Multimodal Literacy of Students in Pre-School Education Programme

Abstract

Picture books constitute the book type most frequently encountered by children of pre-school age, combining both the verbal and visual art communication modes. Picture books are classified as multimodal messages and can serve as the fundamental starting point for the development of visual and multimodal literacy. It has frequently been observed that children of pre-school age discern a larger number of meanings in picture books than adults by listening to the text and observing the illustrations at the same time. The role of the educator is to guide children towards accepting messages originating from both communication codes. The question then arises of how the meaning of a multimodal message is discerned by future educators of pre-school children. A survey was conducted involving first-year pre-school education students (n = 96). Students were asked to discern the message of the multimodal work provided and to write it down. Texts were analysed through coding and the merging of codes into categories. The results of the survey show that the meaning was discerned primarily from the written text and to a lesser degree from the illustrations. The results thus constitute a starting point for planning approaches to the development of multimodal literacy among future educators.