Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2017

Abstract

This article examines multimodal texts created by a cohort of academically marginalized secondary school students in Singapore as part of a language arts unit on persuasive composition. Using an interpretivist qualitative approach, we examine students’ multimodal designs to highlight opportunities presented for expanding literacy practices traditionally not often available to lower-tracked students. Findings highlight the authorial stances and rhetorical force that this cohort of students employed in their multimodal designs, despite lack of regular opportunities to author texts and a schooling history of low expectations. We echo arguments for the importance of providing all students with opportunities to take positions as designers and creators while acknowledging systematic barriers to such opportunities for academically marginalized students. This study thus aims to counter deficit views of academically marginalized students’ in-school literacy practices and to examine openings for equity through authoritative stance-taking, multivoicedness, and multiple paths to authoring that multimodal composition affords.

Publication Title

Written Communication

First Page

104

Last Page

134

Comments

Kate T. Anderson, Olivia G. Stewart, and Dani Kachorsky, Written Communication (vol. 34, iss. 2) pp. 104-134. Copyright © 2017 (SAGE Publications). DOI: 10.1177/0741088317699897.

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