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…

After 10 years of interviews with professionals who work across creative and business sectors, the author has drawn together findings in this article to encourage a collapsing of silos between schools and workplaces so that educators can build on untapped expertise from professionals who work and think multimodally. This call for change involves…

As political agendas change, the teaching of writing continues to evolve, encompassing different writing practices in an attempt to address the perceived needs for literacy in our society. This article presents the Write Here project, which aims to boost children's social development and literacy attainment through engagement with visual art,…

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…

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…

Research and pedagogical information provided to teachers on implementing explicit strategy instruction has primarily focused on teachers' speech, with limited attention to other modes of communication, such as gesture and artefacts. This interpretive case study investigates two teachers' use of different semiotic resources when introducing…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have increasingly become a technology tool used in the educational field. IWBs are touch-sensitive screens that work in conjunction with a computer and a projector, and which are used to display information from a computer. As a qualitative case study, this study investigated the SMART Board-infused instructional…

Research on implementing reading strategy instruction has primarily focused on teachers' verbal communication with limited attention to other semiotic resources such as gesture and artefacts. In this paper, we construct a "telling case" on the basis of how one primary teacher from the United States used speech, gesture and artefacts…

This research investigates how three female Nigerian high school students were taught to deploy critical multimodal literacy to interrogate texts and reconstruct unequal social structures. A class of ninth-grade students in an all-women school was given instruction through the analysis of how multiple modes were used to represent meanings in…

The theory of learning multimodality is receiving greater attention. Its application in language learning classes is also increasing in number. Since Chinese-speaking EFL learners are likely to be visual learners, as an instructor of Taiwanese EFL students, I have come to believe that arts integrated, multimodal projects help less confident and…

In the light of international interest in teachers' literate identities and practices, this paper addresses the under-researched area of teachers' writing identities. It examines the multimodal interactive discursive practices at play in the writing classroom of a teacher in the UK who, in order to support the pupils, consciously positions herself…

Two classrooms of diverse 5-year-old children were set the task of exploring ways of realising music invention through the semiotic import of composing resources. In both a rural and an inner-urban setting in Australia, children demonstrated syncretism in bilingual practices in communication. Visual multimodal analysis demonstrated how children…

There have been concerns about the teaching and learning modes in both conventional and Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institutions globally. Such concerns emanate from issues of quality and standards in education. In view of such concerns, the study examined the teaching and learning modes in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). These were…

Framed in theories of social semiotics, this multiple case study describes and categorizes the actional-operational modes used by three middle school earth science teachers throughout the course of one school year. Data included fieldnotes, photographs, and video recordings of classroom instructions as well as periodic interviews with the…

This study is an investigation of the uses of music technology in music education programs in two universities. The purpose of this study was to discover the ways in which music technology was used in two schools of music across the entire music curriculum for music education students. This study detailed the ways in which music technology was…