Abstract
In recent years, national access to and use of digital tools has increased rapidly in Swedish schools. This article draws upon experiences from a qualitative study conducted in Sweden. This study explored student's use of multimodal texts and how students and their teachers perceive and recognize the multimodal texts produced in project assignments. The empirical material was gathered from six different project assignments at two different secondary schools in Sweden. The data consisted of students’ multimodal text productions, participant observation and interviews and the theoretical framework drew on literacy studies and multimodal perspectives on design for learning. Despite the digital tools and the multimodal opportunities provided in the investigated literacy practices, the students mainly used linguistic design for representing knowledge. The students’ multimodal texts were shaped by local scopes and educational traditions. The written texts were more recognized by the teachers and students and valued in relation to the practice of assessment and grading. The results reveal a need towards developing teaching and assessment practices so that text production encompasses a pedagogy of multiliteracies.
Highlights
Today, Swedish students use mainly digital tools to search for information and to write texts in social science and national language classes (Board of Education 2016)
If we return to the beginning of this article, to the aim and the research questions, we have illuminated how multimodal texts were designed in three literacy practices and which representations were recognized as valuable knowledge by teachers and students
The findings show that the students were designing their interest and understanding of the task in relation to different digital tools (Facebook, Google Sites, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and the schools’ Learning Management System) and that the students had chosen foremost the linguistic mode to represent their knowledge in the three literacy practices (Tables 3, 4, 5)
Summary
Swedish students use mainly digital tools to search for information and to write texts in social science and national language classes (Board of Education 2016). An increased use of digital tools and resources for learning has entailed an extension of opportunities and challenges for student’s writing repertoires. According to this digitized development, there are expectations of new and creative forms of learning and new ways of representing knowledge in any subject. Increased access to digital tools and resources is challenging the students’ choices of different modes for representing experiences and learning (Akerfeld 2014). Websites and software applications, offer a wide range of modes (for example writing, images, speech, and moving images) for meaning making and communication. All modes are seen as equal communicational forms that students use in their repertoire of making meaning and knowledge visible in communication. A written text has by tradition a higher status in assessment than an image which is often only recognized as a decoration to the written text (Jewitt 2009; Oldakowski 2014)
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