Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms

The characteristics of contemporary societies are increasingly theorized as global, fluid (Bauman, 1998), and networked (Castells, 2001). These conditions underpin the emerging knowledge economy as it is shaped by the societal and technological forces of late capitalism. These shifts and developments have significantly affected the commu nicational landscape of the 21st century. A key aspect of this is the reconfiguration of the representational and communicational resources of image, action, sound, and so on in new multimodal ensembles. The terrain of communication is changing in pro found ways and extends to schools and ubiquitous elements of everyday life, even if these changes are occurring to different degrees and at uneven rates (A. Luke & Car rington, 2002). It is against this backdrop that this critical review explores school mul timodality and literacy and asks what these changes mean for being literate in this new landscape of the 21st century. The two key arguments here are that it is not possible to think about literacy solely as a linguistic accomplishment and that the time for the habitual con junction of language, print literacy, and learning is over. As Kress (2003) writes,