Multimodality in children's socially situated learning in Haiti: a video-based ethnographic analysis

Abstract

Using perspectives drawn from recent work in the anthropology of learning as socially situated practice, alongside attention to multimodality as a lens for exploring learning, this article analyzes patterns of meaning-making among children engaged in small group learning during an after-school Creole literacy program in Haiti. Ethnographic analysis of an extensive corpus of video data reveals a powerful role for embodiment, wide attention, and distributed participation in children's learning, processes that in turn channel wider systems of meaning in Haitian society and culture. The article suggests that attention to the multiple affordances and cultural resources children use during engagement in socially situated learning offers a resource for thinking more deeply about education as social practice, especially in contexts where schools and society are shaped by social inequalities.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• multimodality
• learning
• Haiti
• childhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, mediated discourse analysis (Jones & Norris, 2005; Scollon & Scollon, 2003), multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2011); social semiotics of communication (Bezemer & Kress, 2016). While language can be one modality, other approaches center analysis of meaning-making on gesture or on other non-linguistic modalities, or on relations among modes.

2 These included groups of mixed age youth and children repairing bicycles or motorcycle tires or taking care of household chores. In daily life, children in Haiti are nearly always in the company of other children, not adults, where they engage in keen observation and learning (c.f. Gaskins & Paradise, 2010).

3 As assessed by teacher exams graded on a 10-point basis. According to the director scores rose from a general range of 1–3 at the beginning of the program to a range of 5–7 at the end. Of course, if scores did in fact rise it is not clear that the program itself was responsible.

4 It is interesting to note that in Haitian Creole there are many expressions that center the body as the locus of experience, rather than mental states or traits that are deemed more central to English speakers. For example, the English expression ‘Get ready!’ can be translated into Haitian Creole as ‘Ranje kò w!’ (literally, ‘arrange your body’). ‘Don't be shy’ can be conveyed in Creole as ‘Ouve kò w’–literally, ‘open/unwrap your body.’

5 Erasure could also be considered a ‘motivated sign’ (Kress, 1993), demanding an interpretation that takes into account the larger social environment and relations of power that shape its production.

6 Studies have suggested that the camera influence fades over time as subjects become used to it. Jewitt (2012) writes that ‘…the issue of reactivity is often exaggerated…there is little empirical evidence that [the camera] has transformed the ways in which participants accomplish actions.’ (p. 49).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development [grant number DR03164-31165].

Notes on contributors

Diane M. Hoffman

Diane M. Hoffman is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, University of Virginia. She is an anthropologist of education whose interests lie in understanding the cultural foundations of learning in schools and informal settings, with a focus on the formation of self and person in childhood.