Frank Serafini

As literacy educators and researchers, we need to understand not only children’s motives for engaging in the act of reading and the skills, strategies, and practices they bring to the reading event, but also the social, cultural, and historical contexts of reading, the where, and the semiotic resources that make up the picturebooks being experienced, the what, as well. Perspectives on multimodality may be able to offer some insights into children’s engagements with picturebooks and the pedagogical contexts that support these engagements.

In addition to conceptualizing what multimodality is, it is important that we explore what multimodality does for us as literacy researchers, picturebook scholars, and teacher educators. Exploring the connections among multimodal perspectives and contemporary scholarship on picturebooks and children’s responses to these complex texts is vital to understanding the potential benefits of multimodality. The purpose of this presentation is to address the potential impact for multimodal theories on contemporary picturebook scholarship and pedagogy and provide some compelling arguments why multimodal theories and picturebooks matter in English language education.

Dr Frank Serafini is a Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s Literature at Arizona State University. Frank has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in the field of literacy education, multimodality, and children’s literature. His newest book entitled Beyond the Visual: An Introduction to Researching Multimodal Phenomena was published in 2022. Frank has garnered numerous awards for his teaching and research including the Distinguished Professor of Children’s Literature from the International Literacy Association, the Dina Feitelstein Research Award from the International Literacy Association, and the Distinguished Educator Award from the International Visual Literacy Association.

Frank’s current research projects include visual and multimodal research designs, the history of picturebooks, and the complex relationship of words and images in children’s literature.