From a multimodal perspective a range of modes are seen as contributing to meaning
making (including gaze, gesture, movement, body posture, spatial location, image,
speech, music, sound-effect, and so on). It follows then that all modes have the
potential to contribute to learning. In other words, learning is not thought of as a
primarily linguistic accomplishment and the range of modes need to be included in
the analysis of learning. In relation to technology-mediated learning I show in this
thesis that it is not adequate to focus only on talk around the computer and that the
multimodal resources as they appear on the computer screen and students’
multimodal interaction with these both need to be analysed.
The theorisation that each mode has different material and social affordances has
implications for learning. These modal affordances represent or shape curriculum
knowledge differently. Each mode has different potentials for expression making the
choice of mode a crucial part of the production and the shaping of knowledge. The
functional specialisation of a mode over time means each mode has different
potentials for representation and communication of knowledge. This is important for
learning as school curricular subjects draw on the semiotic resources of modes in
different ways. Within the classroom the work of the teacher often draws on semiotic
resources of a range of modes (gesture, gaze, manipulation of models, speech, image,
etc.). In contrast, the work of students, in particular work for assessment is often
restricted to the mode of writing. Learning therefore involves students in the work of
translating information across modes, or ‘transduction’ (Kress, 1997).
Modes are used in specific Communicational events to carry different kinds of
information or messages. This suggests that an analysis of learning that focuses on
speech and writing, or any one single mode may fail to capture the work that students
are engaged in and the meanings that they make. Focusing only on the writing in a
student’s text or the screen of a computer application for instance will not be able to
account for the complex ways in which the meanings of images in the student’s text
or on the screen interplay with the writing. This highlights the need to explore how
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