Sylvia Pantaleo

Sylvia Pantaleo
University of Victoria | UVIC · Department of Curriculum and Instruction (EDCI)

About

72
Publications
17,281
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,276
Citations

Publications

Publications (72)
Article
During a study in a Kindergarten classroom, wordless and almost wordless picturebooks were presented as aesthetic objects that are read for pleasure, reward slow looking, and require engagement in significant semiotic work. Instruction about and adult mediation of picturebooks throughout the research communicated to the children that elements of vi...
Article
Plusieurs chercheur·se·s ont identifié la créativité comme une capacité fondamentale que les individus doivent développer, autant à l’école que dans la société. Partout dans le monde, des éducateur·rice·s explorent comment encourager la créativité dans les salles de classe. Une brève revue des écrits scientifiques sur la définition de la créativité...
Article
Student engagement in the process of transduction concomitantly affords them with opportunities to develop and express their critical and creative thinking competences. Reconfiguring or remaking knowledge or meaning in modes other than those of the original sources of information requires affective, imaginative and cognitive activity by sign‐makers...
Article
During a 10-week classroom-based study in a school in western Canada, 17 Kindergarten children had multiple opportunities to learn about how elements of visual art, design and layout in picturebook artwork are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. Student application of learning about the concepts under stud...
Article
Full-text available
During a classroom-based study that featured wordless and almost wordless picturebooks, instruction and adult mediation communicated to Kindergarten children that elements of visual art, design, and layout are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. The illustration techniques described by Ray (2010) were used...
Chapter
In this chapter, the authors draw on a range of theories and interpretive frameworks to outline some important changes in the nature of contemporary children's literature. The research and scholarship in this chapter focuses on the role of metafictive devices and the ways digital mediation have affected the evolution of children's literature, in pa...
Chapter
Internationally, creativity has been identified as a fundamental competency to cultivate in learners with respect to their intellectual development and personal well-being, including their overall success in school and contemporary society. It is important for educators to recognize, establish, and maintain conditions in which student creativity ca...
Article
A paucity of research has focused on the peritextual elements of graphic novels. The functions and examples of the Peritextual Literacy Framework (PLF) were used to analyze Dav Pilkey’s 10 Dog Man graphic novels. Some of the findings from the content analysis of the books include the following: although all six functions of the PLF are realized in...
Article
A paucity of research has been conducted with learners in elementary classrooms on both the use of and the student creation of science comics. During the classroom-based research featured in this article, Grade 4 students designed ocean threat comics for the culminating activity of an interdisciplinary Ocean Literacy unit, one component of a larger...
Article
During their participation in a classroom-based research project, 9-10-year-old students had opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal ensembles. The Grade 4 students read, discussed and wrote about picturebooks during Language Arts...
Article
Full-text available
Although scholars have explored the meaning-making affordances of peritextual features such as dust jackets, case covers, beginning and final endpapers, frontispieces, title pages and imprint pages in picturebooks, limited research has focused on the peritextual elements of graphic novels. Purposive sampling was used to select a data set of 30 grap...
Article
Participation in a classroom-based study provided Grade 4 students with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal ensembles. Intentionally-designed instruction during the multifaceted research included a variety of activiti...
Article
During a classroom-based study, Grade 4 students were provided with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their esthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal texts. Intentionally designed instruction during the research included a range of activities focused on specific e...
Article
During a classroom-based study, eight – to ten-year-old students had multiple opportunities to develop their knowledge and understanding about semiotic resources for meaning-making in picturebooks and graphic novels. Instruction during the study included a variety of activities that focussed on a selection of elements of visual art and design, and...
Article
One of the main purposes of the classroom‐based research featured in this article was to develop 9‐year‐old students' visual meaning‐making skills and competences by focusing specifically on elements of visual art and design in picturebooks. The complexity of the picturebook format requires and rewards slow looking by readers/viewers. However, stud...
Article
Creativity has been identified by many scholars as a fundamental capability to cultivate in individuals in school and in society at large. Internationally, educators are exploring how to foster creativity in classrooms. A brief review of relevant literature on defining creativity, nurturing creativity in classrooms, and assessing creative products...
Article
A classroom-based study with eight- and nine-year-old students included the participants having many opportunities to engage with multimodal print and digital texts, and various technological tools. The data presented in this article focus on one of the specific purposes of the research: to investigate students’ opinions of the affordances of desig...
Article
During a classroom-based study conducted in two Grade 4 classrooms, the students were provided with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competencies. The eight- and nine-year-old students’ participation in the case study research included the reading and discussing of and writing about picturebooks. The intentio...
Article
During a study conducted in two Grade 4 classrooms, the students were provided with numerous opportunities to engage with multimodal print and digital texts, and various compositional tools and devices. The eight- and nine-year-old students’ participation in the research included the reading and discussing of, and writing about graphic novels. Inst...
Article
The overarching purpose of the classroom-based research featured in this article was to explore the development of middle-year students’ visual meaning-making skills and competencies. The research was informed by multimodality and social semiotics, and embraced a sociocultural perspective of literacy and a transactional theory of literature. Over a...
Article
Full-text available
Picturebooks are highly sophisticated multimodal ensembles. Understanding the semiotic resources and affordances of the visual mode to represent and communicate meaning is fundamental to appreciating the artistry and complexity of picturebooks. A recent classroom-based research project with grade 2 students featured explicit instruction on particul...
Article
The data featured in this article were gathered during a classroom-based research project with Grade 2 (six- and seven-year-old) children. The overall purposes of the study included exploration of how the development of young children's understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their comprehension, interpretation, and analysis...
Article
During a multifaceted classroom-based study, 22 7- and 8-year-old children had opportunities to develop their understanding of visual art and design elements and diverse narrative structures in picturebooks. The culminating activity of the case study research involved application and transformation of knowledge of the instructional foci as the stud...
Article
Notwithstanding the complex and dynamic nature of teaching and learning in schools, over four decades of research findings have consistently revealed a correlation between teacher expectations and student achievement. Focusing on teacher expectations for the narrative structures created by young children, this article features a discussion of data...
Article
The classroom-based research featured in this article explores how the development of student understanding of elements of visual art and design affected their comprehension, interpretation and analysis of multimodal texts, as well as the subsequent production of student-generated texts created in the medium of comics. This article presents the cas...
Article
The data featured in this article were collected during a classroom-based study with seven- and eight-year-old children in British Columbia, Canada. The multiple purposes of the research included exploring how the development of the students’ understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their subsequent application of these same...
Article
One of the purposes of the classroom-based research featured in this article was to explore how the ongoing development of young children’s understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their comprehension, interpretation and analysis of the artwork in a selection of picturebooks. Social semiotics, multimodality, sociocultural the...
Article
Explicit pedagogy that focuses on visual design and composition principles can affect students' responses to, and understanding, interpretation and analysis of images, as well as the creation of their own visual representations. This article considers the why, the what, and the how of teaching various visual elements of art and design to students t...
Article
The classroom-based research discussed in this article explored developing elementary students’ visual meaning-making skills and competencies. The study’s instructional unit focused on a selection of visual elements of art and design in picturebooks, graphic novels, and magazines. As well as reading, responding in writing to, and discussing the foc...
Article
Throughout its history, the ecology of the picturebook has been impacted by various social and cultural changes. Postmodernism is one perspective, among other conceptual and theoretical frameworks, that has been proposed to explain some of the fundamental changes evident in many contemporary picturebooks. A review of the literature (Pantaleo & Sipe...
Article
Although numerous scholars and teachers have embraced Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading, some have misinterpreted and oversimplified her ideas about aesthetic reading and personal response. As well as revisiting Rosenblatt’s theory and other scholars’ interpretation and extension of her ideas about aesthetic response to literature, this...
Article
Meanings are created, represented, and communicated in multimodal ways in our contemporary world. The dominance of the visual in modern society requires students to be visually literate to understand, appreciate, interpret, and compose the content and the design of multimodal texts that include images. This article features the case study of Jaelyn...
Article
During a 10-week classroom-based study, 20 fourth grade students participated in a number of interdependent activities that focused on developing their visual meaning-making skills and competencies. As well as reading, responding in writing to and discussing a selection of picturebooks, graphic novels, and magazines, the students created graphic na...
Article
Colour, a visual element of art and design, is a semiotic mode that is used strategically by sign‐makers to communicate meaning. Understanding the meaning‐making potential of colour can enhance students’ understanding, appreciation, interpretation and composition of multimodal texts. This article features a case study of Anya, an 11‐year‐old studen...
Article
As art objects, picturebooks have the potential to contribute to readers’ aesthetic development. Many scholars and practitioners have recognized how using picturebooks with older students can augment their reading motivation and extend their understanding of visual elements of art and design, as well as develop their literacy, language, and thinkin...
Article
This article features Grade 7 students’ oral and written responses to The Red Tree (Tan, 2001), one of the picturebooks used during two multifaceted, classroombased research projects. As well as examining how the students responded to and interpreted texts with metafictive devices, the research explored how students transferred their knowledge and...
Article
A multifaceted, classroom-based research project explored how developing Grade 7 students’ knowledge of literary and illustrative elements affects their understanding, interpretation and analysis of picturebooks and graphic novels, and their subsequent creation of their own print texts. Analysis of two sources of data, the students’ written respons...
Article
During two multifaceted, classroom-based research projects, Grade 7 students had opportunities to develop their understanding of metafictive devices and art and design elements by reading a selection of picturebooks and graphic novels. The students also had the opportunity to apply their knowledge and create their own multimodal print texts. This a...
Article
This article features a case study of the written and illustrative text produced by one Grade 7 student, Stefinia, and discusses the metaleptic transgressions evident in the book she created as the culminating activity of a research project. Stefinia was a participant in a classroom-based study that explored how developing students’ knowledge of li...
Article
Full-text available
This article focuses on the graphic novel produced by a 12-year-old student who participated in a multifaceted study that provided her with opportunities to engage with multimodal texts. An ecological perspective on teaching and learning framed the classroom-based research that explored how developing students' knowledge of literary and illustrativ...
Article
The classroom-based research discussed in this article focuses on how elementary students' experiences with a collection of postmodern picturebooks developed their narrative competence. This article explores how 39 Grades 3 and 4 students' written and visual texts were affected by reading a particular selection of picturebooks. The students wrote r...
Article
Narrative embedding is a common narrative structural device. Genette (1980, 1988) distinguished among various diegetic levels to explain the discrete narrative levels in embedded narratives and he defined metalepsis as the deliberate disturbing or breaking of narrative boundaries. Metalepsis, described by Malina (2002) as a mutinous narrative devic...
Article
This article examines the written and visual texts of three elementary male students and discusses how the boys’ experiences with a collection of postmodern picturebooks influenced their narrative competence. The boys were participants in a multifaceted study that explored Grades 3 and 4 students’ understandings of and responses to postmodern pictu...
Article
This article examines the writing of three Grade 3 students and discusses how these girls drew upon their symbolic tools, specifically those developed as a result of their experiences with particular kinds of texts. The students were participants in a multifaceted study that explored Grades 3 and 4 students' understandings of and responses to pictu...
Article
Scholars agree that reading pictures is a multifaceted act. Interestingly, children often look at illustrations more closely and "see" details in picture that are missed by "skipping and scanning" adults. Although the illustrations in picture books are a "source of aesthetic delight," "everything" about the illustrations conveys "information about...
Book
Despite being a source of continuing interest to educational scholars, research into the literary understanding of elementary school students has emphasized written materials over multimodal mediums such as picturebooks. Focusing on students in Grades one and five, this book describes children's interpretations of and responses to a variety of cont...
Article
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992) by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith was awarded a Randolph Caldecott Honor Medal in 1993. Scieszka and Smith subvert textual authority through playing “with literary and cultural codes and conventions” (McCallum 1996, p. 400) in their metafictive text. In this article, I discuss the intertextual...
Article
Mercer, N. (1995) coined the term interthinking to link the cognitive and social functions of group talk. Essentially, interthinking means using talk to think collectively, to engage with others’ ideas through oral language. In this article I share four excerpts from small group interactive read-aloud sessions that were conducted with Grade 1 child...
Article
Research has revealed how students draw upon other texts when writing their own texts. This article explores how the writing of Alyssa, a 10-year-old Grade 5 student, was influenced by her engagement with literature with Radical Change characteristics, as well as by her knowledge of and experience with other texts. Dresang's Radical Change taxonomy...
Article
Although some researchers have examined students' literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive characteristics, few have explored how elementary students incorporate metafictive devices into their writing. In this article I analyse the stories and books created by a class of Grade 5 students and discuss the metafictive devices...
Article
In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, Black and White (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee’s choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: “that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn’t necessary to think in a straight...
Article
This article discusses a study that explored first-grade students' responses to and interpretations of eight picture books with metafictive devices. The article focuses on children's visual and written responses to the picture books and describes the relationship between the students' visual and verbal texts with respect to storytelling. The two ma...
Article
The Radical Change conceptual framework provides theory for understanding, appreciating, and evaluating three types of significant change in contemporary literature for children and youth: changing forms and formats, changing perspectives, and changing boundaries. A paucity of research has explored primary students' literary understandings of and r...
Article
Voices in the Park(Browne, 1998) was one of nine picture books I used in a study that explored the nature of Grade 1 children’s literary understanding by examining their verbal responses during storybook read-aloud sessions, and their subsequent written, visual arts, and dramatic responses. This article discusses the Grade 1 students’ responses to...
Article
In the picture book Shortcut (1995), the mediated telling of the fabula (the story) by David Macaulay results in a nonlinear and nonsequential syuzhet (the plot). Several metafictive devices used in the construction of the syuzhet of Shortcut draw attention to its status as text and fiction. Although researchers and theorists have written about met...
Article
This article focuses specifically on an aspect of Grade 1 children's literary understanding—the textual associations made by the students as they discussed nine picture books. This work extends the small body of research that has examined the responses of Grade 1 children (e.g., Kiefer, 1993; McGee, 1992; Sipe, 2000a), and also contributes to previ...
Article
Full-text available
Describes the oral, written, and visual arts responses of a group of Grade 1 children. Discusses first grade children's understandings of and responses to several Radical Change characteristics and metafictive techniques found in David Wiesner's "The Three Pigs" (2001), the 2002 Randolph Caldecott Medal winner. Explores the nature of the literary u...
Article
In this article, I have presented findings from survey data to describe elementary teachers' and teacher-librarians' use of various genres of children's literature and their use of children's literature in specific curriculum areas. Data analysis revealed that teachers and teacher-librarians most frequently used the genres of non-fiction, realistic...
Article
Discusses how four picture books, "Granpa,""The Tunnel,""The Wolf," and "Shortcut," provide the stimulus for children to become more effective readers through the use of sophisticated literary strategies. Explores some of the "gap-filling" required of readers as they deal with the indeterminacies of texts. Discusses classroom activities based on th...
Article
Full-text available
Article
Children's literature has become a central component of many elementary reading programs. The multiple benefits of using children's literature in classrooms have been well documented (Cullinan, 1989a, 1989b; Fuhler, 1990; Galda and Cullinan, 1991; Huck, 1987). Reading programs using literature as their core content vary in organization and structur...
Article
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Department of Elementary Education. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 1994.

Network

Cited By