This article was downloaded by: [University of Hong Kong Libraries]On: 11 October 2014, At: 15:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Language and EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlae20

The multimodal writing process:changing practices in contemporaryclassroomsChristine Joy Edwards-Groves aa School of Education , Charles Sturt University , Boorooma Road,Wagga Wagga, 2650, AustraliaPublished online: 05 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Christine Joy Edwards-Groves (2011) The multimodal writing process:changing practices in contemporary classrooms, Language and Education, 25:1, 49-64, DOI:10.1080/09500782.2010.523468

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2010.523468

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Language and EducationVol. 25, No. 1, January 2011, 49–64

The multimodal writing process: changing practices in contemporaryclassrooms

Christine Joy Edwards-Groves∗

School of Education, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Road, Wagga Wagga, 2650, Australia

(Received 29 June 2010; final version received 2 September 2010)

This paper presents research exploring ‘writing and text construction’ practices incontemporary primary classrooms. In particular, the ways 17 teachers and their studentsengaged with technologies in the construction of classroom texts were investigated. Thecase studies presented prompt the necessity to extend more traditional understandingsof classroom writing and the writing process. This paper challenges and broadens‘what counts’ as classroom writing, and results reveal that the pedagogy of writingrequires teachers to account for the collaborative dimension of constructing texts inwriting instruction. Results challenge teachers to use technology to enhance students’creative possibilities in the construction of new and dynamic texts and build learningabout the elements of design into their instruction. It is argued that the prevalence ofdesign, presentation and production in classroom writing lessons now demands that itbe reframed as ‘the multimodal writing process’.

Keywords: multimodal; multimodal writing; design elements; creativity; technolitera-cies

Introduction

It is overly simplistic to suggest that technology has transformed the face of social interactionand educational practice. Learning spaces and practices are no longer bound by the fourwalls of the classroom, as technologisation and globalisation have advanced the need forstudents to design, produce and present multimodal texts as representations of learning. Newsocial, textual and technoliterate practices have enabled students to become ‘multimodaldesigners of text’ as they message, blog, Flickr, Facebook, podcast and Twitter their wayinto their future lives. These social and textual practices also demonstrate both creativityand a technical complexity which force traditional understandings of meaning making andcommunication to be revisited for their validity and relevance in today’s classrooms.

For many students, technologisation has enabled them to use their imagination andcreativity to combine print, visual and digital modes in multimodal combinations thatcan be and should be applied in classroom writing. And although technology, innovationand creativity are viewed as important goals of current educational agendas (AustralianCurriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2010; Dickinson 2010; Lewis 2005),in many classrooms the new reality is that teachers’ personal familiarity, capacity andfacility with technology determines what is given primacy in lessons (Edwards-Groves andLangley 2009; Langley 2009). Student opportunities to design and produce multimodal

∗Email: cgroves@csu.edu.au

ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 onlineC© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09500782.2010.523468http://www.informaworld.com

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

50 C.J. Edwards-Groves

texts as representations of learning and activity, for example, are consequently bound andpossibly restricted by this.

Every day as students step into their classrooms, they bring with them a broadeningrange of technoliteracies knowledge and skills learnt and practised within out-of-classroomor ‘third-space learning sites’ (Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, and Tejda 1999). Gutierrez,Baquedano-Lopez, and Tejda (1999) describe these ‘third’ spaces as the peripheral spacesfor learning and practising text construction and interpretation brought about by the flex-ibility and ‘on-demand’ nature of tools such as use of laptops, iPods and online spaces.Third-space pedagogy emphasises leveraging students’ out-of-classroom resources intoclassroom activities in a more explicit way (Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, and Tejda 1999).The practical challenge for teachers in everyday classroom life is bridging the learningspaces between third-space capacities and classroom activity. Hence, harnessing and ex-tending student capacity within authentic and generative learning spaces is a crucial goalfor contemporary education.

The position presented in this paper draws out these issues from research examiningthe utility and development of technoliteracies (the simultaneously functioning blend oftechnological and literacy skills) for writing lessons in primary classrooms. The case stud-ies presented specifically investigated the ways teachers transformed classroom technologyand writing practices through participation in different kinds of professional learning ac-tivities. Results from observations of classroom lessons (in particular those focused on textconstruction), along with surveys and interviews with teachers and students, revealed thenecessity to reconsider understandings about the dimensions of the writing process as it iscurrently understood and taught in many classrooms.

(Re)Conceptualising writing, text construction and meaning makingin contemporary times

Attention to writing pedagogy has been a central concern for educators and literacy researchfor many decades. In the 1970s and 1980s classroom writing underwent sweeping reformsthat challenged teachers to view it as more than a technical skill (Walshe 1981). In particular,attention was shifted from a relatively static and rigid approach to the teaching of writing(as a single lesson exercise) to consider writing as ‘a process’ with a widening focus onthe stages of writing (especially revising and publishing) that was described by Graves(1983) as ‘The Writing Process’. The purposes of writing and the contexts and audiencesfor writing (Calkins 1986; Cambourne 1988; Graves 1983, 1984) were given new primacyin lessons.

This revolution invited educators to adjust their teaching practices and understandingsof writing pedagogy to reflect the changing times. Teachers were encouraged to explicitlyprogress through particular stages of writing: pre-writing or planning, writing as drafting,revising, editing and publishing. ‘Process writing’ was taken up in classrooms everywhereas a way to structure the daily teaching of writing. Although these are not a fixed or linearseries of steps to the composition of a text, lessons often typically progressed through thestages, and in some instances some days or weeks were dedicated to a particular stage of theprocess (Campbell Stephens and Ballast 2011). Even today, and particularly in Australia,writing resources and programmes still encourage the use of this process approach (see e.g.First Steps Writing, Education Department of Western Australia 2008).

Writing was generally viewed as an individual task, and although students often engagedin dialogues or ‘conferences’ with their teachers throughout the stages, it was generallyindependent work. A ‘published’ text was the final piece of work, ‘neatly’ handwritten and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 51

illustrated or perhaps in later years typed using a word processor. This was in a time whencomposing linear written texts was the expected outcome.

What the concept of process writing offered teachers, for example, was a view that forthe skills of writing to develop it needed to be practised daily. Now with the ubiquitouspresence of technology in the textual lives of people, writing practices have changed, andthese notions need to be taken forward into contemporary teaching practices. Learningspaces need to factor in deliberate spaced practice conducted over time which includes theuse of multimedia and technology (which offer students an intrinsic motivation to engage ininteresting and authentic writing tasks; Kellogg 2008, 17). So, both the nature of writing andthe pedagogy of writing need to be revisited and re-envisioned to reflect current times, astechnology use is fast becoming more viable and highly visible in children’s out-of-schoolsocial worlds (Downes 2002; O’Hara 2004; Pluss 2007; Zevenbergen and Logan 2008).

Writing in a digital age: technology, multimodality and creativity

To write in today’s classrooms is to generate or construct dynamic and multimodal textsas representations of learning or as an artefact of creative composition. Accounting forthe prevalence of out-of-school technoliteracies, it is no longer sufficient for students toonly present pen-and-paper or linear linguistic texts; there is a need for multimodal writing(Oakley 2008) to take prominence in every classroom. In fact, ‘we can no longer call itwriting exclusively as this is too simple for what text has become’ (Healy 2008, 26); creatingmeaningful text is now as much about design, production and presentation. Technology hasthe capacity to facilitate this dimension of text production and presentation.

A contemporary focus on writing highlights how technology use also enables newpossibilities for creativity – new creativities – in multimodal text construction and meaningmaking. Indeed, as Kress (2003) observed, ‘much of what we regard as creativity happensas students move across modes’ (36). And so, as students are increasingly being expectedto represent learning in dynamic multimodal texts, there is a need to provide learningopportunities which overtly enable students to move across the multiple modes of textdesign and textual presentation so that creative possibilities are explored and enhanced.

Constructing textual meaning for today’s students requires an emphasis on design, pro-duction and presentation as a ‘multimodal’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) constellationof valuing, knowing and utilising linguistic, visual, spatial, gestural and audio character-istics (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). Effective writing lessons must incorporate the explicitteaching of these ‘elements of design’ (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). Classroom texts needto reflect a broadening range of multidimensionality (on virtual posters, in PowerPoint, invideos or movies, as speeches in podcasts and so on). However, the multidimensional, andperhaps even unwieldy, nature of the process of constructing texts is complicated whenmusic, sounds, voice-overs, animations, digital images and so on, enter the textual spaces(Campbell Stephens and Ballast 2011). This creates new challenges for the contemporaryteacher. Creativity and design (through overt knowledge and use of the elements of design)and ‘practise at crafting knowledge for specific audiences and purposes’ (Kellogg 2008,11) pave a new pedagogic territory, and how everyday teachers do these in their day-to-dayinstruction is an important dimension of professional learning.

There is a plethora of educational literature offering rationales, suggestions, methodsand frameworks for teaching in a digital age. These texts provide teachers with imperativesor inspiring success stories, ideal models and interesting examples of potential uses oftechnology integration in classroom settings. However, there appears to be a disconnectbetween the models and examples and the in-reality power everyday teachers feel about

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

52 C.J. Edwards-Groves

trialling, practising and extending students’ writing capacity. In an attempt to fill this gap,the research presented in this paper aims to provide teachers with a sense of agency andcontrol about how they can step through their own learning processes to address teachingwriting in contemporary classrooms.

Textual interactions and collaborations

Today’s youth, or the ‘Net’ generation as they are often described, have very differentinteraction styles with technology than previous generations; and in learning situations theythrive on the utility of technology, creativity, social interaction and community (Nichols2007). Technology use has shifted the nature of communicative action, as young peopletoday interact within a diverse range of communicative spaces: interpersonal, virtual, digitaland textual. What is important is the recognition that working with technology necessitates amore collaborative approach between teachers and students (Matthewman 2003). Therefore,it is imperative that writing lessons pay attention to the ways they visibly and explicitlyconnect to these new ways of interacting and communicating (Edwards-Groves 2003).

The study

Research site

The study was an action research project conducted in rural inland Australia over an 18month period. In this region, the local education office was involved in an initiative toprovide in situ support for information and communication technology use in schools.Many teachers in the region had not yet incorporated technology into their day-to-dayteaching in any observable way beyond word processing or what I describe as ‘digitalcolouring-in’ (Edwards-Groves and Langley 2009), nor had they heard of or understoodthe concept of ‘multiliteracies’ or ‘the elements of design’.

Participants

This paper draws on two collective case studies (Creswell 2008). Case 1 involved 12teachers from five different primary schools; Case 2 involved all five teachers (including ateaching principal) from one primary school. The 17 teacher participants ranged in yearsof experience (teaching between three and 25 years) and volunteered for the project afterbeing initially addressed about the research by school leaders. The teachers taught studentsranging from kindergarten (five-year-olds) through to Year 6 (11- to 12-year-olds). Bothcases involved professional learning which was ongoing and over time, or ‘spaced practice’(Kellogg 2008), for both teachers and students in classrooms.

Case 1 teachers met 10 times (for full day sessions) at regular intervals over one schoolyear. These sessions involved a balance of the following:

(1) facilitator-led sessions constituting review and analysis of relevant literature and pro-grams, software demonstrations and guided practice, trialling, learning about the el-ements of design with static and dynamic texts, sharing classroom experiences andartefacts and negotiating agendas for future learning sessions;

(2) lesson demonstrations and debrief sessions led by ‘more knowledgeable experts’ (thismay have been a member of the group or other system facilitators); and

(3) observation, focused reflection and critique of peer teaching.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 53

Between the sessions teachers were supported with in-class visits by the facilitator andteacher partners. Teachers took turns in hosting the sessions at their school and demon-strating ‘newly’ learnt practices in their classrooms. The researcher acted as a participantobserver and mentor.

Case 2 teachers were a part of a staff where all teachers in the school were committedto taking up technology use as a whole-school project. These teachers met six times over a12-month period in their school; their involvement included the following:

(1) an introductory situational analysis and survey session (aiming to gauge the level ofcomfort, expertise and interest);

(2) a full day professional learning session (which included software demonstrations andcritique, understanding elements of design, guided practice, focused reflection andplanning); and

(3) four follow-up staff meetings (two hours) which included focused reflection of class-room experiences, sharing artefacts and renegotiating individual learning plans.

These five teachers were supported in their own classroom at least twice over the period(focus was negotiated individually), with one teacher working closely with the researcherfor an additional six in-class sessions of two hours and two full one-day sessions. Thisgroup was mainly led by the researcher who acted as a facilitator but was also supportedperiodically by system facilitators.

Data collection

Data were gathered using a range of established qualitative methods which aimed to build apicture of participants’ experiences within their own contexts. This included the following:

� participant observation and audiotaping of selected classroom teaching and profes-sional development sessions (extensive field notes were taken);

� semi-structured surveys (17 teachers); and� interviews with Case 2 teachers and a student focus group interview (random sample

of six students aged 10–11 years from one Case 2 class).

The themes presented emerged from careful examination of field notes, survey responsesand transcripts of audiotaped interviews and professional learning sessions. Data analysisfocused on the following:

(1) classroom lesson practices – what was observed in classrooms in relation to pedagogy,technology use and text construction; and

(2) participant perspectives – and how the participants (teachers and students) themselvesaccounted for the practices and the changes.

Findings

Focusing on the above categories, this section presents these findings under two mainheadings:

(1) multimodal writing: the utility of multimedia and technology for the writing process,design and creativity; and

(2) changing the pedagogy of writing: valuing interactivity and collaboration in classroomlearning spaces.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

54 C.J. Edwards-Groves

Multimodal writing: the utility of multimedia and technology for the writingprocess, design and creativity

In the early stages of the project, it was observed that in most classrooms computerswere mainly used for word processing when preparing work for display (that is, studentswould type up their story or report). The typed text was described by teachers and studentsas the ‘published’ text. In some classrooms technology was not used at all, and in some,students ‘did computer activities or games’. Writing in these classrooms seemed to progressthrough the linear stages of writing (introduced by Graves 1983) from planning (in someinstances, but not all) to drafting, editing, revising and publishing (sometimes). Althoughstudents in some classrooms prepared PowerPoint presentations, these were generally linearwritten text, occasionally with an image inserted. There was little attention given to theutility of multimedia and technology as a motivating feature of ‘publishing’ or to thefeatures of design and the creative or multimodal presentation of the final ‘published’text.

An important thread of change emerged towards the end of the project as teachers andstudents appeared to move into multimodal representations of learning. Although this wasevident in all cases to some degree, those teachers in Case 2 (where the intervention was awhole-school project) appeared to be more prepared to describe both the challenging andthe transformative nature of the ‘new’ practices in their classroom. It might well be thecase that for these teachers, because they were all involved in the project as a whole school,with direction from the principal committed to the project, they could actually engage inspontaneous dialogues about their day-to-day practices in an ongoing and more informalway. A noteworthy difference was that teachers from Case 1 were restricted to having suchfocused conversations with only a few (and for some of these teachers they were the onlyone from their school participating) and on limited occasions (during visits by peers andthe facilitator or at the sessions).

In the following excerpts from final interviews (mostly from Case 2), teachers andstudents articulated changes in technology use and text construction practices. In the firstexample, students learnt to present text about climate change in animated diagrams inPowerPoint (see Figure 1 as an example). (Note that all names are pseudonyms.)

Chelsea explains (below) her diagram and what she learnt. She talks about howthings have changed for her as a writer, and her comments suggest both the multi-modality of the text and the task (connecting oral texts, written texts and dynamic texts):

Chelsea (11 years): We are doing an oral presentation as well as an animated presen-tation. I first had to research the topic of deforestation and thenwrite up a report, I then used publisher; and what it is, it’s like, it’sfor our main topic and it’s a moving diagram on how deforestationadds to global warming. We’ve actually created a diagram on thecomputer as well that moves and does all that, I did it with customanimations – And it’s got arrows everywhere to show when thetrees fall and carbon-dioxide goes into the air – And heat rays arereleased from the sun, and then they bounce off there, and then dueto more heat rays. . . . Yeah. . . . and then carbon-dioxide releasedfrom thing, and more heat rays are released from the sun, and theybounce off the earth, and some get through and some don’t, and dueto more heat rays the earth becomes a hotter place [Note: Chelseais demonstrating how her diagram moves as she describes her text].

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 55

The earth

End of atmosphere

Layer green house gases

sun

A tree made of carbon

Heat rays

Carbon dioxide

Figure 1. Chelsea’s dynamic text, demonstrating the effects of deforestation on climate change,created in PowerPoint.Note: The arrows moved across the text to denote the movement of gases in the environment.

Researcher: So how does actually doing this, like creating this slide, help you knowmore about deforestation?

Chelsea: You have to really know about it [deforestation] and understand it tobe able to make the moving diagram. . . . It has to be right.

Researcher: How is it different from what you used to do?Chelsea: You still do research and that in drafts, but before I probably would

have just written a report and drawn a plain diagram and just talkedabout it; now well it’s just a way to put all your information together,in a way that is interesting, it’s got to look effective so it is interestingfor the audience . . . , we have to play around with how it, you knowplan it out, and set it out too; and it, sort of helps things, instead of justtalking about it, with who you’re presenting . . . you can actually showthem, which is sort of helpful as well, because you know, sometimesthey don’t all the time understand it when you’re just talking . . . . Wehave to think about our audience, it’s a way of involving the audience. . . the Kindergarten children we are presenting to.

This transcript segment raises many interesting points. Firstly, Chelsea orients to themultimodal and multidimensional nature of the task and the text (to present an oral as well asanimated presentation), with each one serving the other. There was not simply one text to bewritten. In order to present the final text to the kindergarten, students constructed a written

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

56 C.J. Edwards-Groves

research report, the script for the speech and the animated PowerPoint. Chelsea’s comment,‘You have to really know about it [deforestation] and understand it to be able to make themoving diagram . . . It has to be right’ points to how researching and knowledge combinewith the technology to be an important multilayered dimension of text development. Here,how to represent her learning about the movement of gases in deforestation is central.She implies that representing school learning now means creating dynamic texts that movebeyond linear written texts, in this instance to make a moving diagram to ‘show the audiencehow deforestation works’.

Similarly, Sharnia (from a different classroom making a class video) also recognisesthat texts need to be crafted differently to ‘show meaning’:

Sharnia (10 years): Now, it helps us to really show what the information we re-searched means.

Lachlan (11 years): It was still like writing a report or something like that, we stillhad to draft and edit, but you know; we got to present it in acreative way.

Timothy (11 years): . . . this made us think hard coz it had to be good for the audi-ence and that is cool.

Showing highlights the vital role of understanding and utilising the elements of design.For these students, classroom writing practices have changed. How design, production andpresentation (and creativity) play a new role in their writing and text construction wasacknowledged. Further, comments by Lachlan signal that design and creativity are newaspects of presenting information in classroom texts. Chelsea and Timothy make explicitthe connection between the critical role of text purpose, audience awareness and text de-sign as ‘it had to be good for the audience’. These students, like those reported in otherstudies (Matthewman 2003), show an explicit awareness of multimodality in relation toaudience and purpose, and gesture towards knowledge-crafting as described by Kellogg(2008, 7). This is a stage of writing whereby the students have moved beyond consid-ering only the author’s representation of ideas and knowledge (knowledge-telling) andwords of the text (knowledge-transformation) to accounting for the audience. To arrive atthis point, these students were engaged in deliberate spaced practice (Kellogg 2008) overtime.

When asked how she learnt to create the moving diagram, Chelsea responded, ‘I sort ofgot the first ideas from my teacher and then went home to play with till I got it right’. Themessage here is that for Chelsea and her classmates, constructing new and dynamic textsrequires time for playing on the peripheral in the third pedagogical space (as described byGutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, and Tejda 1999). By introducing Chelsea to this multimodalway of constructing and presenting text, the teacher produced a generative learning oppor-tunity for Chelsea as she went home to play and practise on her own. Third-space learning,and her teachers’ recognition of its value, enabled Chelsea to practise and develop newcapacities in multimodal text construction.

The excerpt highlights that for these students, new texts need to be multimodal (oral,written and dynamic) and have visual effect (look effective), need to be set out (planned anddesigned), need to be interesting for the audience (be creative and show learning) and needto have authentic audiences and purposes (to show kindergarten children about climatechange).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 57

Changing the pedagogy of writing: valuing interactivity and collaboration inclassroom learning spaces

The role of collaborative learning in writing classrooms was highlighted by both the teacherand the students in one Year 5/6 classroom. In this classroom, the students produced a video‘tour’ of their local community, using puppets to tell the story of the town’s history. Thevideo was then uploaded to a website also designed by the students. In the followinginterview extract, their teacher recognises the role that interactivity has for learning incurrent times:

utilising the co-operative learning strategies to have the students talk about and consult withothers about their writing is an important way to foster meaningful talk that is focused onlearning and even problem solving, . . . with the age of the internet we could be in danger ofneglecting the importance of interaction to learning and living. (Year 5/6 teacher)

Interestingly, it was a conceptual focus also recognised by all the students in this class;these students were able to recognise how new interactive practices influence learning. Inthe following transcript excerpt taken from the student focus group, students (aged 10/11years) discussed how the success of their work (to create a video tour of their local town)hinged on the interactions they encountered with their classmates from the beginning ofthe process:

Nellie: Well you can get more stuff done and if it’s just one person you usuallyjust come up with 1 or 2 ideas but if you’ve got about 5 people they’veall got different ideas and you can then work together and get a reallygood idea.

Lucas: Yeah, it’s better working in a team sometimes, sometimes we haveissues but you actually solve them by having someone else to workwith.

Sharnia: Well, we had to be considerate and co-operate when making deci-sions. . . . if we didn’t do our bit then the whole thing wouldn’t work.

Nellie: Working [in teams] like we were allowed to do, we get to talk aboutour ideas more so it’s actually more productive, that we can actuallyproduce more research or more ideas than we would by ourself.

Jono: Yep better quality/Lucas: /more efficient too, we get twice the amount of work done in half the

time.Researcher: Better quality; tell me about that, it’s a good point.

Jonno: Well I mean [our work] is better quality because we have to discuss itand work it out together, the ideas get even better, you know, we sortof have to listen to each other and we can even get their point of view,so it’s got to be better.

Mikey: Yeah and we could talk about how to set it out on the video, thestoryboards and that, you know design it, the scenes.

Timothy: //our ideas together is good, we learn to listen to each other and worktogether too, I even found out I liked to work with Mary, we had lotsof good ideas together . . . it was fun.

The talk in this transcript offers valuable insight into student perceptions about therole of interaction in classroom writing. Classroom writing had changed for this group

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

58 C.J. Edwards-Groves

of students, and they were able to recognise it, account for it and evaluate it in terms ofthe benefits for their learning. In their comments students validated teamwork as a criticalinfluence on both the process and the production of their text.

Emerging from this interchange are key attributes of group learning processes specif-ically identified by the students. They recognised that by working in groups to write theirvideo they were able to:

get more stuff done . . . , work together and get a really good idea . . . , solve problems . . . , bemore productive . . . , produce more research or more ideas than we would by themselves . . . ,[produce] better quality . . . , be more efficient . . . , get even better ideas . . . , learn to listen toeach other and work together.

This checklist of learning practices equally served new writing practices, student en-gagement (as they worked with others and the task) and motivation (that it was fun).

These students also identified changes to teaching practices. Woven through the follow-ing exchange are links between new processes for writing (or constructing text), interactivityand teacher change:

Mikey: And so because Mr C changed this way of doing research and writingand stuff it is better for us, I reckon I learnt more, I loved doing it, itwas so interesting, we have more say in some of the stuff.

Researcher: What do you mean by that?Mikey: Well, you know, it was different than most other times, um we got to

choose what bit we would like to do for the project and then from thebeginning got to plan out how we would write the video with otherkids in our group. We all got to have a say in the first bit of the planand even how the video would be made.

Lucas: I liked that we, I felt important when the others liked my ideas forputting the things together on the show . . . think about the end at thebeginning was like using our imagination and that.

Careful examination shows that these students orient to new dimensions of classroomwriting. Mikey directly attributes these new ways to change in teaching practices. Heconnects the production of the video to writing in his observation that ‘from the beginningwe got to plan out how we would write the video’. ‘Writing the video’ for him was part ofthe same process (that is, the process of writing includes production and design); similarlyfor Lucas who suggests that they now need to think about the end at the beginning. Thesecomments pose a striking suggestion (taken together with those presented in the previoussection) that writing in today’s classrooms is a multimodal process.

Synchronous learning

It became evident that throughout the project, teachers and students often engaged insynchronous learning of literacy, the literacy of technology and technology use. It wasobserved that over time many of the teachers in the study adjusted their more print-basedpractices to encompass a new multimodal dimension to their writing lessons by shiftingmore print-based writing practices (for example) to co-create digital texts. Although mostof the teachers demonstrated use of the free downloadable Photostory 3 program for arange of curriculum purposes, some experienced a level of frustration with the difficulty of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 59

securing access to the digital cameras and the portable laptops when required, and so thedurability of professional learning was challenged in some instances. Nonetheless, in oneclassroom, students simultaneously learnt about alliteration as they wrote poetry, uploadedpictures, created background sounds and learnt about the design elements to create digitalpoems, using the software program Photostory 3. The dimensions of technology, writing ortext construction were taught and learnt simultaneously; they could not be separated out asindividual ‘lessons’. As students and teachers were engaged in using technology, the rangeof literacies students were required to participate in was intrinsically embedded throughoutthe lessons. This type of ‘synchronous learning’ was identified as a new pedagogicalapproach for teaching writing, validated by the teachers in this study; see the commenthere:

I could see how it all worked together in the real classroom situation. I was amazed at howquickly the kids got it, and they could work with the ideas for writing poetry and the technologyand learning about the elements of design all at once. They seemed to be really motivated, eventhe boys who hate poetry. (Year 3/4 teacher)

This view was typical of how teachers accounted for changes in their teaching. Inanother instance, as students wrote a play to be videoed they engaged in many multimodalaspects of literacy learning; that is, they researched local history through oral, textual andtechnological practices; wrote scripts; collated, discussed and summarised information;justified and expressed opinions; and planned their video, making storyboards. At the sametime they explicitly learnt about the design elements and the metalanguage of multimodality(visual, linguistic, spatial, gestural and auditory) and technology use (video use, uploadingdigital photos, website design, and editing video footage). Such new text constructionpractices and new ways of representing learning (through producing dynamic texts forpresentation, for example) also seemed to assist students in further development of otherwidely valued skills such as reading (researching, summarising, rereading drafts of scripts,and reading aloud), while simultaneously developing more complex technical skills requiredfor using technologies.

Similarly, the next example illustrates how one teacher integrated specific aspects ofcurriculum learning (literacy, literacy of technology and the key learning area [KLA]mathematics) with technology (using Photostory 3). The interchanges between the teacherand her kindergarten students in the excerpt below demonstrate how these dimensions ofwriting work together as synchronously functioning processes:

T: Who will be first? Which photo needs to go into the first position for ourstory?

S: The one with only one monster.S1: I’m first, my turn to put my photo in the spot.T: Okay do we need to move it forwards or backwards?

S(s): Backwards.T: Okay let’s count together as Charlie clicks backwards, see the back arrow

there, good.S(s): One, two, three four/

T: /how many spaces did we have to take it back?Charlie: Four, it was four.

T: Now it is in the right place, what do you want to write for your sentencein the story? I will type as you go.

Charlie: One silly monster.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

60 C.J. Edwards-Groves

Figure 2. Kindergarten collaborative writing journal.

T: Okay Charlie, you need to think about the writing . . . what font colour?Remember font is the name of the type of writing we use.

Charlie: Let’s use red for the writing, it’s my favourite colour.S2: No we can’t put red there coz you can’t see it.S3: Use yellow, it’s bright.

Charlie: Oh yeah, that’s better.

The complex multidimensional aspect of creating more contemporary texts is high-lighted. Throughout the segment the teacher and students overtly drew on the designelements as they used the technology (taking digital photos of students posing as ‘mon-sters’, clicking and dragging and using the Photostory program) in their collaborative storywriting. Multiple aspects of writing worked together as these kindergarten students learntabout visual design (colours of font), gestural design (posing as monster), linguistic design(sentence writing), spatial design (location of sentence on slide) and auditory design (read-ing and recording the script onto the Photostory). In this lesson the mathematical conceptsof ordering, ordinal numbers and direction (forwards, backwards, first, second, etc.) werebeing addressed at the same time. What was significant about this was that the studentswere able to identify the multiple dimensions of writing in their follow-up online journalwriting, a new forum for daily writing practice (see Figure 2).

The journal excerpt highlights that even as five- and six-year-olds, students can articulatethe connectivity between aspects of literacy, technology and the literacy of technology(design elements). Interestingly, the teacher comments that:

[She] didn’t realise the power that using the technology as a tool in the writing process couldbe so engaging for the kids. It surprised me how they could pick out a whole range of thingsthey learnt.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 61

This type of lesson exemplifies three important findings: firstly, the increasing preva-lence of the synchronously functioning dimensions of learning as literacy, the literacy oftechnology (design elements specifically in this case) and technology use, which operateas concurrent dimensions in constructing multimodal texts in classrooms. Secondly, it alsohighlights multimodal teaching where multiple modes of teaching are employed for thepurposes of achieving the lesson outcome. Thirdly, as pointed out by Healy (2008), writingin classrooms has moved beyond creating simple linear texts; in these new times it is nowas much about multimodality in design, construction and presentation.

Discussion

Building classroom interactions around text construction bridges traditional and newertext forms required by an understanding that multiliteracies (New London Group 1996)encompass a multimodal approach (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) to both text constructionand teaching. Through collaborative dialogues about text construction and spaced practice,multimodal teaching (which overtly combines sound, space, image and verbal dimensionsof teaching) presents us with a new pedagogical backdrop for designing, producing andpresenting oral, written and visual texts in today’s classrooms. Furthermore, as Mikeysuggests, ‘writing’ new texts is as much about organising how the students work togethercollaboratively. Conferring with others generates rich dialogues between students abouttheir work to ultimately enhance the learning experience.

In their conversations, students clearly portrayed themselves as involved in a certainkind of learning experience as a springboard for classroom action and interaction whichthey attributed to producing good work. Sharnia, for example, commented that ‘if we didn’tdo our bit, then the whole thing wouldn’t work’. She took seriously her responsibility forworking as part of a group to produce the video. Their comments ‘signal important waysthat interacting with others holds them accountable as knowing certain things’ (Freebodyand Herschell 2000, 47) for themselves and for the collective good (their team and the classproject).

It seems feasible, therefore, to suggest that the role of interaction plays a significantpart in the successful use of technology in classroom learning; it cannot be seen as anisolated activity or ‘digital colouring-in’ (or skills and drills activities) – it must be situatedwithin the context of authentic interactions and authentic learning tasks. Further, supportingteachers themselves through spaced practice in their own context seems to be supportive ofpedagogical change.

The data show that as students are required to generate dynamic and multimodal textsas representations of learning, new ways of conceptualising classroom writing (which farsurpass the traditional views of ‘The Writing Process’ as proposed by Graves 1983) are beingconstructed. Lachlan and Chelsea, for example, express knowledge of the writing process(drafting and editing) but point to the fact that presentation, multimodality and the explicitknowledge and application of elements of design are equally important in composing. Datashow that ‘planning’ often involves preparing and designing a multiplicity of texts whichrequire a recursive movement between and across phases of writing. This process is notlinear.

In their accounts, teachers and students take the elements of design (linguistic, visual,spatial and auditory) to be integral and essential dimensions of the writing or text construc-tion process. In their classrooms they engage with the visual mode, the language mode,the auditory mode, the spatial mode and the dynamic intersection between these elementswhen constructing text. By learning about elements of design and being expected to present

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

62 C.J. Edwards-Groves

information and stories in new and dynamic ways, a new dimension to traditional ways ofconceptualising the writing process emerges. Clearly, the conventions and social purposesof writing have developed beyond the more traditional perspective of the ‘writing process’initially described by Graves (1983, 1984) and Calkins (1986) for example.

Since classroom texts are becoming increasingly multimodal, so too is the processby which they are written. Retheorising writing in new times demands that pedagogicalpractices and understandings incorporate ‘designing’, ‘producing’ and ‘presenting’ as keyelements of the writing process. To be relevant in the contemporary classroom these newdimensions of writing and text construction need to sit beside ‘planning’, ‘drafting’, ‘edit-ing’, ‘redrafting’ and ‘proofreading’. These new practices have generated the need for thewriting process to be reconceptualised as the ‘multimodal writing process’ as students moverecursively between and across phases of writing.

The view here is that multimodality does not replace important foundational writingskills but that the elements of the writing process are extended to account for the shiftin textual practices that technology demands. The multimodal writing process considerstext generating or construction as a dynamic discursive process encompassing recursivemovement between its phases. I propose that this new conceptualisation of the writingprocess is necessary for valuing and supporting the reality of out-of-school or third-spacepractices. Moreover this alone is not sufficient; supporting new writing pedagogies requiresdeliberate spaced practice, as suggested by Kellogg (2008), by teachers and students alike.

Collaborating to fashion new types of texts explicitly wires students for different socialpractices which move in and between textual spaces they encounter in their everydayand school lives. Rather than privileging print-only representations, multimodal teachingrecognises, capitalises on and extends the technoliterate practices students engage in outsidethe classroom. The cases presented substantiate the need to harness what is learnt andpractised in third-space learning sites, as it appears that contemporary students are not onlyadept but also willing to learn and accommodate new knowledge and practices and applythem to existing technoliterate repertoires.

Conclusion

In the study presented, students’ design skills were recognised and validated when they wereencouraged to collaborate and critically represent curricular knowledge through multimodaltexts. This multimodal lens reinvents writing as both a multimodal process and a creativeendeavour. Furthermore, if we are to harness and extend students’ taken-for-granted orthird-space technoliterate practices, a renewed focus on creativity and the explicit teachingof elements of design is required (Kalantzis and Cope 2005) so that representations oflearning are relevant and current. To be relevant, there needs to be a multimodal view of thepedagogy of writing (through collaboration and spaced practice) and the writing processitself. Therefore, utilising technology in and around classroom writing events needs tobe conducted in a way that overtly demonstrates developing student capacity to learnmultimodally and to negotiate and manipulate the multimodal nature of classroom texts.

This paper highlights four imperatives for teaching writing in this new pedagogicspace: firstly, classroom practice needs to explicitly enable multimodal, collaborative andinteractive learning opportunities between students, between teachers and students andbetween students and online learning spaces over time; secondly, the recursiveness ofwriting new texts needs to be acknowledged in text construction as students move be-tween and across phases of writing; thirdly, pedagogical practices must not only be gen-erative but also explicitly draw on the technoliteracies students are ‘practising’ in their

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

Language and Education 63

out-of-classroom or ‘third spaces’; and fourthly, teachers should step slowly with theirstudents in learning to write multimodally and adjust pedagogical practices.

To conclude, this discussion is but a brief excursion into the universal issue of howtechnology has created a new landscape for producing oral, written and visual texts. Thisnew terrain challenges current practices and understandings about generating texts intoday’s classrooms. Learning about writing and learning to write require understandings ofwriting processes and skills to be reconceptualised to also be about designing, producingand presenting text by utilising new technologies. Viewing writing and text constructionas the multimodal writing process, as suggested in this paper, balances the more dominantwritten-linguistic modes of text construction (including linear online texts) with dynamicelements of design. Such a view projects classroom writing into a new pedagogic space.

ReferencesAustralian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. 2010. K-10 Australian Curriculum

(Consultation draft). Sydney: Author.Calkins, L. 1986. The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Cambourne, B. 1988. The whole story: Natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the class-

room. Auckland, New Zealand: Ashton Scholastic.Campbell Stephens, L.C., and K.H. Ballast. 2011. Using technology to improve adolescent writing.

Boston: Pearson Education.Cope, B., and M. Kalantzis. 2000. Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures.

South Yarra, Melbourne: Macmillan.Creswell, J.W. 2008. Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and

qualitative research. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.Dickinson, P. 2010. Developments in English: Text2txt. In Becoming an English teacher, ed. S.

Clarke, P. Dickinson, and J. Westbrook, 218. London: Sage.Downes, T. 2002. Blending play, practice and performance: Children’s use of the computer at home.

Journal of Educational Enquiry 3, no. 2: 21–34.Education Department of Western Australia. 2008. First steps writing. Port Melbourne, Melbourne:

Rigby Heinemann.Edwards-Groves, C. 2003. On-task: Focused literacy learning. Newtown, Sydney: Primary English

Teaching Association.Edwards-Groves, C., and M. Langley. 2009. i-Kindy: Responding to home technoliteracies in

the kindergarten classroom. Bridging Divides Conference Papers. Paper presented at theAATE/ALEA National 2009 Conference, July, in Hobart, Australia.

Freebody, P., and P. Herschell. 2000. The interactive assembly of social identity: The case of latitudein classroom talk. International Journal of Inclusive Education 4, no. 1: 43–61.

Graves, D. 1983. Writing: Teachers and children at work. London: Heinemann.Graves, D. 1984. A researcher learns to write: Selected articles and monographs. Exeter, NH:

Heinemann Educational.Gutierrez, K.D., P. Baquedano-Lopez, and C. Tejeda. 1999. Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid

language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture and Activity 6, no. 4: 286–303.Healy, A. 2008. Multiliteracies and diversity in education. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Kalantzis, M., and B. Cope. 2005. Learning by design. Melbourne: Victorian Schools Innovation

Commission/Common Ground Publishing.Kellogg, R.T. 2008. Training writing skills: A cognitive developmental perspective. Journal of Writing

Research 1, no. 1: 1–26.Kress, G. 2003. Literacy in the new media age. New York: Routledge.Kress, G.R., and T. van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of graphic design. London:

Routledge.Langley, M. 2009. iKindy: An exploration of the integration of Information and Communication

Technology (ICT) into kindergarten classrooms. Honours thesis, Charles Sturt University, WaggaWagga, Australia.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014

64 C.J. Edwards-Groves

Lewis, T. 2005. Creativity – A framework for the design/problem solving discourse in technologyeducation. Journal of Technology Education 17, no. 1: 35–52.

Matthewman, S. 2003. What does multimodality mean for English? Creative tensions in teachingnew texts and new literacies. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years 11, no. 1: 31–6.

New London Group. 1996. A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educa-tional Review 66, no. 1: 60–92.

Nichols, S. 2007. Exploring creativity support systems for the ne‘x’t generation. In IADIS, In-ternational Conference Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, ed. IADIS, 67–74. Lis-bon, Portugal: International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS).http://www.iadis.net/dl/final uploads/200710L009.pdf.

Oakley, G. 2008. e-Lea: Multimodal writing. Practically Primary Journal 13, no. 1. Norwood, SA:Australian Literacy Educators Association.

O’Hara, M. 2004. ICT in the early years. London: Continuum.Pluss, M. 2007. ICT in the classroom. Teacher 177: 56–8.Walshe, R. 1981. Every child can write. Rozelle, Australia: Primary English Teaching Association.Zevenbergen, R., and H. Logan. 2008. Computer use by preschool children: Rethinking practice as

digital natives come to preschool. Early Childhood Australia 33, no. 1: 37–44.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f H

ong

Kon

g L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

09 1

1 O

ctob

er 2

014