Composing comics as activism: Leveraging preservice teachers' multimodal and graphic narrative conventions

This study examines the ways pre-service English language arts teachers (PSTs) conceptualized activism and experimented with visual and multimodal approaches to composing about activism. Drawing on qualitative methods, we examined 22 PSTs' graphic narratives completed as part of their teacher preparation coursework, and center our discussion on three focal students' compositions. We frame our inquiry within the scholarship on critical literacies to address the research question: How do PSTs draw on multimodality and comic conventions to compose graphic narratives about activism? Findings suggest that these focal students leveraged the affordances of multimodal composing to engage readers in their narratives about activism. Specifically, PSTs created multiple perspectives and movement as rhetorical moves that influenced how readers interacted with both their graphic compositions and the activist themes developed therein. After a discussion of the findings, we highlight the potential of PSTs' activist literacies and corresponding implications for the field.