This paper contributes to the contemporary focus on literacy and digital stories in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. When a group of young children create an animated story together, they might collaborate, both with their peers and with their teacher. By drawing on social semiotic multimodal perspectives as the theoretical…

As literacy curricula around the world expand to include multimodal meaning-making, the challenge that remains is how teachers can design engaging and effective learning experiences in this context and the nature of their guidance to students in developing their multimodal literacy. Our paper focuses on the topic of multimodal composing, where…

While digital multimodal composing, underpinned by a critical literacies approach, provides opportunities for students to make informed semiotic choices and voice concerns about social issues, there is limited research exploring how digital multimodal composing is employed to interrogate and challenge the entanglements of language, immigration…

This paper examines the roles of multimodality and thematic patterns in the teaching of the particle model of matter. Although the particle model is a fundamental topic in science education, there is no consensus on (1) whether or not the model should be introduced in early grades and (2) how to introduce the model to students for the very first…

Several studies have been undertaken to develop instruments to measure English teachers' TPACK, but few studies have measured English teachers' TPACK to develop meaningful relationships among technology, content, and pedagogy in the context whereby literacy should be associated with a range of semiotic modes beyond the written language. The…

English is an already crowded curriculum and the incursion of multimodal literature puts it under increased pressure. How do teachers and students learn to understand and deploy tools of analysis that shed light on verbiage and images without becoming entangled in a complex and crowded analytical language? Is it possible to develop a metalanguage…

This paper explores the ways in which multimodal classroom discourse could inform a social justice agenda through broadening the base for representation in the classroom. It identifies some of the challenges and opportunities of designing multimodal classrooms in diverse and developing contexts, where there are vast differentials in terms of…

Recent research findings indicate that using multiple metaphors in multimodal learning experiences are effective teaching approaches in early years mathematics. Using a social semiotic lens this paper reports on eight early years teachers' perceptions of this approach whilst engaging in a small collaborative professional learning group. This group…

The model presented in this article aspires to represent a theoretically valid and coherent definition and description of writing, as a basis for teaching and assessing writing as a key competency in school. It represents a critique as well as an extension of previous alternatives in that it views writing as a culturally and individually…

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…

Reflection is not a new concept in the teaching of higher education and is often an important component of many disciplinary courses. Despite this, past research shows that while there are examples of rich reflective strategies used in some areas of higher education, most approaches to, and conceptualisations of, reflective learning and assessment…

During a classroom-based study that explored the teaching and learning of visual elements of art and design, Grade 7 students had the opportunity to read four graphic novels. Theoretically, the research was informed by social semiotics, visual literacy, sociocultural theory, and Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading. The instructional unit…

Educators can think of changes in the international literacy landscape as a powerful wave. In this report, the authors argue that given the changes affecting classrooms through information and communications technology, and increasing student diversity not only do they want to prepare for the wave, but they wish to harness its power. This…

To explore the multimodality of two representative EFL textbook series for Chinese college students, their visual and verbal semiotic modes were compared. The target textbooks are "Experiencing English" and "New Century College English". Through multimodal discourse analysis, the study aims to shed some light on how to develop…

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…