Literary narratives are well recognised for their power to foster engagement with complex social themes. Transmedia narratives, which present the same story in different media, can help advance both critical multimodal discourse studies and multiliteracies pedagogies. To harness this potential, we need to develop methods for systematically relating media affordances to discourse-semantic patterns and the broad social themes these patterns construct in narratives, and ensure these methods build on the knowledge learners bring to the classroom. This article introduces (...) a social semiotic method for analysing transmedia narratives and illustrates its ability to reflect the persuasive power of narrative and build on young children's critical multimodal awareness. This is achieved through a case study comprising data from three adaptations of the same award-winning narrative - animated film (Joyce, W. (Producer), Joyce, W., & Oldenburg, B. (Directors) (2011). The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore [Motion Picture]. Moonbot Studios), interactive app (Moonbot Studios. (2011). The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore (Version 1.4). [Mobile Application Software]), and traditional-format picture book (Joyce, W. (2012). The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore. Illustrations by William Joyce and Joe Bluhm. Moonbot Books) - and mother-child interactions with the book and the app. (shrink)

Ledin and Machin's critique of the use of some current approaches to multimodality for the purposes of critical discourse studies raises some important methodological concerns that need to be addressed. However, both the particular position they develop as well as some of the key points they raise are themselves problematic. In this response, I argue that Ledin and Machin misconstrue some significant aspects of the body of theory they critique and, as a consequence, offer a potentially misleading view of (...) the relevant state of the art in multimodality. I suggest that pursuing closer alignments with theoretically more nuanced accounts of multimodality would allow the account that Ledin and Machin propose to be revised in ways better suited to the task of conducting empirically-driven multimodal critical discourse studies. (shrink)

_This practical and forward-focused book presents a framework that uses social infrastructure to produce effective and inclusive professional development options in education._ Although technology has increased our capacity for social networking both in the digital space and face-to-face, Kira J. Baker-Doyle contends that most professional development opportunities for educators are still fundamentally asocial. She calls for the adoption of humanizing network practices to create meaningful continuing education experiences that leverage the collective knowledge, expertise, and social capital of educators to spark (...) educational change. Baker-Doyle shows how the critical network literacy (CNL) framework overlays critical theory, multiliteracies theory, and social network theory in a way that encourages critical reflection and collaboration among participants. She draws from sources including empirical studies of teacher educators and teacher activists, meta-analytical studies of social network research in education, and professional experience with collective organizing efforts, to detail the many benefits of cultivating CNL in educational spaces. Baker-Doyle provides evidence of how the framework’s practices and protocols can increase transparency, improve representation, and incorporate affirming and restorative discourse. Her work demonstrates how CNL helps create environments that honor teachers’ social identities, their social networks, and the broader social context in which they work. This thought-provoking book is filled with exercises that reinforce social competencies, questions that prompt dialogue and understanding, and real-world examples that underscore the framework's relevance to key educational practices. The generous guidance offered in _Critical Network Literacy_ can be used as a launching point to promote innovation and leadership in teaching. (shrink)

This article proffers a critical reading of multiliteracy pedagogy and a materialism of the multimodal and machinic. A critical stance is taken against the mesmerising modes of representation that run rampant across our ocular territories. The article assesses the dangers of fetishizing technologies. To this end, Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) is read through a Guattarian theoretical prism to emphasise four chief points: (1) the role of the unconscious, (2) the role of affect (affectus in the Spinozian sense; (...) contrary to feeling which immobilises, affect moves us), (3) the apparent becoming cyborg of the human race and (4) the desire to desire repression. The author contends that while qualitative multiplicities play a central role for MLT, it is neither inconsistent nor contradictory to consider the role of the machinic in greater detail. It is argued that more research must be directed into the cartographic, ethological and noological mechanisms at work in plastic universes of reference (new technologies and the arts) which transform the virtual and transfigure the dynamic of affect. (shrink)

Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociological perspective yields a rather different concept that is here (...) termed “critical science literacy.” The implications of this reconsideration for thinking about citizen perspectives, for the work of science journalists and other professional interpreters, and for the design and evaluation of new approaches to science communication are explored. (shrink)

In this article, we carry out a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of a sample from a larger corpus of Romanian news articles that covered the controversial camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and continue to the time of writing in 2017. These French government policies have been highly criticized both within France and by international political and aid organizations. However, the analysis shows how these brutal, anti-humanitarian events became recontextualized in (...) the Romanian Press to represent the French government’s actions as peaceful and consensual. In addition, the demonization of the Roma in the press serves as a strategy to continuously disassociate them from their Romanian counterparts. While there is a long history of discrimination against the Roma in Romania, these particular recontextualizations can be understood in the context of the Romanian government’s need to gloss over its failure to comply with the Schengen accession requirements and acquire full European Union membership. (shrink)

The concept of “critical science literacy” advanced by Susanna Priest is significant to how citizens approach scientific knowledge, but the concept is also relevant to undergraduate students majoring in the sciences, who are not necessarily becoming “critically literate” in their own disciplines. That is, future scientists are not learning how arguments are structured, meaning is made, and facts are agreed upon—specifically through communicative practices—both within and outside of the scientific community. This gap in the curriculum can be addressed (...) through collaborative efforts between rhetoricians and sociologists of science. Drawing from three major disciplinary traditions—writing studies, the rhetoric of science, and science communication—this article posits that a pedagogical intervention is necessary to improve science communication with nonexpert publics. A science writing and communication course that is grounded in the rhetoric of science and that also has sociological, philosophical, and historical components can provide science students with a critical awareness of how their discipline operates in society and teach them how to become more responsible and effective communicators. (shrink)

This article describes contrasting ideas for a set of topics in epidemiological thinking. The premise underlying this contribution to the special edition is that researchers develop their epidemiological thinking over time through interactions with other researchers who have a variety of in-practice commitments, such as to kinds of cases and methods of analysis, and not simply to a philosophical framework for explanation. I encourage discussants from philosophy and epidemiology to draw purposefully from across a range of topics and contrasting positions, (...) and thereby pursue critical thinking in the sense of understanding ideas and practices better when we examine them in relation to alternatives. After an initial topic concerning practices for developing epidemiological literacy, a number of conceptual steps follow—the characterization of the very phenomena we might be concerned with, the scope and challenges of the field of epidemiology, the formulation of categories—before linking associations, predictions, causes and interventions and examining the confounding of purported links. Building on that conceptual basis, the remaining topics consist of issues or angles of analysis related to the complexities of inequalities within and between populations, context, and changes over the life course. The organization of topics derives from a graduate course that I teach that aims for epidemiological literacy, not technical ability in statistical formulas and data analysis, and shares the underlying premise and critical thinking goals of this article. During the topic-by-topic description, some assertions about explanation and intervention emerge, notably, that epidemiological–philosophical discussion about causality often leaves unclear or unexamined whether a modifiable factor shown to have been associated with a difference in the data from past observations should be thought of as factor that, when modified, would generate that difference going forward. The article concludes with a “Limitations of this Study” section that teases out different kinds of description–prescription relationship that are implied in undertaking philosophy of epidemiology and identifies some other considerations that are implied but not emphasized by this article. (shrink)

Young migrants – particularly refugees – are commonly the object of stereotypical visual media representations and often have no choice but to position themselves in response to them. This article explores whether making young migrants aware of the politics of representation through media literacy education contributes to strengthening their participation and resilience. We reflect on a media literacy program developed with teachers and 100 students at a Dutch “International Transition Classes” school. The educational program focuses on visual media (...) production using smartphones, raising critical consciousness and promoting civic engagement. Ethnographic data analyzed include field notes, a focus group with teachers, in-depth and informal interviews, student-produced footage, and a 10-minute ethnographic film. In our increasingly polarized mediatized world, better recognition of how the needs of certain young people diverge depending on how they are situated in racialized, gendered, and classed structures of power is needed to work towards inclusive media literacy education. (shrink)

This paper presents an ethical framework designed to support the development of critical data literacy for research methods courses and data training programmes in higher education. The framework we present draws upon our reviews of literature, course syllabi and existing frameworks on data ethics. For this research we reviewed 250 research methods syllabi from across the disciplines, as well as 80 syllabi from data science programmes to understand how or if data ethics was taught. We also reviewed 12 (...) data ethics frameworks drawn from different sectors. Finally, we reviewed an extensive and diverse body of literature about data practices, research ethics, data ethics and critical data literacy, in order to develop a transversal model that can be adopted across higher education. To promote and support ethical approaches to the collection and use of data, ethics training must go beyond securing informed consent to enable a critical understanding of the techno-centric environment and the intersecting hierarchies of power embedded in technology and data. By fostering ethics as a method, educators can enable research that protects vulnerable groups and empower communities. (shrink)

Marxian education scholars have successfully established critical media literacy as a specific response to concerns about contemporary media's problems and possibilities with regard to youth. This development has made a significant contribution to the intersection of media, critical theory, and pedagogy. Yet, the theoretical foundations of critical media literacy limit its capacity to confront the trajectory of contemporary media and communication technologies. Here, Kip Kline offers Jean Baudrillard's media theory as a possible corrective to the (...) undertheorization of media at the level of form that contributes to the inefficacy of critical media literacy. (shrink)

This essay review connects Joe L. Kincheloe's Critical Constructivism on epistemological analysis to the conceptual and sociopolitical challenges of new media in educational contexts. New media is a domain of educational research that has taken ubiquitous directions in recent scholarship. From cyber-bullying to digital rights management to the development of new literacies and the Orwellian nature of plagiarism watchdog sites like Turnitin.com, teachers are wary of tapping new media resources or ?vehicles? to enhance their more traditional instructional strategies and (...) have little impetus to develop what may be called critical digital literacy skills for themselves or their students. In 12 efficacious points, Joe L. Kincheloe's Critical Constructivism: A Primer ushers readers through complex processes of teaching and learning, knowledge construction, and cognition, as well as necessary examinations of the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which the knower and known are situated. The key understandings of critical constructivism are further explored in this review by evaluating its pedagogical applications and possibilities for teachers and learners confronting the challenges of navigating the vehicles (Web sites, online gaming, any form of online community/social environment ad, use of personal digital communication devices, ad infinitum) of new media in and beyond the classroom for the purposes of gaining what may be termed as critical digital literacy. Kincheloe's primer offers teachers, students and researchers an accessible epistemological manual equipped with definitions of concepts and terms emboldened and spotlighted throughout the text, in addition to its convenient glossary compiled in the back of the text. At face value, teachers, preservice teachers, and teacher educators are provided with a practical heuristic for crossing the great divide from the abstract domains of pedagogical theory to the inviting shores of teacher and learner cognition and practice. (shrink)

The concept of suicide literacy is currently used to describe a perceived deficit in public knowledge about suicide that is directly related to specific health actions and outcomes. It thereby fulf...

Heightened political polarization challenges civic educators seeking to prepare youth as citizens who can navigate affective boundaries. Current approaches to civic education do not yet account for the emotional basis of citizenship. This paper presents an argument for critical affective literacy in civic education classrooms. Drawing from concepts and theories in critical emotion studies, affective citizenship, and agonistic political theory, critical affective civic literacy challenges the rationalistic bent of civic education, and offers instructional strategies for (...) educating the political emotions of students. The voices of late-arrival migrant youth enacting affective citizenship are featured in order to help illuminate the contributions of critical affective literacy to social studies research and practice. (shrink)

The notion and practice of critical thinking (CT) has moved from its speculative formation by John Dewey to a standard element in teacher education curricula and standards. In the process, CT has narrowed its focus to the analysis and articulation of logical thought, and lost transformative value. In this paper, we examine the conception and implementation of CT in three teacher education domains primarily in the United States–music, media and information literacy, and social studies–asking how CT has deformed (...) education in those domains, and how domain-specific approaches could reinvigorate CT. We further suggest refocusing the purpose of CT in teacher education on accomplishing transformative education for equity in school and society, by implementing a critically reflective, transformative praxis based on the insights of domain-specific approaches to CT. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Critical Discourse Studies and in other linguistics oriented scholarly journals we now see more research which draws upon multimodality as part of carrying out analyses of how text...

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...) shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...) shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

Parece evidente que se hacen necesarios nuevos enfoques lectoescritores para una sociedad expuesta a una literacidad multimodal y a la necesidad de que los lectores adopten una perspectiva crítica, tanto por la simultaneidad de códigos como por la sobreabundancia informativa y la dificultad para distinguir los contenidos verdaderos de los falsos. De esta manera, se trata de superar las concepciones de lectoescritura como un dominio del código y promover una dimensión poliédrica. Los objetivos de nuestro estudio se basaban en (...) demostrar la eficacia de la enseñanza de la literacidad crítica frente a los modelos tradicionales, hegemónicos en los sistemas educativos. (shrink)

This article has provided a critical review of sampling procedures in the context of Sierra Leone. The basics of the two major types of sampling procedures (probability and non-probability) have been explained, with a view of shedding light on their usage to assist researchers in their pursuance of addressing proposed hypothetical statements. Problems associated with low literacy rate in Sierra Leone have been highlighted as a major concern, more so in the process of ensuring ethical code of conducts (...) are adhered to during the execution of sampling research. Research practices in the country needs a complete overhaul, particularly with its very low investment in ‘Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ to help support the backbone of research, and backed by investment in technology to assist with the enhancement of exploring sampling data in pursuit of addressing hypothetical postulates / research questions during research. (shrink)

(2009). A Critical Analysis of School Enrollment and Literacy Rates of Girls and Women in Pakistan. Educational Studies: Vol. 45, WOMEN AND EDUCATION, pp. 424-439.

Defining technology : technology as apparatus -- Multimodal critical discourse analysis -- Analysing multimodal discourse : a toolkit approach -- Discourses of technology as progress -- Discourses of technological determinism -- Discourses of technological fetishism : (over)valuing technologies -- Discourses of technological (dis)satisfaction : consuming technologies.

This paper examines ideas which underpin the 'New Literacy Studies', including Street's critique of the 'autonomous model' of literacy. Through a re-examination of the work of Scribner and Cole, the implication that literacy is not related to cognitive development is questioned. Gee's critique of linguistic prescription is discussed. Drawing on action research perspectives, which argue that educational theory concerns the identification of educational problems and values, an approach to literacy for education is proposed.

Vocational Education and Training programs are fuelled by technical and practical educational modules. The teaching staff adopts both traditional and innovative pedagogical frameworks to increase the generalization and maintenance of practical skills. At the same time, VET teachers and trainers have a few occasions to promote and include disciplines and educational programs for enhancing students' soft skills, e.g., critical thinking skills and media literacy. Following the European VET framework and literature of the field, CT and ML represent a (...) social challenge that requires even more efforts by academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Thisstudy situates into this context with the aim of introducing a novel educational approach for supporting the teaching staff in the promotion of students' CT and ML. This educational approach has been realized by the team of researchers and trainers of the NERDVET project, an Erasmus+ KA3 project devoted to the promotion of new tools and policies for enhancing CT and ML in VET. To pursue this aim, the team has employed the self-nudging model which regards the individuals' set of cognitive and behavioral strategies that individuals can develop to target a specific objective. By framing pedagogical strategies into this perspective, the team realized an initial approach for educational activities and teaching strategies to promote students' CT and ML. (shrink)

During the past decade and a half, the field of family literacy has gone from its infancy on the educational periphery toward a position closer to the mainstream. Characteristic ofthe field’s growth is the nation’s largest endeavor in family literacy, the federal Even Start program, which began from scratch in the late 1980s and now claims more than 800 local programs in 50 states and Puerto Rico.Despite several national evaluations of Even Start, no comprehensive study in the family (...) literacy literature specifically focuses on this quarter-billion dollar program’s attempts to measure the progress of its adult students. Accordingly, this study sought to discover the ways in which adult assessment is performed by Even Start programs.This essay emphasizes critical thinking with regards to assessment in Even Start programs Critical thought and reflection drive the exploration of several themes in the study’s data that carry itnplications for the families served by Even Start. These implications, gleaned from what Brookfield (1987) calls “reflective skepticism” and careful study of the data, bring the survey’s numbers to life and ultimately yield useful, potentially program-enhancing information.The article offers background on family literacy and Even Start programs and briefly illustrates the study’s methodology. Then follows a discourse that views the study’s findings through the lens of critical thought, drawing meaning from selected findings that contain repercussions for Even Start families. The piece concludes with recommendations for the improvement of Even Start programs through enhanced assessment and continued study. (shrink)

This paper discusses literacy as a socio-political phenomenon from the perspective of several relatively independent educational discourses. The first is critical education theory and research revealing the hidden mechanisms by which education policies act in the interests of a global market economy. The second is the perspective of critical pedagogy scholars on contemporary educational challenges, who offer responses similar to those discussed in current discourse on informal civic education. The third is the heated discussion of high-stakes (...) class='Hi'>literacy testing (related to OECD literacy studies such as PISA, IALS, etc.) the results of which are used as a source of argumentation for diverse attitudes and educational consequences. Based on an analysis of literacy theory, research on active citizenship and civic education, the term “civic literacy” is proposed and argued as a relevant conceptual frame for conceptualizing school as an institution which can be involved in resistance to all forms of power politics or ideological indoctrination and manipulation, while at the same time, respecting the traditional values and aims of general education. (shrink)

The pace of change in the world is accelerating, yet educational institutions have not kept pace. Indeed, schools have historically been the most static of social institutions, uncritically passing down from generation to generation outmoded didactic, lecture-and-drill-based, models of instruction. Predictable results follow. Students, on the whole, do not learn how to work by, or think for, themselves. They do not learn how to gather, analyze, synthesize and assess information. They do not learn how to analyze the diverse logic of (...) the questions and problems they face and hence how to adjust their thinking to those problems. They do not learn how to enter sympathetically into the thinking of others, nor how to deal rationally with conflicting points of view. They do not learn to become critical readers, writers, speakers and listeners. They do not learn how to use their native languages clearly, precisely, or persuasively. They do not, therefore, become ‘literate’, in the proper sense of the word. Neither do they gain much in the way of genuine knowledge since, for the most part, they could not explain the basis for what they believe. They would be hard pressed to explain, for example, which of their beliefs were based on rational assent and which on simple conformity to what they have been told. They have little sense as to how they might critically analyze their own experience, or identify national or group bias in their own thinking. They are much more apt to learn on the basis of irrational than rational modes of thought. They lack the traits of mind of a genuinely educated person: intellectual humility, courage, integrity, perseverance, and faith in reason.Happily, there is a movement in education today striving to address these problems in a global way, with strategies and materials for the modification of instruction at all levels of education. At its foundation is an emerging new theory of knowledge, learning, and literacy, one which recognizes the centrality of independent critical thinking to all substantial learning, one which recognizes that higher-order, multilogical thinking is as important to childhood as to adult learning, and as important to foundational learning in monological as in multilogical disciplines. This educational reform movement is not proposing an educational miracle cure, for its leading proponents recognize that many social and historical forces must come together before the ideals of the critical thinking movement will become a full academic reality. Schools do not exist in a social vacuum. To the extent that the broader society is uncritical so, on the whole, will be society's schools. Nevertheless, the social conditions necessary for fundamental changes in schooling are increasingly apparent. The pressure for fundamental change is growing. Whether and to what extent these needed basic changes will be delayed or side-tracked, thus requiring new periodic resurgences of this movement, with new, more elaborate articulations of its ideals, goals, and methods — only time will tell. (shrink)

Volume 16, Issue 5, November 2019, Page 522-530.

This book takes on current perspectives on transnationalism and children's relationships to media, childhood, and markets in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children's media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms (...) and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. The analysis situates children's literacy and play practices in the intersections of local/global, rural/urban, Spanish/English/multilingual, and Latino multinational media/US multinational media, revealing how children use drama and pretense to relocate, take up, contest, and consume global media and consumer identities. (shrink)

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively ‘pure’, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (...) (c) scrutiny of the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society. (shrink)

Postmodern theory is used to consider literacy instruction with and without an electronic whiteboard to investigate what it means to move beyond using technology to replicate older models of classroom structure that may be historically situated but that also limit or at least, do not support engagement in ways that may be possible through use of new technologies. Using postmodern theory in this regard is a way in which to consider again the thoughts and practices that tend to construct (...) identities and ideologies in ways that work against true engagement in literacy tasks, lead to subjection and demonstration of acquiescence in place of engagement that leads to participation and critical engagement. Critical engagement as opposed to gaining and maintaining student attention to task are considered in this paper. Thinking about use of the electronic whiteboard from a postmodern perspective cautions us about careful use of this technology to avoid sending messages to students about them and their role in literacy development, the classroom, and in society. (shrink)

_Religious Education and Critical Realism: Knowledge, Reality and Religious Literacy_ seeks to bring the enterprise of religious education in schools, colleges and universities into conversation with the philosophy of Critical Realism. This book addresses the problem, not of the substance of our primal beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality and our place in the ultimate order-of-things, but of the process through which we might attend to questions of substance in more attentive, reasonable, responsible and intelligent ways. This (...) book unpacks the impact of modern and post-modern thought on key topics whilst also generating a new critically realistic vision. Offering an account of the relationship between Religious Education and Critical Realism, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in philosophy, theology and education. (shrink)

Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influ...

We are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, to the ways that we communicate with each other, to how we spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on information technology, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge society, and therefore ascribes education a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to education to rethink its (...) basic tenets, to deploy the new technologies in creative and productive ways, and to restructure schooling in the light of the metamorphosis we are now undergoing. (shrink)

This paper proposes a methodological synthesis in order to study multimodal media discourse and argumentation in the context of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece. It follows the framework of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, integrating this with argumentation studies, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of inference. Our data come from the Greek newspapers Kathimerini and Ta Nea. We contend that the proposed methodological synergy enables scrutiny of (a) racist conceptualizations cultivated by the representation of migrants (...) and refugees in headlines and photographs in newspaper articles along with (b) the argumentative potential that is implicitly sustained in these multimodal representations. (shrink)