Digital multimodal teaching and assessment: developing teachers' knowledge and competence

This paper presents initial findings from an ongoing research project, Teachers' meta knowledge and assessment practices in digital, multimodal learning
environments (2022-2024). The project is grounded in multimodal social semiotics (Kress, 2010), didactic design theoretical perspective (Selander, 2022;
Sofkova Hashemi & Spante, 2016; Åkerfeldt, 2014) and Design Based Research (DBR) (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012). The project explores and develops
teachers' digital multimodal teaching and assessment in compulsory schools. This paper concentrates on the first iteration of three, which aims to increase
teachers' knowledge and competence regarding how meaning-making, with different modes and digital learning resources, can be used and articulated in
lesson activities and acknowledged in students' work. Nineteen teacher teams from two schools participated in a workshop and designed their lesson through a
tool set up by the researchers. The tool addressed six areas 1) Knowledge content, 2) Skills, 3) Timeframe, 4) Space, 5) Resources, and 6) Reflection regarding
knowledge and skills. The empirical material consists of these lesson plans, workshops, focus group interviews with teachers and observations. The empirical
material was analysed from a design-oriented multimodal social-semiotic perspective focused on framing, functional load, and meaning potential (Kress, 2010;
Selander, 2022). The findings showed three emerging themes: discrepancy in focus between content and form, lack of explicit recognition of students' digital
competence and weak framing in the planned teaching with digital learning resources.