Illuminating Perspectives through Critical Visual Literacy: 56th Annual IVLA Con

The present study aims to explore teaching poetry reading using various visual resources in a community-based Chinese heritage language classroom, which has been marginalized in the U.S. institutional discourse. The present study draws upon the theoretical perspectives on culturally sustaining pedagogy and multimodality. The ethnographic research design was used to support the inquiry. Data sources included weekly observations in the poetry class, video recordings of class conversations, informal conversations with the teacher after each class, and artifacts collected from the focal participants. The findings demonstrate three major themes: teaching cultural values, understanding metaphorical knowledge, and using drawings as a reading reflection. The findings provide examples to illustrate each theme. Specifically, the teacher was skillful at navigating various visual resources to engage the students in the meaning-making of the poems. Additionally, the interplay of the multimodal texts and the teacher’s action modes all contributed to the children’s engagement with poetry reading. Pedagogical methods informed by the findings are also discussed.