knowledge exists in memory in a purely propositional form in which the
Communicational modes are transformed in some unifying way. Other research
suggests that there are distinct information-processing systems for image and word,
and other modes.
I want to argue that the multimodal character of the social plane suggests that it is
possible that the formation of consciousness and what goes on in ‘the mind’ is itself
multimodal or at some level beyond mode. (If it is beyond mode it is not through
speech either.) I want to suggest that signs may not be internalised and 'transformed'
into inner speech and may 'exist' as a fragmentary fuzzy multimodal meaning.
Multimodal Learning
Viewing signs as motivated and transformative as outlined in the previous section has
important implications for thinking about learning. First, students’ signs are never
(more or less competent) repetitions, reproductions, copies, of the teacher’s sign: the
students’ signs are always transformations of the resources that were available to
them, made in the light of their interest at the point of making the sign. The selection
of a signifier can not be treated as an error or a mistake as the student’s sign is not a
copy of the sign of the teacher but an expression of her or his interest. Second, this
concept of sign shifts the focus from sign system to sign making. In doing so it
challenges the notion of sign making as a matter of the sign maker’s competence to
suggest that sign making is a matter of the design of meaning. The sign as arbitrary
means that learning is essentially about acquiring an abstract system of resources that
is outside of the learner. The role of the student is to Ieam the rules and codes of the
system. If the student fails to do this they are considered to have an inability to cope
with the abstract system, and the meanings that they make, and indeed they
themselves are read as failures. Understanding sign making as motivated focuses
instead on the sign maker’s design of meaning with the resources available to them in
a specific context.
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