Identifying and using diverse multimodal communicative repertoires: A critical ethnographic study of identity in an early years classroom

Identifying and using diverse multimodal communicative repertoires: A critical ethnographic study of identity in an early years classroom

Young students bring with them to schooling a diversity of identities shaped by their social and cultural lifeworlds. In an era of superdiversity, the recognition of students’ identities, matters. Affirmation of identity supports students’ wellbeing and learning. Concerns about the recognition of all students’ identities was the primary impetus for this ethnographic study. Broadly speaking, the research reported in this thesis was an ethnography of the diverse and multimodal ways young students in their first year of formal schooling negotiated and communicated their identity, within their interactions with others. Critically, this research explored how a teacher might identify and affirm students’ diverse identities. The affirmation of students’ identities is supported by making use of their cultural and personal knowledge, their interests, and their ways of being and learning, in classroom experiences. Understandings about the diversity of multimodal communication explored in current research were supported by this research study; however, a new conceptualisation of Diverse Multimodal Communicative Repertoires was proposed, to support the analysis of students’ multimodal communicative negotiation of identity. This research study was a Critical Ethnography of Multimodal Communication. It drew on social semiotic multimodal theory, understandings from multimodal interaction analysis, and ethnography of communication methods to explore ways a teacher might recognise students’ identities. Given the diversity of identities and multimodal communicative repertoires that students bring to schooling, this ethnography highlighted educational practices that support and constrain a teacher’s pedagogy for supporting students’ negotiation of identity, and for affirming each student’s identity in support of their wellbeing and learning.

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