A Multimodal Framework for Computer Mediated Learning: The Reshaping of Curriculum Knowledge and Learning

8.   The Development of Multimodal Theory

In this concluding chapter I address the second aim of the thesis, the question of how the
thesis contributes to the development of multimodal theory through its application in the
domain of the screen and technology-mediated learning. In doing so I locate the thesis in
relation to potential critical practitioner interests and to wider theoretical perspectives to
technology-mediated learning.

The thesis contributes to the development of multimodal theory in five ways. First, the
thesis offers a coherent theoretical framework for multimodal analysis. Second, it
clarifies the conceptual terms that are central to a multimodal approach. Third, it moves
away from a focus on the conventional roles of modes on screen to ask what semiotic
resources modes make available and how these resources shape knowledge. Fourth, the
thesis attends to both the representational modes of multimodal texts and the modes of
students’ practices, and the relationship between them, thereby looking at how the
resources on screen bring forth and fashion the work of students - and vice versa. Linked
to this focus on both text and practices is the fifth contribution of the thesis to multimodal
theory in which I begin to explore how social semiotics and activity theory could be
productively combined.

A Coherent Framework

The thesis is motivated by my interest in pedagogic and theoretical questions concerning
multimodality and technology-mediated learning. The language of description that I
develop in this thesis can be equally applied to the ‘traditional technologies’ of the school
classroom (which rely on textbooks, models and diagrams, teacher and student gesture,
movement and talk) and the use of new technologies in teaching and learning. As I have
discussed and demonstrated throughout the thesis, technology always has a significant
effect both on pedagogy and on the representation of curriculum knowledge. The
facilities of any technology (new media in this case) and the environment of its use draw
on and (reconfigure representational and Communicational modes in different and

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