ABSTRACT
This chapter explores pedagogical and theoretical approaches to ambitious instruction about texts that are, for various reasons, challenging for teachers and students. It explains the theoretical goals including deepening understanding about layering literacies with arts-based instructional methods and generating insights into learning by privileging visual texts, the body, and emotion as mediating, omnipresent factors in classrooms. The chapter conceptualizes the multimodal approach to teaching and learning about challenging texts as layering literacies. It examines the increasing complexity of student work through the lens of critical transactional theory about difficult knowledge, and accomplish by drawing on theoretical insights from Louise Rosenblatt, Dennis Sumara, Deborah Britzman, and Cynthia Lewis. The chapter explores pedagogical and theoretical approaches to ambitious instruction about texts that are, for various reasons, challenging for teachers and students. The pedagogical, or teaching, goals are to increase learners' engagement and to support teachers in moving toward offering students challenging texts.
