In this paper we are interested in the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and its representation. We carry out a social semiotic analysis of a central tool used in astronomy--the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram--in order to highlight its disciplinary and pedagogical affordances. The H-R diagram that we know today combines many layers of…

In this study, the aim is to explore what genres can be found in applications used in preschool as a way to facilitate preschool teachers' informed choices and raise awareness concerning the importance of choosing digital content carefully. In particular, applications that facilitate communication beyond a verbal majority language are in focus in…

The use of digital teaching materials is increasing in mathematics teaching. The dynamic resources of these materials have great potential, for example to adapt the content to different teaching methods and different students. These materials also provide new opportunities for the increasing distance learning. However, in order to take advantage…

The aim of this article is to discuss how a multimodal approach to meaning-making can contribute to language education and how multimodal meaning-making is supported in the Swedish curricula. Considering the rapid digitalization of contemporary communication, the aim and content of language education has been challenged. The article describes…

Young children's play is highly multimodal, with gesture, gaze, movement and speech often combined simultaneously in collaborative meaning-making. This article argues for a multimodal social semiotic perspective on play, recognising that this requires representation of data that brings multimodal elements into careful consideration. In this…

This paper investigates the potential aspects of visual literacy that might appear when visual analytics and students interact in social science secondary classrooms. Interacting with visual technology likely demands new forms of literacy as various dimensions of complexity emerge in such learning activities where reading imposes order and…

While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students' written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach…

Presentation is the default mode of communication in higher education. Teacher education is no exception, and student teachers learn the practice of presenting by observing their subject teachers and by performing their own presentations. This study proposes an analytical framework based on the Learning Design Sequence (LDS) (Selander, 2008),…

In this paper we discuss the role of transduction in the teaching and learning of science. We video-filmed pairs of upper-secondary physics students working with a laboratory task designed to encourage transduction (Bezemer & Kress, 2008). The students were simply instructed to use a hand-held electronic measurement device (IOLab) to find the…

Inquiry-based approaches to science education are central to recent South African primary and secondary school curricula, but have been found challenging to adopt in disadvantaged township contexts. It is therefore important to find ways of introducing inquiry-based approaches, where pupils are encouraged to investigate phenomena they are…

This paper links Systemic Functional-based multimodal discourse analysis and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education through the workshop "Multimodal Literacy in the EFL classroom" (MLEFL). Drawing upon 'multimodal analysis for critical thinking' (MACT) pedagogy (O'Halloran et al., 2017) and the Systemic Approach to…

In this video ethnographic study, a social semiotic approach has been used to explore how the use of digital tablets in preschools may enable children's communication in a minority language. The results show how preschool children use the emerging affordances of digital tablets in order to act as producers of minority language activities, where…

The re-conceptualisation of texts over the last 20 years, as well as the development of a multimodal understanding of communication and representation of knowledge, has profound consequences for the reading and understanding of multimodal texts, not least in educational contexts. However, if teachers and students are given tools to…