Kress Chs. 3-4
Yet lives are messy, and, within the broader frames set in cultures and in society, they are endlessly variable. Any meaning-making system that has to cope with that messiness and its ceaselessly nuanced, subtle variability is not likely to be readily reducible to rules (Kress 31).
Though I have found Kress' writing difficult and for the most part impersonal, I am grateful for this recognition of the organic humanness in language. While standards and rules can be useful, our language--our meaning-making system-- should adapt to reflect us, the meaning-makers. And because life doesn't always stay in the lines or follow the norm, because we are creative people with creatively unique capabilities, I like the idea of utilizing a language that flexes and varies even as our lives do.
Now, I recognize a potential danger here, or at least I can hear the push-back from more traditional-minded pedagogists, namely that we risk losing "excellence" or "standards" in such organic models of language. Admittedly, the various modes of media we and our students can choose to work with complicates this. Especially when we consider how "new" many of these modes are to us and our culture, I think it is hard to create new paradigms for our expectations-- ones that we feel are rigorous, intentional, and indicative of a critical consciousness. And I don't think I have well-defined answers or responses to this valid question; it seems the idea of "new standards" is something we will need to explore and experiment with, even as our students explore and experiment with various modes.
I keep coming back to this idea of "control." As a Type-A first-born, I confess I'm often unhealthily dependent upon it-- upon having it, gaining it, and maintaining it. Perhaps the hardest lesson I've had to learn in my 7 years of teaching is how to humbly relinquish it. Just as the most "teachable moments" often spring from spontaneous, unforeseen, and uncontrollable events, so too I think will our best understandings of assessments and expectations for multimodal learning. I think the key is keeping that "big picture" in mind (see previous post), grounding ourselves in some core key values that can steady our course through these unchartered waters.