Railways, rebellions and Rage Against The Machine: adolescents' interests and meaning-making in the creation of multimodal identity texts

This paper draws on a Canadian qualitative case study grounded in multiliteracies theory to describe the meaning-making processes of four students aged 13-14 years as they created history projects. Students were invited to explore curriculum content in self-chosen ways and to produce presentations in a range of formats. The data we present and discuss were collected through participant observation and in-situ interviews with four students who selected digital formats. We examine these data using multiliteracies concepts: specifically multimodality and identity texts. We argue that multimodal literacy practices have potential to bridge gaps between students' in-school and out-of-school lives and underscore the importance of allowing students to draw on their out-of-school identities and interests to guide explorations of curriculum content.