Overview
- Challenges readers to reexamine beliefs about children’s visual texts (“art”) and traditional definitions of “literacy"
- Demonstrates how meaning making processes are critical to children’s development, 21st century education, and social justice
- Presents a provocative sampling of international perspectives and disciplines
- Features authentic examples of toddlers, preschool, and elementary school aged children learning in diverse contexts
- Underscores the integral role of educators, parents, and policymakers in supporting children’s multimodal meaning-making processes
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Educating the Young Child (EDYC, volume 12)
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Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Contexts and Layered Texts
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Front Matter
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Visions
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Front Matter
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Conclusion
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Front Matter
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Keywords
- visual language and literacy
- children's drawing development
- drawing stories and graphic narratives
- resilience and art
- intergenerational art program
- MAKESHOP and studio thinking
- art and social justice
- early critical literacy
- teacher reflection and reflective practice
- creative thinking
- toddler and preschool experiences
- YouTube videos in preschool
- 21st Century learning
- co-drawing
- semiotics
- learning and instruction
About this book
Our image-rich, media-dominated culture prompts critical thinking about how we educate young children. In response, this volume provides a rich and provocative synthesis of theory, research, and practice that pushes beyond monomodal constructs of teaching and learning. It is a book about bringing “sense” to 21st century early childhood education, with “sense” as related to modalities (sight, hearing), and “sense” in terms of making meaning. It reveals how multimodal perspectives emphasize the creative, transformative process of learning by broadening the modes for understanding and by encouraging critical analysis, problem solving, and decision-making.
The volume’s explicit focus on children’s visual texts (“art”) facilitates understanding of multimodal approaches to language, literacy, and learning. Authentic examples feature diverse contexts, including classrooms, homes, museums, and intergenerational spaces, and illustrate children’s “sense-making” of lifeexperiences such as birth, identity, environmental phenomena, immigration, social justice, and homelessness.This timely book provokes readers to examine understandings of language, literacy, and learning through a multimodal lens; provides a starting point for constructing broader, multimodal views of what it might mean to “make meaning;” and underscores the production and interpretation of visual texts as meaning making processes that are especially critical to early childhood education in the 21st century.
Reviews
“The diverse voices of the contributing scholars honor the creative work of young children through rich visual and verbal examples that serve to bring meaning to the proposed conceptual ideas. Many chapters will push readers past familiar ideas and into a critical examination of contemporary literature and constructs to build broader conceptions of literacy and early learning experiences…a welcome new edition to a respected work that previous students have found very applicable.” (Angela Eckhoff, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA)
“It is the only book that I know of that specifically focuses on early childhood in exploring the ways in which children make meaning using multiple sign systems. This is of utmost importance as 21st century literacies are moving more toward multiple literacies such as the visual, rather than literacy understood only as print on a page… I will use this book in my classes for teaching literacy in the content areas, so it appeals to teacher educators not only in early childhood, but also elementary.” (Lucy Spence, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA)
“The book addresses multimodal approach to meaning making/learning in the times where international trends in education threaten arts-based approaches to education. Even though teachers who deal with children arts know how important multidisciplinary, multimodal and arts-based forms of learning are for the children and themselves, are still influenced by these trends. Narey articulates these challenges so well in her chapters. Narey’s strong voice binds the chapters together, framing the book’s content according to the contemporary challenges in early childhood education. The originality of the volume, among other things lies in its timely relevance.” (Biljana Fredriksen, University College of Southeast Norway, Norway)
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Multimodal Perspectives of Language, Literacy, and Learning in Early Childhood
Book Subtitle: The Creative and Critical "Art" of Making Meaning
Editors: Marilyn J. Narey
Series Title: Educating the Young Child
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44297-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-44295-2Published: 09 January 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-83033-9Published: 22 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-44297-6Published: 03 January 2017
Series ISSN: 2543-0610
Series E-ISSN: 2543-0629
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 330
Number of Illustrations: 93 b/w illustrations
Topics: Early Childhood Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Literacy, Creativity and Arts Education, Learning & Instruction