Multimodal Teaching and Learning with the Use of Technology: Meanings, Practices and Discourses

The aim of this paper is to report on teachers’ experiences of, and approaches to, multimodality in teaching and learning. A small-scale online survey with closed and semi-structured questions has been deployed to school and university teachers (n=68) for eliciting their experiences in multimodal teaching and learning. Thematic analysis has been adopted as the overarching methodology for reporting patterns in the data from the survey. The results from the analysis showed that experiences of multimodality are discerned as: (1) imparting information, (2) enacting collaborative learning and (3) pre-paring students for exploring concepts. The process of meaning making is exemplified through a developmental progres-sion from more teacher-directed modes through oral, written and visual representations to more student-centered through gestural representations as means of connecting and combining different modes triggered via visual communication, col-laboration and exploration.