Playful Images and Truthful Words: Eighth-Graders Respond to Shaun Tan’s Stick Figures

This interpretive study examined how eighth-grade students responded to a multimodal short story introduced to them by their English Language Arts teacher as part of a multimodal literacies curriculum unit. By analyzing fieldnotes constructed from observations, the classroom teacher’s voice-recorded reflections, and the students’ work, the author investigated how students articulated and described the relationships between words and images in multimodal texts. This study showed how students were open to multiple interpretive possibilities when reading images. However, when reading a text comprised of both words and images, students looked to written language as the most significant mode of representation and communication. Furthermore, most students in the class sought word-image coherence and alignment. The discussion suggests that multimodal literacies instruction might benefit from further alignment with critical literacy pedagogy, enabling students to question and challenge texts produced through any modal combination. Literacy education researchers and classroom practitioners have the potential to ensure that students are supported in becoming critical thinkers able to explore issues of representation within the multimodal texts that saturate their social worlds.