Picturing Identity: An Investigation into Culturally Inclusive Literacy Practice with Secondary EAL/D Students Using Multimodal Texts

Abstract

This Australian study investigates how multimodal literacy activities may support culturally inclusive literacy practices with secondary students for whom English is an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). The cultural inclusion of EAL/D youth is viewed as a process through the lens of education justice (Kalantzis & Cope, 2025), arguing for teaching pedagogy that acknowledges students’ personal and cultural background in the learning process. The study focusses on the potential for multimodal identity texts to give voice to EAL/D students and facilitate their participation in communities, increasing connections between teaching practices that support recently arrived English language learners and mandated inclusivity policies.

This research project adopted an iterative case-study approach to investigate the experiences of EAL/D student participants in Years 9 and 11, before and after the creation of multimodal identity texts in the form of digital video diaries. Drawing on an analytical framing that combines principles of multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996) and social semiotics (Callow, 2023; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), my adaptation of Callow’s social semiotic framework (Callow, 2023) includes the analysis of ‘voice’ as an additional element to the visual and written modes in the framework. The case study builds upon previous research with multimodal identity texts to propose that visual and written elements combine with features of audio during students’ creation of digital identity texts, portraying powerful multimodal meanings that support EAL/D student representations of identity and culturally inclusive literacy practice. The findings indicate that EAL/D youth’s digital representations of identity are influenced by the complexity of adolescent identity formation and characterised by both intrapersonal and interpersonal connections with themselves and others.