Making Meaning

As a teacher and teacher-educator, Marilyn J. Narey has extensive experience in both art education and early childhood education. During her tenure as a K-12 public school art teacher and department chair in southwestern Pennsylvania, she received multiple grants and recognition for her innovative child-centered curricular projects and partnerships. Her work in the private sector focused upon developing a successful pre-K through primary program that featured arts-based learning. Currently she is a professor of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Driven by a vision of quality early childhood education that transcends disciplinary boundaries, Dr. Narey has received National and state awards for teaching excellence for her work in general education, as well as art education. Her research and publication interests include teacher quality, reflective practice, creativity, curriculum design, literacy, and instructional technology and she has presented nationally and internationally on these topics.

• Beyond Words.- Drawing to Learn.- Creating a Critical Multiliteracies Curriculum: Repositioning Art in the Early Childhood Classroom.- Researching Literacy with Young Children's Drawings.- Studio Thinking in Early Childhood.- Contexts and Layered Texts.- The In-Depth Approach: Young Children's Artistic Learning in the Context of Museum Environments and Other Cultural Settings.- A Circle of Friends: Re-envisioning Art Learning and Individual Difference in the Classroom.- Multiple Modes of Communication of Young Brazilian Children: Singing, Drawing, and English Language Learning.- The Heart of the Arts: Fostering Young Children's Ways of Knowing.- Visions.- Empowering Pre-service Teachers to Design a Classroom Environment that Serves as a Third Teacher.- Rewiring and Networking Language, Literacy, and Learning through the Arts: Developing Fluencies with Technology.- Lighting the Fires Within:.- Learning to See the Boa Constrictor Digesting the Elephant: Pre-service Teachers Construct Perspectives of Language, Literacy, and Learning through Art.

“As contributors to Narey’s edited collection (2009) seem to imply, literacy is defined as a “person’s ability to make/interpret meaningful signs in a particular representational modality (e.g., print, image, film, etc.)” (p. 2). Yet, as these authors (Narey, 2009) seem to imply, our schools and education systems remain verbocentric, even in early childhood, despite our predisposition for meaning making in multiple modalities in today’s global world. Narey’s book is foundational for teaching through multiple modalities. Readers can dive into any of the aforementioned texts to opportunities for opening up spaces that invite your students to critique, design, and engage in multi- modal experiences.” “As a professional resource for early childhood educators, Narey’s book offers educational theory supporting multimodal teaching and educational settings. Readers will be stimulated by detailed descriptions of arts-infused curriculum and inspiring descriptions of technologyused to extend learning. It is a valuable reference for anyone interested in learning more about multimodal learning.” Excerped from:Professional Book Reviews: Critique! Design! Engage! Opening New Spaces for Multimodal Experiences, Deidre Clary, Amy Johnson Lachuk, Andrew M. Corley, and Lucy Spence. Language Arts, Volume 89 - Number 2, November 2011.  Copyright 2011 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Used with permission.