ABSTRACT
The myriad ways in which children employ multiple modes in the complex, intertwined texture of face-to-face interaction have been examined in a recent education research study through the multimodal analysis of the use of cohesive devices. Pupils in a Year Five mixed English Primary school (aged 9–10) were filmed working in groups on class-based activities. The focus of this study was pupil-to-pupil interaction. Whilst previous studies of pupil interaction in the classroom have focused on talk and specifically, language (Mercer 2000; Mercer and Dawes 2010; Alexander 2004), and have used conversation analysis or pragmatics as approaches to analysis (Atwood et al. 2010), they have not examined the contributions of other modes. Studies which have been influential here have looked at children’s classroom talk from a socio-linguistic perspective (Maybin 2006) rather than a multimodal perspective. However, multimodal analysis has previously been used in educational research to look at the Science classroom (Jewitt et al. 2001) and the English classroom (Kress et al. 2005) where the focus has tended to be on teaching or the relationship between teachers and pupils and early years settings (Flewitt 2006; Lancaster 2007) with an interest in communication in home and school settings.
