Jan 22 2025 61 mins
Community Inquiry and Semiotic Analysis with Drs. Matthew Deroo, Daryl Axelrod, and Jennifer Kahn
In today’s episode, host Matt Sroka welcomes Drs. Matthew Deroo, Daryl Axelrod, and Jennifer Kahn to discuss engaging students in community-based inquiry utilizing multimodal artifacts to analyze signs and symbols. The conversation explores how students can draw upon their own cultural and linguistic resources to analyze artifacts. Together, we also discuss how teachers can do similar work in connecting school literacy with student and community resources. This conversation centers on their article for The Journal for Adolescent & Adult Literacy titled: Engaging culturally and linguistically diverse youth in semiotic analysis for community-based inquiry
Matthew R. Deroo is Associate Professor of Digital Literacies for Multilingual Students in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami. In his research, Matt seeks to learn with and from youth and their communities. His language and literacies-oriented research includes examination of the social and cultural contexts of immigrant and refugee youth, critical, digital media literacies, language education, and citizenship, civic engagement, and belonging.
Dr. Axelrod a Learning Specialist at Columbia University’s Disability Services, a part of Columbia Health. His collaborative learning with digital literacies research covers two primary areas of interest. One is emergent bi/multilingual students’ multimodal composing practices, such as how adolescents create digital compositions using augmented reality apps on mobile devices. He also examines youth and families’ storytelling practices that incorporate data visualization tools, such as families telling migration stories while examining related census data maps. His other line of inquiry concerns qualitative and quantitative research design accessibility, specifically for young adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities and autism.
Jennifer Kahn, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning and Learning Scientist in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami. Dr. Kahn studies how to broaden participation in interdisciplinary, technology-rich activities to support youth learning across school and community settings.
Resources:
Other Related Resources: Activity Guide
Questions to Consider in your group's Semiotic Analysis:
What is the content of your artifact?
What text or numbers are present?
What signs or symbols are present?
What is the color scheme?
How are the words and images positioned?
What is foregrounded or backgrounded?
Are facial expressions present, if so, what are they?
Then Discuss:
How might this artifact be understood within a specific cultural or language based context?
How did your group make meaning (make sense of) your artifact?
Finally:
Write a Memo- narrative form below (about your meaning-making process and your group’s analysis of the artifact)