of the screen represent everyday and ‘scientific’ concepts differently to those of the page,
and positions students in relation to the construction and production of knowledge and
(re)positions student and teacher roles. The analysis of the use of new technologies in the
classroom offers educational practitioners ‘tools’ for thinking about how the facilities and
multimodal representations of the screen can (re)shape pedagogic practices and roles.
Incorporating Text and Practices with Texts
As commented on in the introduction to this thesis, multimodal and semiotic research
tends to focus on the design and the meaning of texts. How students engage with
multimodal texts, what they do with them and the practices that weave around and
through these texts in the classroom is less often addressed from a multimodal
perspective. Conversely, research that focuses on classroom practices, in particular
research from a neo-Vygotskian perspective on technology-mediated learning, rarely
addresses the multimodal resources that mediate these. In this thesis I have provided a
multimodal analysis of technology-mediated learning that shifts, productively I hope,
between a focus on the semiotic potential of the resources made available on screen and
the practices that these resources bring forth in the classroom. I have been able to
examine the connections between the design of a text and students meaning making by
moving between the two analytical levels, of the resources displayed on screen and of the
classroom. In short, I have been able to examine how the resources of screen have
shaped learning at specific moments in the classroom. This has enabled the
transformative character of learning as a dynamic, social process to be foregrounded in
the thesis.
The process of analysing both the software and the student data within the thesis from a
multimodal perspective makes a contribution to the development of multimodal
methodology of classroom research. Neo-Vygostykian and ethnographic research on
technology-mediated learning focuses on people’s practices and interaction with one
another around the computer and focuses far less or not at all on the resources as they are
displayed on the screen. It is analogous to research that might focus on the use of the
book without focusing on the contents, formats and linguistic aspects of the book. As a
300