The Missouri Reader Vol. 38, Issue 2 | Page 41

The case study presented here is used as an

example of what both a change in text

(graphic novels as opposed to novels) and

context (extra-curricular as opposed to

curricular) can illuminate about literacy

practices and what it may be able to

suggest about moving popular multimodal

texts across the ‘boundaries’ or

‘domains’ (Barton & Hamilton, 1998) that

exist within pupils’ lives. (Sabeti, 2013, p.

839)

Sabeti found that members of the graphic novel reading group were able to make substantial “border-crossings” (Sabeti, 2013, p. 836), but warned that her group was extra-curricular. She concludes with a call for more research to see whether there are ways that the success in the environment of her small graphic novel reading group could be harnessed for pedagogical purposes in other contexts.

Comics and Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students

Researchers document success using comics to teach linguistically and culturally diverse students in a number of case studies. Chun

(2009) used the 1992 Pulitzer

Prize-winning graphic novel,

Maus, by Art Spiegelman (1991)

to effectively teach English-

language learners and height-

ened their sense of critical

literacy as they compared their

own immigrant backgrounds to

the conflicts and challenges experienced by the characters living through the holocaust as portrayed in the graphic novel. Danzak (2011) employed the comics medium to help his English Language teen-aged students develop a sense of agency as they confronted and re-imagined their personal immigration stories as graphic novels, noting that, “…thanks to visually supported text, graphic novels provide comprehensible input and lower the affective filter for second language learners” (p. 189). Hecke (2011) used graphic novels as a teaching tool to help her university and high school English students increase their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in their English as a Foreign Language classrooms. Ranker (2007) used comic book read alouds to help his ESL students engage in meaningful social interaction around literary texts in their target language.

Deaf students at risk of falling behind in their reading ability share many characteristics with students learning English as a second language. Smetana, Odelson, Burns and Grisham (2009) reported great success using graphic novels to help engage their deaf students and to scaffold reading with the comics’ correspondence between text and image. The same findings were echoed by White (2011) who reported how comics helped increase reading comprehension in students with hearing loss. Similarly, students with diminished cognitive function responded positively to their work with comics and graphic novels (Gomes & Carter, 2010).

Multimodal and Semiotic Qualities of the Comics Medium for Teaching

Newspaper comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels are all formats of the same medium, commonly known as comics or sequential art (Eisner, 1985/2008; McCloud, 1993; 2006). The single comic panel, or frame, is the medium’s essential semiotic unit, which, combined with a second, third, or any number of subsequent panels (each displaying a variety of icons, pictures, and textual combinations) engages the viewer/reader in a co-construction of meaning across the empty-spaces, or gutters between frames (Bongco, 2000; Eisner 1985/2008; Low 2012; McCloud 1993, 2006; Pantaleo 2013b). The salience of these visual breaks is overlooked in cinematic media, where the viewer/reader sits passively by as the film progresses automatically through time from one frame to the next (McCloud, 1993; Cohn, 2013). In comics, the breaks are frozen in time and space, thus inviting the type of active transaction between reader and text addressed in the foundational work of Rosenblatt (1978). The majority of authors in this section (Connors 2013; Dallacqua 2012; Pantaleo 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b) acknowledge the influence of Rosenblatt in their work and share an interest in determining how comics’ texts and readers interact to produce meaning.

41