Although several studies have shown that children use diverse ways to communicate, and many scholars have stated that early childhood education must include multiple routes to literacy, there is a lack of research using a multiliteracies lens to study how teachers and children use different modes (e.g., visual, gestural, sound) and media (e.g., book, screen, radio) to teach and learn in early childhood classroom settings.
This qualitative case study took place in a kindergarten classroom where the teacher utilized multiple semiotic systems (visual, auditory, gestural, spatial, linguistic, and multimodal) in her classroom instruction and valued the children’s multiliteracies performance. This study investigated why and how the teacher utilized multiple semiotic systems in the teaching and learning process, and it explored how the teacher’s classroom instruction related to the children’s multiliteracies performance.
Serving as a participant observer, the researcher visited the case study kindergarten classroom four days a week for two months during the data collection period. Data sources included 29 entries of field notes, 29 entries in the researcher’s reflection journal, 29 videotapes documenting daily classroom interaction (two hours each in average), 17 audiotapes recording interviews with the teacher (15 to 20 minutes each), 564 photographs documenting the teacher’s and the children’s artifacts and
teaching and learning moments, and documents from the school and the teacher. The data were organized, transcribed, coded, and analyzed.
Analysis of the data revealed that the kindergarten teacher’s rationale for utilizing multiple semiotic systems in the teaching and learning process included: 1) to structure rich learning experiences to engage the children in actively constructing knowledge, 2) to provide a meaningful context for the children to acquire content area knowledge, and 3) to help the children make literature connections. Data analysis also revealed that to incorporate multiple semiotic systems in her classroom instruction, the teacher utilized multiple semiotic systems in every lesson, provided step-by-step demonstration, and experienced the meaning-making potentials of different semiotic systems with the children. This study also demonstrated how the teacher’s use of multiple semiotic systems in her classroom instruction related to the children’s multiliteracies performance.
This study supplemented the current research on the use of multiple semiotic systems in early childhood classroom settings. It also extended the existing studies by presenting the pedagogy of teachers exploring multiple semiotic systems with children, and by making connections between a kindergarten teacher’s use of multiple semiotic systems in her classroom and her students’ multiliteracies performance.