Primary teachers’ perspectives on teaching critical reading incorporating multimodal text

This paper explores a group of primary teachers’ knowledge and perspectives about multimodal text and its usage in teaching critical reading skills for upper primary students in Surakarta, Indonesia. This case study explores a group of primary teachers’ knowledge and perspectives about multimodal text and its usage in teaching critical reading skills for upper primary students (students of grades 4, 5 and 6) in Surakarta, Indonesia. A focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted among 30 primary teachers and 10 school principals by using open-ended inquiries. The discussion administered several topics related to teachers’ perspectives about multimodal texts, teaching critical reading instructions, and the application of multimodal text in upper primary learning. The results of the research shows that text-based learning in the primary curriculum was mostly using written text with minimum illustration and often was only supported by a video from the internet. Most participants confirmed that they develop upper primary students’ critical reading skills by asking students to retell, finding key information, discussing the main ideas, and mostly answering questions about the text they read. The conclusion of the research is that the implementation of multimodal text in upper primary learning was limited to written text with illustrations, posters, advertisements, and video or animation videos from the internet. The implication of this research urges teachers to use multimodal texts to enhance critical thinking skills.