twenty-first century forms of design and urged to incorporate modes of rep-
resentation and expression such as images, sounds, hypertexts and so on, in addition to the
written word. Exploring the role of images and their relationships to writing, multimodal
research prompts us to account for more modes in texts and acknowledge that modes
introduce new forms of thinking and learning (Gee, 2003; Sheridan & Rowsell, 2010).
Drawing attention to complex and dynamic forms of meaning with modes in varied sites,
researchers have continued to investigate how modes shift repertoires of practice and ways
of thinking about texts (Burn & Parker, 2003; Jewitt, 2009; Kress et al., 2005; Siegel, 2006;
Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010). Multimodality, as a theory, provides a framework
for understanding the process of composition. A multimodal approach allows educators
and researchers to attend to a wider range of resources and practices.
Indeed, one of multimodality’s greatest powers is its capacity to shift how, where, when
and to whom we focus our gaze. (Re)designed writing approaches composition with modal
flexibility and by drawing on resources that invite the best possible, most apt mode to
transmit a message in a text. Gone are the days of relying solely on words as a core principle
of composition. To write today is to design elements on a page to reflect messages, values,
beliefs and opinions. By attending to ways in which young people make meaning, English
teaching enacts pedagogies that are multimodally responsive.
Design is a well-trodden path in varied theory and disciplines. When the New London
Group wrote their manifesto (1996) and edited collection (2000), they unravelled some of
the mysteries of design by claiming that “all meaning and design is transformative in one
sense: human agency constitutes meaning (designing) and remakes the world in the process
(the redesigned)” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, p. 205). Certainly a multiliteracies framework,
premised on the notions of available design, design and redesign prompts altered perspec-
tives on literacy learning and teaching. Moving away from words on a page to applying
sounds, images and camera angles as ways of assessing students’ literacy skills, educators
like Eryn have explored not only hidden, tacit practices students carry with them into the
classroom, but also epistemologies that inform these practices.

Multimodal literacies
Multimodal research unveils aspects of English and literacy learning that can be held
back by linguistic analysis. Take the nuanced research of Pippa Stein and her work with
young children and their multimodal meaning-making and transformation of ideas into
hand-made artefacts (Stein, 2007). Or, the work of Kate Pahl (2004) who connects the
sign to the sign-maker by tracing habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) and subjectivities embedded
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 249

in drawings and in play. Or, Carey Jewitt’s (2009) detailed work analysing diagrams of
scientific processes in science class as preferred heuristics over linguistic descriptions. Or,
Charmian Kenner’s (2004) interpretation of spatial organization and framing of writing on
the page: its directionality, the angle, shape, and size of its script. These studies individually
and collectively redress an overemphasis in the past on the written word. Multimodality and
social semiotic theory have opened up new possibilities for investigating aspects of school
English that allow more room for analysing unchartered skills and identity mediation for
students who do not feel as proficient within linguistic structures.
The work of Gunther Kress (1997, 2003, 2010) informs our application of multimodal
theory. In his work, Kress shows how language is partial in its capacity for expression
and that “there are always many modes involved in an event of communication” (Jewitt &
Kress, 2003, p. 3). Kress’s work with Theo van Leeuwen (2001) connects multimodality
to “the modes and media of contemporary communication” (p. 10), especially Internet
technologies and video games. When viewed through a multimodal lens, it becomes evident
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that “the act of writing is itself a multimodal practice that draws on visual and actional
modes, in particular resources of spatiality and directionality” (Jewitt & Kress, 2003, p. 2).
Clearly, multimodal theory plays a key role in our analysis of data.

Methodology
Research reported in this article took place from January 2011 to June 2012 in an ethnically
diverse, urban public high school in Canada. We worked closely together planning design-
based, multimodal work once a week over the school year. Eryn devised lesson ideas and,
together, we built each one around design principles that we presented in the Appendix.
Each Thursday over the course of the school year, we focused on a mode: images, moving
image, sound, camera angles and social networking. There is an ethnographic dimension
to the research because we take account of the school community and student habitus
(Bourdieu, 1990; Rowsell, 2011). In our continuing work together, we privileged student
participants’ everyday lives and funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005).
To do so, we asked students to complete questionnaires about their outside literacy prac-
tices and ruling passions (Barton & Hamilton, 1998) and Jennifer interviewed 2 of the
14 students as telling case studies of participants involved in the study. There are 14 stu-
dents in this English class and Eryn chose the two participants of the case study because
they stood on opposite ends of the spectrum from being very keen on English learning to
being indifferent, even lukewarm about English learning.
As a result, the study is by no means an ethnography as in moving into a setting and pre-
senting the perspective of an insider. Instead, the culture of a school, teacher and researcher
reflexivity, and perhaps most importantly, student identities were taken into account in
the analysis and writing up of the study and, in this way, the study presents more of an
ethnographic perspective (Green & Bloome, 1997) of an urban high school. We derived
our understanding of “ethnographic perspective” from Green and Bloome’s description
of an ethnographic approach to the application of design principles in Grade 11 English
classroom:

. . . adopting an ethnographic perspective, we mean that it is possible to take a more focused

approach (i.e., do less than a comprehensive ethnography) to study particular aspects of every-
day life and cultural practices of a social group. Central to an ethnographic perspective is the
use of theories of culture and inquiry practices derived from anthropology or sociology to
guide the research. (1997, p. 6)
 250 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste

Establishing a spectrum of ethnography helpfully separates extensive and comprehensive

studies of a given culture from shorter ethnographies that take some account of cultural
practice and an emic perspective of a context. It would be false to claim that Jennifer is an
insider after spending only 6 months in the school with once-a-week visits. However, it is
fair to say that Eryn is an insider to the school having worked there for 9 years.

Context
Arcadia Academy (pseudonym) is a secondary school in a mid-Eastern Canadian city
known for its multiculturalism and the student body at Arcadia typifies this diversity by
speaking multiple languages and a variety of religions. Arcadia is a specialized school that
features an enhanced core curriculum with an emphasis on entrepreneurial and business
skills. Situated between a mid-income neighbourhood and a low-income neighbourhood,
Arcadia Academy bridges the differential with a mix of middle and mostly lower socio-
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economic students. Although close to a wealthy area, Arcadia is far enough away that it
gets students from a different catchment area. Most Arcadia students live in apartment
buildings close to the school. The school layout falls in line with other high schools of its
kind: red-bricked, long hallways with lockers, a large auditorium for assemblies and class-
rooms sorted by subject area. It is a high school that typically moves its students towards
local colleges and professional trades.

Teacher
As a mid-career English teacher, Eryn has developed a particular philosophy of teaching
built on, as much as possible, imbuing media and popular culture into her programme. Eryn
has strong connections with students, and it is clear to Jennifer that students enjoy being
in her classroom. Eryn has been keeping a reflection journal during the study in which she
ruminates on her students and her approach to teaching them. In one reflection she says,

We live in a mediated environment where media literacy is a crucial life skill. Most students
participate in media through their use of technology and their consumption of programming,
text, audio and products. However, the critical components involving consumption of and par-
ticipation in our brave new media world is rarely or effectively addressed in the classroom.
Media studies is not reading the newspaper or making a poster. Media studies involve critical
thinking in order to deconstruct and hopefully challenge the bombardment of messages that
have ideological and commercial agendas. Considering our media-saturated society it is valid
to assert that true literacy must include media literacy; it must include students being active
participants in their media landscape rather than passive recipients. (4 April 2011)

Eryn has five key concepts of media that she consistently reinforces: (1) all media are con-
structions; (2) media texts contain beliefs and value messages; (3) each person interprets
media texts and their messages differently; (4) media texts reflect special interests (com-
mercial, ideological and political); and (5) each medium has its own language style, forms,
techniques, conventions and aesthetics. These tenets come from her own research on media
and curricular documents and they frame all of her lessons. Upon entering her classroom
the viewer is struck by these tenets of media and communication. Eryn encourages her
students to engage and think in terms of media through activities and instruction, but also
uses the potential of her classroom as “a space that is in process of being made” (Massey,
2005, p. 10). When you walk into her classroom, the space feels edgy and inviting and it is
a place where students linger.
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 251

Students
There are 14 students involved in the study, seven females and seven males. There are
several Somalian students, four Euro-Canadians, and some Middle Eastern and Caribbean
students. As with other teenagers the researcher has worked with (Rowsell, 2011), these
14 individuals have complex, dynamic lives. They build websites, make films, draw tattoos
and illustrate professionally. Often, these students have jobs after school and take care
of their siblings. Jennifer interviewed two participants Sean and Abdul1 to explore their
stories, ruling passions (Barton & Hamilton, 1998) and valued artefacts (Pahl & Rowsell,
2010).
The first interviewee, Sean, is an artist and has been for some time. Based on the three
excerpts from our interview below, he is an entrepreneur with ability to not only hone a
trade, such as illustration, but also to market his trade:
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I use Sharpies. I’ve actually ordered a lot of my markers from Montreal and from the US
because they have better quality markers; the only problem is that they cost more. That’s
basically my home life. (Sean, 1 January 2011)
Other than that I do play a lot of games and videogames and actually I have been doing
competitive gaming, which is where I would compete to play for money. (Sean, 20 January
2011)
I draw graffiti and I design tattoos sometimes and I have been trying to teach myself how to do
realistic designs. I started getting into my artwork in Grade 9, and I just taught myself. (Sean,
1 January 2011)

Constantly learning and honing his artistry, Sean exhibits the traits of twenty-first century
learning that Sheridan and Rowsell (2010) described in Design literacies as experimenta-
tion and trial-and-error:

. . . producers talk about frustrations, roadblocks, epiphanies, or aha moments when every-
thing came together, emphasizing that experimentation requires risk, which often brings
mistakes. These mistakes are not final failures but, rather, highly valued signs of growth that
allow producers to test, improvise on, and refine ideas, modes, or practices before they find
the best way to communicate their message. (p. 32)

With mistakes come epiphanies; through trial-and-error composers recognize that one
image is better than another, improvising on what is on-hand can generate novel approaches
and felt connections to text productions. With greater access to information online and
through media vehicles such as YouTube, learning through media texts has been taken up
more in the main. Sean is a telling example of a learner who learns by trial-and-error and
by experimentation.
Also a self-taught innovator, Abdul talked about being self-taught:

I find learning in school a bit more difficult than how I learn – I like to self-teach and I’ve self-
taught myself, and I find that a bit easier because then I know what I’m looking for and I know
what I need to learn, rather than somebody telling me what I need to learn and somebody
telling me how I need to learn it. (Abdul, 1 January 2011)

During our interview, Abdul talked about teaching himself how to build websites and how
to render 3D images, through YouTube videos. Abdul and his dad own a successful fish
business, buying and selling live fish on the Internet.
The stories, observations, and anecdotes of Sean and Abdul correspond with so
many other teenagers that Jennifer (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010; Rowsell, 2011) has met and
 252 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste

engaged with and who continue to impress both authors with their fearless creativity, their
repertoires of practice and their composition of diverse texts.

Data analysis
As the data set consists of interviews, assignment outlines, student assignments and reflec-
tive journal entries, we analysed all data through an open-coding approach. Rather than
begin data analysis with a set of themes in mind, we generated codes by reading student
assignments and in-class activities several times and reading the two case study interviews.
Clearly, we carry a bias or position that design literacies are our lens for programme plan-
ning and teaching methodology. However, as necessary and in keeping with the goals of
open-coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), we created new codes as needed in order to catego-
rize the data coherently. We decided to shape our themes around modes privileged during
writing activities. Although we had a stated aim of applying design principles to the study
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of English, particularly students’ conceptions of composition, our analysis focuses on how

designs came to fruition, especially when students privileged certain modes over others.

Discussion
The layering of different modes and focal modes during classroom activities gave students
more resources and materials with which to make meaning with texts. Through a series
of interconnected projects, we introduced texts that privilege certain modes over others.
Underpinning each lesson was a critical awareness of texts and the way that they are pro-
duced and composed. Questions framed many discussions: In what way does this text tell
a story? What conventions are used? Who is the intended audience? In what ways do peo-
ple use or consume this text? Where does this text come from? How could I produce a
similar text? The discussion is divided into the different forms of writing when privileging
certain modes: understanding writing through imagery; writing about sound; writing with
materials; writing through gaze and angles.

Understanding writing through imagery

One problem with writing in high school is that it lacks real-life applications. There are
many genres of texts that we read and compose in our day-to-day lives. Take magazines, in
particular fashion and Hollywood magazines, as popular culture texts loaded with discur-
sive and modal complexities and ideological devices and forms of composition. To explore
these kinds of vernacular, popular culture texts in our research, we profiled gossip maga-
zines such as Us, Life & Style, and In Touch. These genres of magazines rely on aspects of
popular culture, such as fixations on Hollywood stars; analysis of appearances and aspired
appearances; lifestyle choices; contrasting actors in their real lives from their characters in
films; and the day-to-day lives of famous people. We asked students to interpret explicit
and implicit messages in them. Our argument for doing so rests on a belief that to be effec-
tive readers and writers of vernacular texts, students need to recognize linguistic and visual
devices used to influence their readings. To interpret and critically frame gossip magazines,
we asked students to deconstruct them by reading them, leaving observational notes about
hidden agendas and messages on post-it notes, and thinking about the “laws of popular
culture”.
Eryn spoke about popular culture texts as having five elements: pop culture is change
and is always changing; pop culture is speed because everything in pop culture moves fast;
pop culture is money and about making money; pop culture is narcissism to provoke us
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 253

to think about our effects on our world; and pop culture is fun by providing an escape
from the toil of everyday life. Armed with these five elements, students set out to analyse
and annotate Hollywood magazines. First, students annotated their preferred readings of
images and text, and then students annotated oppositional readings of images and text.
By preferred reading, Eryn meant what the reader of the text needs to take away and how
the design of texts tells this story. In Figure 1 we present Pat’s preferred and oppositional
readings of contemporary fashion. Dresses, jackets juxtaposed with movie stars wearing
these same items induce readers to want to emulate movie stars and these inducements and
preferred readings navigate readers towards a certain position. Students call into question
inducements and positions by taking a different, opposing position on the image.
During the hour and half lesson, we worked with students in stages to focus on what
the images are telling us about society. After annotating their own preferred and opposi-
tional readings, they reviewed other students’ annotations and presented annotations that
they most agreed with to the class. In completing this assignment, writing became not
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only layered with positions, but also an active and iterative process of remix in that they
remixed the content with annotations to insert their own voice into the popular culture text.
After the activity, students wrote reflections about the register, layout and design of gossip
magazines.

Figure 1. Preferred and oppositional readings of gossip magazines.

 254 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste

Writing about sound

In order to conceptualize writing through sound, we viewed three different music videos
on YouTube with sound and without sound. The music videos that we viewed were Friday
by Rebecca Black; Roll Up by Wiz Khalifa; and I Know I Can by Nas. Students in the class
chose the three videos to represent different genres of music: self-made; hip-hop, rap; and
melodic and inspirational. For the first showing of a video, we offered both sound and
visuals. For the second viewing, we distributed a handout asking students to identify and
apply principles of design to the music videos. The design principles that we identified and
explained were balance, rhythm, dominance and unity. For balance, students analysed the
beat and frequency of beats within the melody; for rhythm, students analysed the nature of
the melody; for dominance, students analysed dominant sounds in the melody and words
in the lyrics; and for unity, students took account of the union between melody and lyric as
well as how the song hung together.
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The next step was, first, to watch the video without sound and then to listen to the video
without visuals. For the final viewing, students again watched the videos with both sound
and visuals. The goal of the activity was to isolate sound and visuals as compositional
devices and to compel students to think about and reflect on visuals and sounds as rhetorical
devices. With each showing, students wrote their thoughts on balance, rhythm, dominance
and unity. Table 1 lists design principles with sample student responses.
There was a cross section of responses, and although students were able to describe how
sound has rhythm or balance, we found that they had difficulty applying sound principles
to text. As researchers, we too struggled with teaching and modelling analysis of sound in
terms of design principles.

Writing with materials

Being a writer in contemporary times is as much about the bricolage, assembly and exper-
imentation of and with modes, as it is about technical skills. To investigate how students
combine materials to make a text, we asked students to invent a technology or innova-
tion. After talking through the activity, Eryn put arts and crafts supplies at the front of
the room with scrap paper to brainstorm ideas. One student proposed a double-sided flat-
screen television so that parents can watch their favourite television programmes while
their children watch their favourite television programmes and they are in close proxim-
ity. Two other students proposed a holographic wearable device that projects information
in three-dimensional displays. Three other students proposed videogames on different
themes. Figure 2 shows Emily making an iPad on a stand with the capacity to phone people
and to view them on-screen.
Using materials and proposing inventions invited students to think innovatively and to
consider materials not only for function but also for form. The activity was successful in
engaging students in the task and excited them about their inventions. It was a different
spin on writing that appealed to their creativity and their desire for experimentation and
improvisation.

Writing through gaze and angles

There is an adage in design and production in the marketplace (Sheridan & Rowsell, 2010),
which is: to sell a good product means to show and then tell. What became clear to us, when
we interpreted the role of angles and gaze as focal modes and design principles, is that
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 255

Table 1. Application of principles of design to music videos.

Principle Sample responses

Balance Friday Roll Up I Know I Can

– Volume “It is pretty balanced “Balance through “Balance of objects and
– Melody with lots of colour” beach scene” spaces”
– Lyrics – Mohammed – Nanha – Abdul
“Images and sounds “Colour creates “Balance created
are both balanced” balance” through beats”
– Hanin – Abdul – Mohammed
Rhythm “It is a constant “It has a strong and “The rhythm was
– Repetition or rhythm that steady beat” constant and always
alternating repeats” – Abdul flowing”
between – Sean – Nanha
elements
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“Medium tempo that “Medium volume “Two different genres of

keeps the song softens sound” music put into one”
together” – Hanin – Lisa
– Namisa
Dominance “She [Rebecca Black] “The dizzying effect “When he is rapping, the
– What do you is dominant in the when the camera words on-screen
hear most? video and she takes goes around effects match what he is
away from the sound” saying”
sound” – Mohammed – Orasu
– Hanin
“Singer is in the “Moving around
screen most of the visuals take away
time – taking away from sound”
from sound” – Emily
– Jasper
Unity “There isn’t a good “All of the images “Combining two genres
– Does various unity in the beat” came together to of music gives
sound – Abdul create balance” balance”
components – Mohammed – Hanin
work together
or against each
other?

students have a nuanced understanding of the function of showing – then telling. The task
that we assigned students was to produce a 3-minute rant that a classmate would film on a
FLIP digital camera. Eryn described a rant to the class as: “an individual self-expression
or an opinion; it is something that the ranter thinks should be known, and they’re not afraid
to tell you about it. A rant is usually done with wit and with humour” (24 February 2011).
Before the class activity, Eryn showed rants on different topics ranging from politics to
popular culture to world events. When we completed our rant activity, we asked students to
brainstorm an aspect of popular culture that they felt passionate about, to write a script for
their rant, then to storyboard the visual and sound techniques so that they could use them
to increase the impact.
The results of their rants were, for the most part, impressive. Being acquainted with
moving images as well as they are, they were able to identify the substantive and evocative
 256 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste
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Figure 2. A new iPad invention.

effects of body movement, gaze and vectors in their short rants. They actively invoked what
Burn and Parker (2003) describe in their research as “kineikonic mode”, which is a partic-
ular focus on the role of gesture in moving image media: “our approach will combine these
two in what we have called the kineikonic mode – literally, the mode of moving image”
(Burn & Parker, 2003, p. 63). Burn and Parker talk about aspects of the kineikonic mode
as affording meaning through framing, shot distance, camera angle, focus and so on. The
difference between the rant activity and Burn and Parker’s description of kineikonic modes
is that there was no on-screen editing that took place. The filming involved “a raggedness
and improvisation” (p. 65) that Burn and Parker talk about in their work.
Designers have always been concerned with viewer gaze, and many of the students
were able to translate their emotional response to the topic through props such as popular
culture photographs, wigs and focusing on objects. In Figure 3, we present a collage of
angles, props and vectors. The top row juxtaposes two students, Mohammed and Hanin.
One takes a side angle to conclude his rant – simulating the effect of walking out. He
thereby exerts agency by stating his views and keeping the viewer’s gaze while he exits.
Like Mohammed, Hanin takes a side-long pose to accentuate the red wig. As an added,
powerful feature, Hanin placed a red wig on her hijab to strengthen her argument about the
impact of looks and image in fashion. In the second row, you see Orasu blurring his identity
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 257
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Figure 3. A collage of kineikonic modes.

to make a point in his argument and then he and Abdul move the camera to their shoes to
add a rhetorical device through props (shoes) and angles. These subtle effects exhibit a
marked proficiency with pose, facial expressions and visual effects to evoke meanings and
opinions. What is most interesting about this visual is that it was one of the out-takes as
a practice run before their official rant. They were improvising and experimenting with
rhetorical devices by focusing in and out on objects. The focus on angles and gazes proved
to be one of the more successful lessons out of the four lessons.

Beyond utopian ideals: (re)defining writing through a design-based lens

The four different versions of writing taught us that students are aware of different effects,
elements and media genres, yet they had difficulty connecting these practices with an over-
all picture of composition. Also, they could not critically frame what they were doing
and thinking as they fulfilled activities. Students were hungry for design principles that
we did not have. Working with gaze and angle was more successful than the other forms
 258 J. Rowsell and E. Decoste

of “writing”. We attribute some of their interest and engagement around producing rants
to simply using FLIP cameras and storyboarding ideas with peers. Independent projects
such as writing through sound and analysing gossip magazines were far too solitary
for them.
If composition or writing teaches students how to synchronize several modes at once
or privilege one mode for an effect, then our definitions of “writing” in school will
loosen, and, so they should to meet contemporary needs. To be sure, incorporating and
building on the affordances of modes has opened up our English teaching and path-
ways into writing for different students. Yet, an enthusiasm for multimodality as a more
egalitarian approach to writing sometimes overshadows other complexities at play when
conducting ethnographic, multimodal research in classroom contexts. What complicates
multimodal teaching is not only the heterogeneity of participant interests and experi-
ences with modes, but also researchers’ and educators’ lack of experience and expertise
with modal praxis and design principles. Simply put, we do not know enough about
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multimodal logic to redefine writing within multimodal frameworks. Although modest,

this research study and many others identify gaps in the literature about how modes such
as sound work, or how movement expresses emotions (just to name two examples from
our study). If we approach composition and writing from a multimodal epistemology,
then far more work needs to be done on what constitutes proficiency or competence with
modes. Multimodality is therefore neither clear-cut nor a panacea. This research study is
a cautionary tale about clarifying, perhaps even refining, our technical understanding of
multimodality.
The boundaries and bandwidth of writing need to expand to make learning in English
class more meaningful and more engaging. That said, writing still deals mostly with words.
Writing should be tied to texts studied in English class. Writing also deals with, or at least
should deal with, new media and digital technologies. Writing should deal with design.
Writing ought to be creative and innovative. Yet, most of the time writing in high school
remains a five-paragraph essay on a canonical text.
What the study demonstrates is moment-by-moment shifts from one mode to the
next that take place when we make meaning. Isolating modes helped us to recognize
the potential and limitations of modes. However, to apply these principles to composi-
tion, we were limited by our lack of knowledge and know-how with specific modes like
sound.
What stands between students and high achievement in English class, particularly the
teenagers with whom we worked, lies in not recognizing the purpose of school English in
their lives. Certainly there are a host of competing forces such as having jobs after school,
digital environments, varied interests, social networking and even hobbies that displace the
value of linguistic writing. We found that when we shifted to multimodal writing, students
were more interested, engaged and invested in activities, but with this engagement came a
steep learning curve for us as educators about the principles of design, especially in terms
of specific modes.
What stands between many teenagers and writing is socialization into competent design
and critical framing of texts. For students who struggle with formal writing in English class,
they lack an awareness of what constitutes competent writing in different genres and for-
mats of texts. The lack of transparency and critical framing of compositional competence
in multiple modes limits current conceptions of writing in policy and practice. Before we
move forward to reshape frameworks based on multimodality, we urgently need the teach-
ing of writing to be informed by the expertise, know-how and skills of designers who know
all too well what modes can do.
 Pedagogies: An International Journal 259

Acknowledgement
The Producers: Design Literacies-in-Action is an International Reading Association (IRA) Elva
Knight funded project and we acknowledge IRA for supporting our research project.

Note
1. We used pseudonyms throughout the article and project to protect the identities of participants.

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Appendix. Design criteria for high school study

Balance
• Location, volume and size of objects/people
• Balancing of colours (light/dark or bold/neutral colours)
Rhythm
• Repetition or alternating between elements
Proportion
• Relationship in size between one thing and another
Dominance
• Where does the eye go most in the video?
Unity
• Do the various elements connect? How and Why?