Attuning to Multimodal Literacies in Teacher Education: A Case Study Analysis of Preservice Teachers' Aesthetic Reader Responses to a Wordless Picture Book

This qualitative research investigated two preservice teachers' multimodal aesthetic reader responses to a wordless picture book in a literacy methods course. This study took up a sociocultural perspective that was informed by transactional reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1986, 2013) and further supported by a pedagogy of multiliteracies, multimodality (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kress, 2010; New London Group, 1996), and new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). The primary data sources that informed this study were the wordless picture book "Here I Am" by Patti Kim and the multimodal texts composed by two preservice teachers that incorporated music, dance, images, and poetry. A transcription of the researcher's reflective class discussion with the preservice teachers further triangulated the results of the study. Undergirded by multiple case study methodology (Merriam, 1998), this inquiry applied multimodal analytic techniques inspired by Jewitt (2017), Kress and van Leeuwen (2021), and Norris (2004) that were used to establish researcher positionality and closely examine the collected case study data. This study also used innovative analytic methods influenced by music transcription to make visible the meaning-making affordances of visual art forms, musical compositions, poetic texts, and dance. Key findings from this research pointed to preservice teachers' use of modes to narrate, organize, and emphasize meanings to convey emotions, tones, and actions through modal quality, synchrony, and complexity. Additionally, both preservice teachers used an array of digital tools to design and assemble their compositions, thus indicating the affordances of incorporating new literacies in teacher education. This study showed that providing opportunities for learners to design modally complex narratives that incorporate musical, visual, and embodied ways of knowing and meaning can lead to deeper understandings of multimodal texts. This dissertation posits that attuning to multimodal literacies expands the possibilities for future research in education through its conceptualization of how modes are orchestrated to create symphonies of meaning through music and art. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]