Multimodal Funds of Knowledge in Literacy: Countering Deficit Narratives of Diverse Families

This book prepares educators to teach and support diverse students and their families as they negotiate multimodal aspects of literacy. Framed by sociocultural theory, multiliteracies, multimodality, and posthumanism, this book provides concrete alternatives support students’ and families’ cultural strengths.

Sally Brown is a Professor of Literacy Education at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches preservice and in-service educators about multimodal literacies. She is interested in how young, culturally and linguistically diverse children develop literacies across school, home, and community environments and in contact with the material world.

Rong Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Appalachian State University. Her research focuses on emergent bilingual families’ language and literacy practices in home settings. She also studies young children’s emergent literacy skills developed during reading wordless picturebooks and culturally related picturebooks, and their multimodal meaning-making.