Moving Ideas ― Multimodality and Embodied Learning in Communities and Schools

What does it look and feel like to communicate, create, compose, comprehend, teach, and learn with our bodies? Reaching beyond existing scholarship on multimodality and literacies, Moving Ideas expands our capacity to understand the embodied dimensions of learning and stretches our repertoires for more artfully describing them. Wresting language away from its historically privileged place at the center of social science research and practice, this collection examines the strategic layering across semiotic modes, challenging educators and researchers to revisit many of our most elemental assumptions about communication, learning, and development. The corporeal pedagogies these authors describe illuminate a powerful kind of learning that we know far too little about; in this age of accountability and high-stakes testing, failing to pay adequate attention to the promise of multimodality means forfeiting significant resources that could be used to innovatively engage people of all ages in education broadly conceived.

Currently Professor of English Education and Applied Linguistics at Sonoma State University, Mira-Lisa Katz earned a PhD in education in language, literacy, and culture from the University of California, Berkeley. Katz is the recipient of several awards and has presented her research internationally and published in numerous journals.