1 Who Can Read and Write?

The insight that different texts and genres make different demands in the meaning-making situation must lead to an extended view of reading and writing as meaning-making activities, and of literacy development for the individual. From that perspective, the development of literacy does not consist of “learning to read and write”. Instead, an important aspect is to develop textual repertoires to be able to make meaning through different texts, including repertoires concerning writing as well as other semiotic modes—in different genres and in different subject-specific contexts. Furthermore, the development of textual repertoires concerns a variety of texts, from writing in paper-based media to highly multimodal, hyperlinked texts in digital media.

Today, all teachers must handle multimodal texts, and they need to have an awareness about the ways in which different resources for meaning-making work. However, they also need to develop teaching practices that involve strategies that enable ways of handling texts that are perceived as challenging. From this point of view, meaning-making through texts must develop continuously. There is no exact moment when we can say that a certain student “has learned to read” in an absolute sense, something which makes partly new demands of teachers in all disciplines.

2 The Expert and the Novice

As mentioned, each semiotic mode has a more or less culturally established potential for meaning-making. However, readers note and interpret different aspects of a text depending on their previous knowledge, specific interests, understandings of the situation, genre knowledge, etc. This situation applies both to anyone knowledgeable in the field and to those for whom the field is new. It is especially important here to be aware of the fact that someone with a great knowledge of the field might not realize the potential challenges in texts or other learning resources. The expert in the field will, without being conscious about it, fill in potential gaps, and weed out extraneous information. Moreover, it is doubtful (or rather, it is implausible) that the offered meaning from the perspective of the expert will be the same thing as the perceived meaning from the perspective of the novice.

3 Curriculum Documents

Every country compiles a curriculum in line with its own traditions, but also inspired by the development in other countries. Thus, we can find examples of curricula with a clear emphasis on multimodal texts, even though most countries do not yet explicitly require multimodal competence as a specific competence in their curricula.

At the same time global research, as well as new educational practices concerning how to represent knowledge and work with learning in schools, obviously change the learning landscape. Therefore, a multimodal (and multimedial) understanding seems to be of increasing importance.

4 Text Talk in Education

It is common for teachers to work with students’ prior knowledge of the subject matter when introducing new content in class. Working with prior knowledge can involve giving an overall introduction to the content area and working with central concepts, or connecting to the students’ previous knowledge of the area in various ways. To work with students’ previous understanding in such ways can function as a support for many students, not least to facilitate their understanding of a complex content. Yet, if the teacher does not also support the students in how to grapple with the actual texts that they are supposed to make meaning from, they might never need to get to grips with texts. This in turn can have negative consequences for the students as they might lack essential tools later on, when they will have to deal with different kinds of texts independently.

Numerous classroom studies over the years, from different subject areas and school years have revealed that teachers seldom engage students in discussions focusing on how texts within the area are structured and why (Danielsson 2010; Digisi and Willett 1995; Edling 2006; Wellington and Osborne 2001). It appears as if it is often taken for granted that anyone who has broken the written code and reached some level of reading fluency should not need any guidance as to how to make meaning from or produce different kinds of texts. An exception is of course writing education within the mother tongue subject. Also, there are examples of schools focusing on language and content, where teachers in the mother tongue collaborate closely with teachers in other subjects, for example in schools working with the genre pedagogy. More often, however, if any collaboration takes place between subjects, it often concerns a general level, with no focus on the chracteristics of texts in different subjects.

Furthermore, research has shown that even within subjects where an abundance of resources are central for meaning-making, such as images, abstract models, mathematical symbols, etc., teachers tend not to highlight the specific demands inherent in such texts (Danielsson 2010; Løvland 2010; Öman and Sofkova Hashemi 2015). Both teachers and students seem to assume that images always support the content, and that images in themselves cannot be a challenge in the meaning-making process. Furthermore, teachers appear not to draw any specific attention to the multimodal aspects of student texts, for example when students create PowerPoint presentations.

There may be various ways of explaining why so many studies reveal the same pattern. It could be that we tend to take certain things for granted, as we commented on in relation to the semiotic modes that are valued and “count” in school. It could also be the case that teachers lack tools for talking about and assessing multimodal aspects of texts (Bearne 2009). Teachers might want to highlight multimodal aspects of texts, but they do not really know how to do it. We hope that our discussions about multimodality and the model for working with multimodal texts in education can function as a support for teachers wanting to develop their teaching in such a direction.

Before presenting our model for working with multimodal texts, we will comment briefly on some other models that have been developed for working with texts in education, although primarily with writing (i.e. written words).

A number of these models are based on methods for working with reading comprehension, such as Questioning the Author, which is a scheme developed by Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown for the reading of literature (e.g. Beck and McKeown 2006), which has also been adopted for working with factual texts.

The basis of genre pedagogies (e.g. Christie and Derewianka 2008) is that an explicit focus on text structure in class will harness students in their text encounters. Within genre pedagogy, both the form and the function of texts in different subject areas are emphasized. Thus, the focus is both on text structure and on the fact that there are functional reasons for differences in structure. In genre pedagogies, it is common to work with reading and writing in parallel, for example through the “circle model” (e.g. Rose 2005), which is based on mutual deconstruction and construction of texts, and that the teacher and students pay attention to various features of the text. During such discussions it is natural to discuss what consequences it would have if alternative ways of expressing the content were chosen.

As said, these models are mainly based on written verbal language, which is all well and good. Yet if we bear in mind that texts usually consist of a variety of resources and not only writing, it is just as important to highlight the interplay between different semiotic resources and how to tackle texts from a multimodal perspective (e.g. Tan et al. 2012), not least concerning pedagogic texts.

Also, working with multimodality has potentials to improve students’ text envisionment (Langer 2011), or text movability (Liberg et al. 2002), that is, to be able to approach and relate to texts and their various functions in different ways. So far, students’ text movability has mainly been studied in relation to the verbal aspects of written text. However, a Danish small-scale study by Jesper Bremholm (Liberg et al. 2012) describes how secondary school students show more limited text movability in regard to multimodal aspects of texts in science compared to the verbal aspects of the same text.

5 Model for Working with Multimodal Texts in Education

Note: The presentation of the model is based on an article published in the Open Access Journal Designs for Learning (Danielsson and Selander 2016Footnote 1). That article gives the foundations of the model and this is done through the same text examples as used in the following. However, due to reasons outside of our control, we have not been able to obtain a permission to use examples from one book in the following, and therefore, we refer to the original article regarding the Chilean examples in the following.

As said previously, from an educational perspective, we believe that “the expert” (often the teacher) might need tools to identify potential challenges in multimodal texts. The model presented in the following can be such a tool. Furthermore, we believe that teachers can use the same model as a basis for classroom discussions about multimodal texts with students, who are likely to be “novices” as regards the content in focus.

Table 4.1 presents our model for working with multimodal texts in education. In the development of the model we have drawn on social semiotic and multimodal perspectives of meaning-making (Bezemer and Kress 2008; Jewitt et al. 2016; Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), and specifically so in subject-oriented knowledge domains. The model is empirically grounded on research revealing that meta-textual classroom discussions generally are scarce in classroom practices, and in particular in relation to multimodal aspects of texts.

Table 4.1 Model for working with multimodal texts in education (based on Danielsson and Selander 2016)
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Briefly, the model comprises the following aspects of texts:

  • The general structure of the text;

  • the interplay between the various resources used in the text;

  • figurative language;

  • values (explicit and implicit).

Thus, besides focusing on aspects such as the general structure of texts and the interplay between different resources, which are central from a multimodal perspective, the model includes the use of figurative language (metaphors, analogies, similes, see for instance Cameron 2002) as well as values. In the following we give some comments on that.

Research and theory concerning metaphors and analogies is vast (one key volume is Lakoff and Johnson 1980). There are several ways of defining these terms and it is not always easy to draw a sharp line between them. For the purposes of this book, however, we draw on the central idea that all definitions include a possibility of activating two distinct domains, and in line with, for instance, Cameron (2002), our use of metaphor includes both of these types as well as explicitly expressed similes (e.g. “my love is like a red red rose”). Since we here focus on multimodal texts, we also include other means of representing metaphors apart from linguistic expressions.

Figurative language is a natural part of the disciplinary discourse in many areas (e.g. ‘monetary flow’ or ‘magnetic fields’) and is frequently used as a way of understanding and talking about complex structures or processes. Also, such expressions function as pedagogical tools, for example to make “visible” what is not possible to see directly (like micro-worlds, or rather abstract phenomena as a ‘monetary system’, or concepts like ‘democracy’). To some extent, figurative language can function in the same way as a visual model. By using it, it is possible to make an inner visualization that summarizes the main points. At the same time, a metaphor can also be a simplification and generalization and it is not always clear how far an analogy or metaphor reaches. For example, it might not be obvious what parts or aspects of the source domain (e.g. electron shells in the example mentioned in Chap. 3) and the target domain (e.g. the atomic structure) are actually similar, and what parts or aspects are not. Especially for the “novice” in the field the reach of metaphors might not be obvious. Therefore, even though metaphors can support students in their meaning-making, such use has also been noted to be potentially challenging, for instance if students take an analogy or metaphor too far or interpret them literally (e.g. Haglund 2013; Danielsson et al. 2018). In the case of the atom, the metaphorical use of “electronic shells” to explain the ways in which electrons move around the nucleus at a certain distance, gives an impression that there are actually shells where electrons can be placed.

Values, both explicit (“you should eat healthy food”) and implicit (“Huowei skipped breakfast; therefore he is tired”), can also be expressed through different semiotic resources. Since images can be used to convey values in implicit ways, multimodal perspectives have previously proven fruitful for such analyses (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), something which has also been emphasized in relation to pedagogic texts (e.g. Unsworth 2007).

Included in our model are also comments on how teachers and students can work stepwise, unfolding and discussing the text, thus supporting meaning-making around the content. In such discussions, an overall perspective can be that there is always an author behind a text, and that this author has made a number of choices in regard to choice of content, as well as what resources to use and how. This way of discussing texts, highlighting that there is always an author behind it, is central for the framework Questioning the Author mentioned above. That framework, however, is based on verbal text only. To discuss texts in explicit ways is important, not least because the novice in a field of knowledge cannot be expected to be able to fill in the missing parts, or make explicit the implicit links or relations between different pieces of information. By highlighting that there is always an author that has made choices, can be a way of connecting to the students’ own text production in different school subjects. Furthermore, by highlighting authors’ choices, students who might find texts challenging can feel confident in actually questioning the author’s choices rather than questioning their own capability to make meaning from the text. Such discussions can also function as a way of supporting the students’ development of critical literacy (e.g. Luke 2000). Altogether, the different aspects of the model underpin the development of meta-cognitive skills through an understanding of how different resources operate to represent knowledge.

As mentioned, a number of frameworks for working with texts have been developed previously, though generally with a bias towards writing, thus disregarding other resources, such as tables, graphs, and diagrams. Examples of exceptions are a model presented by Unsworth (2001) and the framework Multimodal Analysis Image (Tan et al. 2012). In comparison to those models, our model has a stronger focus on subject content and meta-textual classroom discussions. Thus, it has a double benefit in that the model supports students’ meaning-making related to subject content while at the same time having the potential to support students’ development of multimodal literacy.Footnote 2

Our presentation of the model is based on sections on human digestion in two textbooks in science, to illustrate the different parts of the model. One book is Singaporean, used for lower secondary school (students aged around 14); the other one is Chilean, used for middle-grade students (students aged around 11). Figures 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 are images taken from different parts of these sections in the Singaporean textbook. As mentioned, the images from the Chilean textbook can be found in the original article presenting the framework (Danielsson and Selander 2016).Footnote 3 For the complete chapters of each of the books, we refer to the original text books. Our point here is not to make any kind of comparative cultural analysis. Instead, we want to demonstrate that the framework is versatile and applicable across different cultural contexts, with a focus on how the orchestration of text resources through different semiotic modes has consequences for how to grapple with the text as such and for the interpretation of the content. Here we concentrate on paper-based pedagogic texts. With minor adaptations, the model can also be used for digital texts involving resources such as moving visuals, sound, and hypertexts. We use here examples from one subject to illustrate the various parts of the model. In the second part of this book we use it to analyze texts from a great variety of subjects. There it will be clear that in different texts as well as in different subjects, certain parts of the model might be more important than others.

Fig. 4.1
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Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 24–27, with permission from Marshall Cavendish Education)

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Fig. 4.2
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Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 28–29, with permission from Marshall Cavendish Education)

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Fig. 4.3
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Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 32–33, with permission from Marshall Cavendish Education)

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Fig. 4.4
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Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 38–39, with permission from Marshall Cavendish Education)

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Our point of departure is how different text resources are used to build up the text as a whole, how different text resources interplay and the potential challenges regarding the different resources as well as their interplay. Also, we comment on the implications for education, suggesting ways of discussing the texts. Such text discussions must of course be adapted to the students’ age, interests, and previous experience of reading and discussing various kinds of texts.

The model is relatively extensive, but there is no need to always use all parts of the model for all texts. Instead, depending on the content area and the purpose for which a specific text is used in the educational situation, different aspects of the model can be concentrated on. In the second part of the book, we have made a number of close readings of texts in different content areas. In relation to those readings, we also give some examples of what could be fruitful to focus on in text discussions in the classroom.

5.1 General Structure—Setting

The analysis of the general structure can be connected to the notion of setting in the designs for learning framework (Selander et al. 2021). In our model, the analysis of the general structure is meant to capture the ways in which a text “invites” its reader and calls for certain types of activities by its means of representing the content. Here we start off by looking at the thematic orientation, and then the sequencing of the text. After that, we go on to examine what the different text resources express in regard to content, such as different kinds of illustrations, headings, and text boxes. The aim of examining texts in regard to the general structure is to get an overview of the text as regards both layout and content. For meta-textual discussions in the classroom, this is a suitable starting point, and even quite young students can be involved in such discussions. Things to highlight in the discussions could be what content seems to be expected to be found in the text (from the information that, for instance, headings and illustrations offer to the reader), what resources “stand out”, what roles different types of illustrations seem to play, and if there seems to be an expected way to go about reading the text.

In regard to the thematic orientation of the Singaporean text, the miniature in Fig. 4.1 shows the starting point of the chapter “Human digestive system”. The left page is the first one of the introductory section headed “Why is the digestive system important?”. This heading provides the students with the main concept, “the digestive system”, and by expressing the heading as a question, the intention seems to be to draw the students into the content by making them curious to find out the answer.

The chapter as a whole has a structure that evolves from a direct connection to students’ everyday lives to a purely scientific approach to the content. It starts off with a short text about a boy who has skipped breakfast and therefore is feeling hungry and weak. Then a table presents nutrients with comments on their molecular sizes, function, and examples of food in which they can be found (see miniature in Fig. 4.1). Through this table the reader is taken one step further into the scientific aspects of the content. The remaining part of the chapter on the human digestive system mainly deals with the digestive system from a scientific point of view, including chemical aspects of digestion (e.g. large image in Figs. 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3).

Even though the chapter takes on a gradually more scientific approach, different activities, sometimes labeled 21st Century Skills (Figs. 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3) connect the topic to the students’ everyday lives throughout the chapter. Towards the end of the chapter, the human digestive system is summarized in a flow chart (Fig. 4.4). It is worth noting that it is not until the flow chart at the end of the chapter that the terms physical and chemical digestion are defined, even though the terms are used throughout the chapter.

The section on digestion in the Chilean textbook begins with a book spread with a series of pictures resembling a comic strip with some writing below (for images, see Danielsson and Selander 2016). The following bookspread consists of a running text in the upper part of the bookspread, with a series of images below that. In regard to the thematic orientation of the Chilean text, it also starts out with a a heading formulated as a question(“¿Cómo funciona nuestro cuerpo?”, Eng. “How does our body function?”), inviting the reader to learn more. Here, the starting point is the series of pictures over the double-page spread in which two children decide to make an imaginative journey through “the body”. The journey goes from the stomach to the heart via the blood and after a detour to the lungs back to the blood circulation, it finally ends with the children floating in urine in a bladder. During the journey, the two children note things such as nutrients and oxygen entering into the cells of the organs.

Underneath this, under the heading ‘I observe and respond’ (Spa. “Observo y respondo”), students are given questions that are supposed to make them read the comic strip more closely, for example by questions about the different body organs that the children encounter. On the left page of the double-page spread, a number of questions invite the reader to describe, for instance, the essential functions of different body systems. However, there is no explicit information in the comic strip that gives specific information about these systems.

The following pages in the Chilean book go deeper into the subject-specific content. Here a series of pictures at the lower part of the bookspread gives gradually more abstract and detailed representations of parts of the intestines, starting with a photo of a child eating an apple, ending with an image of a cell which is said to be one of the many cells building up the intestines.

In the comic strip as well as in the writing accompanying the illustrations in the following book spread, scientific terminology connected to the topic is used frequently. The following section deals with the physical and chemical aspects of the digestive system. Here labels give the scientific concepts connected to the human digestive system presented in an image, similar to the Singaporean book spread in Fig. 4.4. An explanatory text describes the kind of processes that go on in the various parts of the system shown in that image.

As we note from the analysis of the thematic structure in the books, there are similarities between the texts. Both of them invite the reader to the content by using questions as headings, and they both use a connection to the students’ everyday lives as a starting point.

Sequencing deals with text structure at a general level, for example to what extent the information structure invites the reader to read the different parts of the text in a certain order. From a brief look at the book spreads in Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4, and the two bookspreads from the Chilean book (see Danielsson and Selander 2016), it can be noted that it is only the second bookspread in the Chilean book that has a traditional structure, with a body text clearly separated from the illustrations. In the other texts, different textual and visual modes are intertwined. Another way of sequencing is found in the book spread from the Singaporean textbook in Fig. 4.1, where the left page is dominated by the image depicting a cell. Such a prominent image, in both relative size and central placement, draws the attention to that area of the page (see Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, for a discussion of salience). At the same time, the numbers 1 and 2 imply a reading order starting at 1. This type of visualization, with the prominent image of the cell, including a zoom-in on a cell membrane alongside numbered text sections and arrows, is common in pedagogic texts. Such visualizations imply a reading order following the arrows, where the reader is supposed to juggle between writing and visualizations, using the arrows to follow a process. In this case, however, the numbered arrows have partly different functions, with two arrows (one crossed over, being a “dead end”) pointing in divergent directions from the verbal text numbered “1”. The arrow that is crossed over functions as a notice that big molecules cannot pass into the cells, and therefore (which is not stated explicitly) we need the digestive system to make big molecules smaller. Thus, drawing attention to the general overview and the ways in which the reader is “invited” into the text can function as a form of guidance for the students, at the same time as possible challenges (such as the use of arrows for different purposes in the visualization) can be highlighted in such discussions.

With regard to what the different semiotic resources are used for, we concentrate mainly on the book spread shown in the large image in Fig. 4.1. This spread contains images of various kinds (abstract images, like the human cell and the molecules, as well as more realistic images, such as the black and white photo of a scientist), writing in different forms, for instance body text, headings of various levels, and words integrated in visualizations.

The image on the left page is used for showing aspects such as wholes and parts of the cell and for giving a more concrete image of abstract content, such as simple and complex molecules. At the same time it gives a kind of time sequencing (large molecules breaking down to smaller molecules) and processes (simple molecule passing through the cell membrane). This explanatory use of the image can be compared to the more illustrative images on the previous spread in the textbook (miniature in Fig. 4.1), with the tired boy resting his head on a desk, and food on plates, or the schematic image on the left page of the following book spread, shown in Fig. 4.2, labeling different parts of the upper digestive system.

Also, various kinds of graphic devices are used in the book spread shown in Fig. 4.1, for example text boxes and bolded words in the body text. The use of text boxes of various kinds is common in textbooks. In the Singaporean book, text boxes are used to mark key ideas, using an explicit heading. Throughout the book, recurrent activities intended for the students to go beyond the immediate “facts” in the book to connect them to real-life situations are marked “Think and Explore”, with an explicit connection to “21st Century Skills”. The Chilean textbook also provides the reader with a number of key concepts in a text box shown in the second book spread (see Danielsson and Selander 2016): in this case different types of body tissues (Spa. tejidos), which are given in bold text. However, this information is given under the heading ‘Did you know?’ (Spa. ¿Sabias Que?). Such headings are quite frequently used for texts intended to raise the curiosity of the reader, but perhaps giving less important information.

Since there are no “rules” as to how to use different graphic devices in a text, there are good reasons to discuss and make explicit how different resources are used in a specific text when introducing it in an educational context.

5.2 Interaction Between Text Resources in the Text

An important aspect of multimodal texts in education is the relationship between the different text resources on the page (or equivalent), and the different ways these resources are used for expressing various aspects of the content. When examining the interaction between text resources, we examine to what extent the different resources give the same, overlapping, or different/supplementing information (also see Unsworth 2007). When different resources supplement each other, they can sometimes appear to give partly contradictory information, at least for the novice in the field. One such example is when a concept like the atom is presented as a static phenomenon consisting of various particles in an image, while at the same time other resources like verbal text or gestures (in the classroom practice, or in a video) focus on the dynamic aspects of the atom, with electrons swirling around a nucleus (e.g. Danielsson 2016).

Both students and teachers tend to view images of various kinds as a way of facilitating the reading of a complex text (Danielsson 2011). Images can of course be used to visualize or simplify a complex phenomenon or reasoning. However, they might also add new, complex—or contradictory—information. Therefore, images too can be challenging for the interpretation of the text.

When creating multimodal texts, one always need to decide whether some content should be given in images (and why). Besides that, a number of other choices have to be made as to how to depict the content in image (photo, drawing, graph, etc.) and what level of abstraction that would be suitable for the content in relation to, for example, the intended reader. Here we can make interesting comparisons between the series of pictures in Fig. 4.3 from the Singaporean textbook, and the images shown in the second bookspread in the Chilean book (see Danielsson and Selander 2016), which to some extent are used for parallel content, such as the fact that the intestines play an important role for the digestion. The Chilean textbook is intended for slightly younger students. In this case, the series of pictures starts with an everyday, concrete photograph (a boy eating an apple) and moves towards more abstract representations (a drawn image of the cell). The Singaporean textbook, on the other hand, shows a less concrete image of a body (presented in a kind of X-ray fashion), and this image is supplemented with a zoom-in which gives a schematic image of the walls in the small intestine and a blood vessel, where “small molecules can pass”. This zoom-in, in turn, is supplemented with a schematic image of the cells. The series of pictures with gradually more abstract content in the Chilean textbook could be an attempt to “lead the reader by the hand” towards the representation of the cell, which is quite distant from an idea of “body parts”. The Singaporean textbook, on the other hand, makes higher demands of the readers’ capacity for abstract understanding right from the start.

As regards images presenting content that is also mentioned in the body text, various ways of connecting, for instance, terminology to an image can be used to facilitate meaning-making for the reader. One such way is to ensure spatial proximity between a term used and the equivalent part of picture, that is, to give verbal comments on the image located relatively close to it. In Fig. 4.5, presenting an image from a popular science magazine, proximity is further enhanced by the use of colors. Arrows or lines between verbal text and image are also commonly used when labeling important parts of an image (e.g. upper right of large spread in Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.5
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Enhancing proximity by use of color: BBC Focus Magazine (Ridgway/BBC Knowledge 2013, p. 71, with permission from BBC Science Focus Magazine)

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Another important aspect concerns consistency in terminology use between different representations. The use of terminology shown on the page in Fig. 4.1 is consistent throughout the page to the left in the large spread, with specific words like “cell membrane” re-occurring in the visualization as well as in the verbal text integrated in the visualization and in the text presented in other parts of the page. However, a closer inspection of “the cell” in Fig. 4.1 and 4.3 reveals that this concept is depicted quite differently depending on what aspects of the cell are highlighted in the different sections. Such a variation is something which might need to be pointed out in the educational context, and discussions about the different choices can support the students in relation to both subject contentand multimodal literacy.

5.3 Figurative Language

As mentioned, there are several reasons to focus on figurative language such as metaphors in relation to multimodality. Firstly, a metaphor in itself can often be seen as a multimodal ensemble (e.g. Jewitt 2014). An example is the use of the metaphor “monetary flow” to talk about economic systems. Here the words can lead to a mental visualization of a flow. Secondly, metaphors can be expressed through different semiotic modes in a text (writing, image, etc.). Also, some metaphors are integrated in the content of a knowledge domain (see below) and, consequently, central for meaning-making in that area.

In the following, we discuss figurative language in writing as well as in images, since images in pedagogic texts can be based on metaphors. One such example is the welfare system of a society, where an image could be in the form of water flowing in pipes with the different parts interconnected as in a technical system (cf. “flow of money”).

As mentioned, the use of metaphors can also be challenging, for instance in regard to the reach of a metaphor. Also, as regards second language learners, the use of uncommented figurative language can be potentially challenging. This is particularly true when everyday expressions are used (which is often the case with metaphors, for instance “muscular bag”). For a student who knows the everyday expression, the figurative use can be misleading. Therefore, an important role of the teacher is to “unwrap” the figurative language and to help students to focus on the adequate aspects of the content expressed metaphorically.

In the two texts we have chosen, we can find some interesting examples of figurative language. In the Singaporean text, we are told that glands produce “special juices”, and that there is “pancreatic juice”, “intestinal juice” as well as “gastric juice” (Figs. 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4). The concept of “juice” is not explained, neither in relation to the everyday language of juices nor in terms of the different kinds of juices within the different parts of the body.

Other metaphoric expressions are “muscular tube”, “muscular bag” and “wall”, or “how food travels” (Fig. 4.2, our italics) through the body. Also, we learn that “hydrochloric acid […] helps the protease to work” and that “Long muscular tubes contracts and relaxes, which mixes intestinal juice and pancreatic juice with food, to help digestion” (our italics). Apart from being metaphoric expressions, food and muscles also become “humanized” with intentions in these examples.Footnote 4

We can also notice more general concepts like “systems” (for example “systems that form the organism” in Fig. 4.4) and “functions”, which have connotations of a machine-like mechanism, where every part has been made in relation to every other part to serve an overarching whole. In the Chilean book (see Danielsson and Selander 2016) it is said that systems of digestion, circulation or nerves “together form the organism”. In the Singaporean book, the flow chart of the digestive system in Fig. 4.4 further enhances the notion of a system in a type of visualization.

An interesting kind of analogy is found in the Singaporean text (Fig. 4.3, bottom, left). Here the students are supposed to perform an experiment with water, cooking oil, and washing-up liquid as an analogy for the digestion process when fats break down in the body. In the activity, it is explicitly mentioned that the cooking oil “plays the role of” (i.e. functions analogous to) the fats in the food, while the washing-up liquid plays the role of the bile. However, the analogous role (if any) of the water is implicit.

Discussions about the use of figurative language in a text, including “unwrapping” the metaphors and their reach can function as excellent opportunities for in-depth discussions of content matters (see also Danielsson et al. 2018).

5.4 Values

Value statements are a part of human communication. Sometimes values are openly declared, and we can simply agree or disagree with them. But equally important—or perhaps more important—are the more implicit or tacit values in a text. In these cases we need to scrutinize the ways in which the information is presented, and what kind of information is left aside.

In the two texts we have analyzed here, explicit articulations of values are not frequently used. But one example can be found in Fig. 4.3 (right) under the sub-heading “Think and explore”. The text states that “Some teenagers become obsessed with losing weight […]” and then follows a warning concerning possible dangerous consequences such as eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), which might cause “life-threatening conditions” such as “muscle weakness, kidney damage, heart failure and even death if left untreated”.

Implicit values are of course more difficult to detect, since they very much depend on the perspective from which the text is interpreted. Here we would like to point out some interesting examples. Curriculum documents often state that historical links should be made in different content areas, though exactly what historical links are supposed to be offered the students might not always be stated. In the Singaporean text a historical connection is made through some information about Dr. William Beaumant, here highlighting his efforts and curiosity, while the fact that he used a live person for his experiments is not problematized (Fig. 4.1, right). Another example of implicit values is the conceptual hierarchy (Fig. 4.4, right), which shows how different concepts are interrelated and, implicitly, how scientific conceptualizations should be organized in more or less general terms. In this case, the text shows us what kinds of representations are valued in scientific work. The hierarchy is also a way of pointing out the role of scientific concepts in relation to the everyday use of different terms.

It is important for students to become aware of the ways in which values can be more or less hidden, in order to prevent them from being manipulated by texts and for them to develop their critical literacy (Luke 2000). Also, by highlighting implicit and explicit values in texts, interesting discussions connecting to the students’ own life experiences can be made possible. Even though values can be commented on in relation to any text, this might not be the most important aspect of the two texts in focus here. In the second part of this book, however, we have analysed texts taken from history and religion (Sects. 8.5 and 8.6), which are subjects that are particularly interesting concerning values.

6 Summary

In this chapter we have focused on educational perspectives of multimodal texts, and we have also presented a model for working with such texts.

The fact that different multimodal texts and different text genres or texts in different subjects can be challenging for the reader in different ways must lead to an extended view of the development of reading and writing. From such an extended perspective, “learning to read and write” means developing different repertoires regarding different genres as well as texts in different subject-specific contexts. The way that “the expert” can interpret texts is different from that of the “novice”. For example, a person who possesses great knowledge in a field will fill in potential gaps in a text, in ways that the novice cannot do. Therefore, a teacher with a profound understanding of the content area might not always realize the potential challenges regarding the interplay between textual resources such as writing and various kinds of illustrations. Hence the expert might need tools to make visible the challenges implied in a text, in order to support novices in their encounters with texts.

A number of methods for working with reading have been developed previously, though most of them focus on verbal language. Our model focuses on the multimodal text and how to work with such texts in education. In the last section of the chapter, we have presented our model for work with multimodal texts, alongside a presentation of the different aspects of the model by analyzing two texts, focusing on (1) the general structure of the text, the thematic orientation and sequencing, and the different text resources used; (2) the interaction between the various parts of the text, such as visual proximity and congruence as regards the contents of the text; (3) figurative language, such as analogies and metaphors; and (4) explicit or implicit values.