The Metalanguage of “Visual Design ” into the Classroom for the Construction of Intermodal Meanings

Given that little research has been conducted to date in the classroom about the exploitation of aspects of “visual grammar ” for the teaching of literacy, the purpose of this study is to provide research data to support the adoption of a common image/text relations metalanguage in educational practice as an effective tool for critically negotiating, and mainly, for composing intermodal meanings. Forty-six sixth-grade students who attend a state primary school in the city of Ptolemaida, northern Greece participated in the study. The materials used in the study consisted of: (a) informational, print-based multimodal texts and, (b) compositions produced by students, at first individually and then in groups. The overall research is designed on a pre-test phase, an instructional intervention phase, and a post-test phase. The qualitative comparative analysis of student compositions manifests that the metalanguage of “visual design ” constitutes a truly promising, pedagogically utilizable tool for the description, interpretation and comprehension of the interactions among the various semiotic modes co-existing in multimodal ensembles. This entails the development of multimodal and visual literacy skills by the primary education students. These findings highlight the need for adoption and incorporation of such a metalanguage for the design of curricula facilitating the teaching of literacy, in order to refram