Abstract
This chapter explores the process of using film, as described by participants in the three research projects that form the basis for this text. Using the gerundial coding method, a series of steps emerged based on interviews with teachers, including locating films, choosing key moments to emphasize, choosing how much of the film to share, and deciding on next steps in the instructional process. While not all comprehensive or universally applicable to all processes for including film as a text, this chapter holds implications for the complexity of film as a text in the classroom and generates a tentative model for what steps in utilizing film in literacy instruction might look like, particularly in secondary education settings.
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Figure 1.
A model for using film across content areas
Key Terms in this Chapter
Film: An assembled and recorded text composed and shared with specific intentions and purposes, either from authorial voices within or outside the classroom space.
Assemblage: A term that signifies a multimodal text that has been composed of two or more combined elements for meaning-making.
Literacy Practice: On-going reading and writing processes that students/teachers engage with, either in the context of school or at home.
Filmic Pruning: The notion teachers employed of deciding to remove certain content from a part of the visual experience.
Filmic Curation: The process teachers engaged in of finding and selecting films for classroom use.
Teacher Autonomy: The intentional choice that can be made in schools, districts, and larger systems in education to invest in the professional decision-making of teachers, rather than apply reductive stances to educational processes.
New Literacies: An approach to examining the ways that meaning are conveyed through multimodal and digital texts and platforms that extend beyond printed word-based text; according to Lankshear and Knobel, this sense of the new may be applied to either processes or materials.