Expanding Pre-Service Teachers’ Conceptions of Texts, Readers, and Response Through Multimodal Response

The author conducted a qualitative study of multimodal digital response to children’s historical fiction that his 23 pre-service graduate students read in book clubs. Grounded in sociocultural and multimodal theories of literacy, the study addresses the following two research questions: What influence did sociocultural and multimodal engagements with text have on students’ meaning-making? What influence did these engagements have on their conceptions of texts, readers, and response? Findings show how social negotiation of meaning and robustness of design work expanded participants’ understandings of texts, readers, and response that challenge current autonomous, verbocentric conceptions of literacy that predominate in schools.