Dr. Denise Newfield’s paper, Pippa’s Song: Multimodality and Pedagogic Praxis, commemorates the contribution of Pippa Stein, professor of language education at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 1981 to 2008.

Professor Stein was a much beloved and respected teacher, academic and researcher, a founder member of the Africa Research Network, a member of the international advisory committee of the Learning Conference, and of the editorial boards of numerous academic journals. Her untimely death in August 2008 is mourned by the international academic community.

It is my purpose today to pay tribute to her work in multimodal pedagogies and in democratic education by providing a critical assessment of it.