The arts as an enabler of text production across modes and media in early literacy experiences

This paper illustrates educators' facilitation of literacy experiences involving children producing multimodal texts using digital and non-digital resources. Given the increasing attention to multimodality in literacy education and a turn to sociomaterial paradigms in literacy education research, our study contributes to an understanding of how educators teach and create opportunities for children to construct meaning and produce their texts. A key finding in our investigation was the role of the arts in enabling sense-making, multimodality and embodiment during the text production processes. Using theories of sociomateriality, we examined the interactions between bodies and materials within spaces as educators facilitated experiences for multimodal text production in their classrooms. Two cases are presented to demonstrate the possibilities when the arts are used with print and digital resources. Emerging from these cases is the centrality of the arts in text production experiences as the ‘glue’ at the interface of the social and material that draws together human and non-human entities. In response to the findings, a sociomaterial assemblage of text production is presented that shows this essential role of the arts in the assemblage's functioning. As such, we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of text production that elevates the place of the arts in the teaching of early literacy.