Orchestrating debate: a multimodal analysis of classroom interaction

This paper examines the ways in which the interpretation of a literary text is constructed through social interaction in a multi‐ethnic urban secondary school English classroom. The focus is on the literacy experiences of Year 10 students (age 14 to 15 years). We take a multimodal approach to understanding social interaction around texts and show that higher‐order literacy skills are realised and constructed through the configuration of talk and writing with a range of other representational and communicational modes, such as gesture, gaze, movement, and posture. We suggest that despite the exhaustive regulation of literacy and school English, some English teachers, while still curriculum and examination focused, have found strategies that give them space to make connections between texts and the experiences of their particular student intake. They do so in ways that link to wider social and moral issues, drawing on their own and their students' life experiences, to make cultural connections with the texts studied. The paper shows how a multimodal analysis of social interaction facilitates and extends understanding of the teaching that is taking place.