Literacies to Grow and Teach: Cultivating a Spirit of Inquiry through Multimodal Text Sets

This chapter documents a commitment to culturally responsive teaching through the implementation of multimodal text sets in English language arts teacher education. Using a communities of inquiry framework inspired by justice-driven approaches to literacy learning, preservice teachers at New Mexico State University designed curriculum and instruction that considered the importance of students' digital literacies to meaning-making and communication. Through the presentation of a course unit that explores how multimodal text sets inspire literacy learning that is culturally relevant for students whose racial, linguistic, and cultural identities are often absent in mainstream school curricula, this chapter highlights the notion that digital literacies are accessible to and supportive of the minority serving educational institutions of New Mexico. Preservice teachers first considered what topics sparked their curiosity or inspired them to step into learning before exploring topics to which their future students will be drawn to investigate in language arts. Integrating two frameworks for creating text sets, preservice teachers then selected a targeted, canonical text around which to build their sets and supported it with multimodal scaffolding texts. Following the work and reflections of one focal student, this chapter offers unit descriptions, snapshots, and implications of personalized literacy experiences with creating inquiry-based, multimodal text sets in a secondary methods course.