The Impact of Literacy-Based Schooling on Learning a Creative Practice: Modal Configurations, Practices and Discourses

Building on the argument that practices between teacher and learners in classrooms may differ ( ; ; ; ; ), I look at how literacy focused school classroom teaching/learning practices instilled into an individual have a long-term effect. Using a multimodal (inter)action analytical approach ( , ) and the site of engagement as my analytical tool that brings together concrete actions, practices and discourses as a coherent whole, I examine actions, practices and discourses produced and reproduced by an art teacher and a new art student in a small private art school in Germany. While the art teacher draws on and re-produces the practice of painting, the new art student draws on and reproduces the practices and discourses that she learned in formal schooling, forcing her to produce and understand modal configurations that do not align with the creative practice that she is learning. This paper has potential educational and social ramifications as it illustrates that formal schooling may have a negative effect upon creativity by focusing the schooled individual upon and on . These foci directly translate into modal behaviour which disadvantages the individual when trying to learn a creative practice, where the and are emphasised. As the world becomes more multimodal and creative, we may want to engage in more research to rethink what and how children are taught.