Multimodal communication and identities options in an intergenerational art class

This case study of multimodal pedagogies within an intergenerational (IG) art class addresses questions about the learning opportunities that were created therein and what the fixing of participants’ ideas within a semiotic chain said about their facility with communicative modes and media, interests, and identity options. Key findings include: when compared to the adults’ work, the children’s use of media was more elaborate, experimental, and less inhibited and their designs more complex; the content of the children’s communication was multifaceted, and future-looking while some of the adults’ were constrained by limited identity options related to their position in the life course; and the class’s multimodal pedagogies provided occasion for the exploration of modes and media with support for working through key communicational decisions.