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Design+ Multimodality in art teacher education in China

cultural aspects of meaning-making, can complement and forwards between representations in text, image,
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the multiple modes of expression in art education. Despite sound, gesture, object, and space.” This phenomenon is
this, prior research suggests that the insights offered by increasingly significant in contemporary communication
multimodality scholarship have not been fully integrated and education, particularly as new technologies, media,
into art teacher education in China. For instance, there is and practices emerge. This transformation is notably
still much to explore and develop in terms of drawing from evident in China, where digitalization transformation has
both traditional and contemporary art forms, innovating advanced at breakneck speed. 1
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teaching models, and addressing the disruptions that may Another key concept in multimodality is the role of
arise from classroom innovations. 9 social and institutional practices in shaping the increasing
In this paper, we interrogate the intersection of three and diverse use of multimodal texts in students’ lifeworlds,
bodies of literature: multimodality in education, teacher including the digital environments that create new spaces
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education, and art education, with a particular focus on the for living, playing, and learning. For educators, a strong
Chinese context. Through this theoretical discussion, we grasp of multimodality and its potential can enhance
aim to offer informed insights for adapting and utilizing students’ literacy development, enabling them to work
multimodal pedagogies in the training of art teachers in across multimodal modes and media.
China. Research on multimodality has grown exponentially
Our approach is based on an interpretation of since the term was coined in the mid-1990s. Scholars from
multimodality that encompasses both a multimodal social various disciplines — such as semiotics, linguistics, media
semiotic approach (MSSA) and multimodal pedagogies. studies, new literacies studies, and education — have
We contend that this approach may contribute to the examined a wide range of issues related to communication,
development and internationalization of Chinese art education, culture, and power from a social semiotic
teacher education in the current era. By integrating MSSA perspective. Theoretical orientations to the concept of
as a lens to examine the social, cultural, and communicative multimodality may be approached from three broad
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practices in art education, especially its theoretical camps. Prominent researchers, such as Jewitt et al., focus
underpinnings and pedagogical approaches, we highlight on multimodal discourse analysis, primarily grounded
how multimodality can be relevant to Chinese higher in systemic functional linguistic multimodal theory.
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education. By advocating for the adaptation of multimodal Studies by Kress and Kress and van Leeuwen construe
pedagogies to suit the unique features of Chinese education multimodality from a social semiotic perspective, while
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and culture, we propose a viable pedagogical approach for Bateman et al. adopt a systematic-, corpus-, and linguistic-
enhancing initial art teacher education in this context. based approach to investigate how different modes are
assembled to construct genre-specific knowledge systems.
2. Multimodality and education Closely related to multimodality is the study of social
2.1. Beginnings and developments of research on semiotics, which investigates the representational practices
multimodality through which individuals dynamically compose, create, and
communicate meanings using semiotic resources in social
The literacy paradigm in the contemporary world is environments. A social semiotic approach to multimodality
characterized by infinite engagement in virtual spaces is rooted in the theoretical foundation of systemic functional
and interactions with blended media. This paradigm grammar, which asserts that both linguistic and non-linguistic
transcends the traditional notion of print-based knowledge semiotic systems are organized and described through three
acquisition, where primacy is often given to language fundamental metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal,
and words. Perspectives of multimodality advance the and textual metafunctions. These metafunctions serve
notion that forms and compositions of media, semiotic various communicational and representational purposes in
products, and events are combinations of semiotic modes meaning-making, revealing how meaning-makers produce
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in complementary and mutually reinforcing design cohesive multimodal texts and meanings by drawing on
patterns. 4-8 semiotic resources from their lifeworlds.

According to Cope and Kalantzis, 10,p.3 the emergence One literacy framework that builds on multimodality
of a wide array of information and communication research is the multiliteracies framework attributed to
technologies, along with digital media, has greatly enhanced the New London Group. This framework, representing
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multimodality. We now live in an age of synesthesia: a decades of empirical and theoretical research, argues
central pillar of multimodality, where meaning-makers that learners should acquire multiliteracies to make
constantly engage in “mode switching, moving backwards sense of complex multimodal texts. This often involves

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/dp.4554