an alternative reading of these concepts is available through image, movement and the
other modes made available on screen. The visual modes (image, colour, texture) are
dominant across all three subject areas, including School English; however, the form of
these modes and what they attend to differs with respect to aspects of the representation
and construction of curriculum. For example, within English, image most often appears
in the form of ‘illustration’ (although as I have demonstrated image is not serving the
‘function’ of illustration) and to locate the curriculum in the domain of people’s lived
experiences. This use of image provides a semiotic links between English as it appears
on the screen and English as it appears on the page and serves to embed screen texts in
the cultural and historical domain of English. In the case of Mathematics, it seems that
visual modes provide a series of tools for the construction and deconstruction of
mathematical curriculum entities. In contrast, the visual modes appear to be used in
school Science computer applications as a kind of ‘empirical fact’ steeped in the realism
of scientific theory. This serves to locate scientific texts as they appear on screen within
the empirical culture and history of Science, one of objective observation and fact.
Several questions that are raised by the focus on English, Mathematics and Science in the
thesis will inform the development of larger scale research in the future. These questions
include ‘How are modes configured differently in computer applications designed for use
in different school subjects?’, ‘How are modes designed to attend to curriculum entities
in different ways (for example how the visual representation of curriculum entities in
English as opposed to Science)?’, and ‘How does the use of the facilities of the screen
differ between school subject areas?’.
Theorising Learning
Throughout the thesis I have applied multimodal concepts in the domain of learning and
school knowledge - and through this application the concepts have been clarified further.
In order to analyse sign making as a social process in the school context I have shown,
albeit partially, the potential for bringing together social semiotics and activity theory. In
the thesis I have begun to explore some of the ways in which the concepts of
multimodality and activity theory can be brought together in the analysis of technology-
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