How to analyse and talk about lingering, perhaps non-apparent, change in classroom practice?

We present results from two separate Swedish research projects. The first, Advancing teachers professional digital competence, running 2020-2023, addresses aspects of teachers’ digital competence in multimodal literacy practices that are characterized as spatial, digital and non-digital. The project is underpinned by educational design research (McKenney & Reeves, 2019) and is informed by sociocultural perspective (Wertsch, 2007), especially New Literacy Studies (Street, 2003) and space theory (Massey, 2005). The second project, Teachers' meta-knowledge, and assessment practices in digital, multimodal learning environments, running from 2022-2024 (DiMLA) addresses authentic educational challenges that teachers encounter when working with pupils' digital multimodal representations. The project draws on Design-Based Research (DBR) (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), and is informed by multimodal social semiotics (Kress, 2010) and didactic design theoretical perspective (Selander, 2022; Sofkova Hashemi, 2022; Åkerfeldt, 2014). This roundtable deals mainly with teachers’ design for learning, i.e the teachers' choices of resources and why these were chosen, concerning aims and objectives as well as what was recognised as learning (Bezemer & Kress, 2016).

We present data material as: (1) fieldnotes from classroom observations and transcriptions of video observations, (2) students’ digital, multimodal representations and would like to discuss:
• our analysis – credibility, choice of theoretical perspective, missed aspects
• whether these results are important and how they can (ought to) be discussed
• what kind of contribution to research
• if and how these results can inform the continuing work with the schools.

Petra Magnusson, Kristianstad University

Design for what kind of learning?

The challenges identified through initial survey and interviews with teachers and pupils in the DiMLA project can be expressed as 1) alignment in teaching and assessing students’ digital multimodal meaning-making, 2) teachers’ genre knowledge and preparedness for use of digital tools. Preliminary findings from school one (year 6) show a discrepancy in teachers’ focus between content and form and a lack of explicit recognition of students' digital competence. This result is supported in the students’ digital representations which follows what is signaled as recognised learning thus resulting in powerpoint presentations dominated by verbal writing and seemingly random choice of visual text parts.


Ewa Skantz Åberg, University of Gothenburg

Materiality, dimensions of space, and mediation in early years literacy education: Negotiating text making across digital and non-digital contexts

The analysis shows that the teachers, during the introduction of composing a dish in Keynote, occupy the front classroom space with body movements, gestures, speech, and gazes, while the pupils remain passive. However, the teachers invite them to construct a shared space for dialogue and learning wherein different semiotic means are negotiated, e.g. a ‘zooming gesture’. In group collaboration, the idea content is transformed in various symbolic systems and materialized by the pupils into a written planning, a playdough model and a digital presentation. The two first non-digital mediational means appear to offer spaces for establishing intersubjectivity, but they also serve as structuring and cognitive tools to remember what to include in the digital presentation. The dimensions of space found are physical, embodied, dialogic and screen space. The pedagogical approach applied is similar to Merchant’s (2008) parallel model, although the teachers emphasize the written over other expressional means.

Merchant, G. (2008). Digital Writing in the Early Years. In J. Coiro, M.Knobel, C. Lankshear & D. J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies (s. 751-774). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.


Sylvana Sofkova Hashemi, University of Gothenburg

Designing ghost stories with several modalities and digital resources: a challenge of bridging curricular goals

In year 3 in the DiMLA-project, teachers designed for work with ghost stories involving several modalities and digital resources achieving an enhanced focus on multimodal aspects of texts and meaning-making. In this engaging and well structured design with focus on the auditive mode, the teacher modeled and read aloud ghost stories imitating voices and scary sounds. Pupils engaged in verbal activities of spelling, highlighting, brainstorming spooky words and creating a mind map for their ghost story on paper, writing in pairs on screen and recording reading aloud their final ghost story. The spoken and written word became preparatory for digital writing and reading aloud, similarly to Merchant's (2008) parallel model assuming control of pen-and-paper writing processes alongside specific screen-based activities. The study implies that teachers are challenged bridging the curricular goals with modal and digital knowledge objectives that connect rather to the creative discourse or shine with absence.

Merchant, G. (2008). Digital Writing in the Early Years. In J. Coiro, M.Knobel, C. Lankshear & D. J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies (s. 751-774). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.