Is multimodal literacy developed? An analysis of the Language and Literature school textbook in Chile

Abstract

This study assessed the potential of the Language and Literature school textbook for third and fourth year of high school for the development of multimodal literacy. To achieve this, an analysis based on the methodological framework of Unsworth et al. (2019) was employed, which allowed the classification of reading comprehension questions based on a multimodal perspective. The results showed that comprehension questions address aspects of multimodality, such as text-image relationships and image interpretation. However, it has been observed that there is no systematic progression in the complexity of questions across units, a predominance of comprehension questions that only require reading the written text, and occasional use of images solely for decorative purposes. As projections from the study, recommendations are provided to align textbooks with contemporary educational needs.