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Learning from the Covid-19 pandemic: What is the role of digital resources and multimodal literacy in virtual teaching?

Research topic/aim

The Covid-19 pandemic has entailed challenges as well as opportunities for education in Sweden. During the spring of 2020, teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools had less than a week to make the change from face-to-face to virtual teaching. In December 2020, they once again had to switch to virtual teaching. For teachers and pupils, these changes in teaching modality involved new uses of digital resources. The purpose of this study is therefore to highlight Swedish upper secondary school teachers' practices and perspectives on modifying their teaching with respect to the use of digital resources and multimodal literacy in the virtual classroom. 

Theoretical framework

This study takes a multimodal approach to learning as its theoretical point of departure. Based on the notion of multimodal literacy (Jewitt & Kress, 2003), the study analyses how digital resources in a range of modes contribute to the shaping of knowledge and what it means to be a teacher in the virtual classroom. In accordance with Jewitt and Kress (2003), four aspects for representing meaning are considered: materiality, framing, design, and production. 

Methodology/research design

Data for the study were collected in 2020-2021. The analysis is based on 19 video-recorded interviews with three focus groups involving a total of 13 teachers, as well as audio-recorded observations of 16 lessons in virtual classrooms involving three different classes. The focus group constellations being based on teachers being from three different schools. 

Expected results/findings

The results indicate that all teachers in the three focus groups emphasise the importance of the written text in the virtual classroom, while in the traditional classroom, written texts function more as a form of support. Access to digital pedagogical resources has been uneven among the three groups. Focus group 1 has limited access to digital resources and believes that the digital resources have functions as a storage place for making documents available and checking data on a platform. Focus group 2 has access to extensive digital resources and describes that this enables individualisations in the digital classroom. Focus group 3 has gained access to digital breakout rooms and argues that these were a pedagogical and didactic breakthrough for virtual teaching. The digital breakout rooms contribute to support learning in interaction between the participants in the multimodal literacy practice. 

Relevance to Nordic educational research

In Nordic countries, there is ample research on literacy studies in digitally rich environments. This study can contribute with a broader picture of how digital literacies are situated in ordinary and naturally occurring virtual classrooms. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers have been faced with new challenges for instruction and teaching virtually. This study thus provides additional insights into the important role of focusing on pedagogical and didactical ways of involving teachers and pupils in the use of multimodal literacy and digital resources. 

Reference

Jewitt, C. & Kress, G. (2003). Multimodal Literacy. Peter Lang.