The same topic, different products: Pre-/in-service teachers’ linguistic knowledge representation in a multimodal project

Using a multiple-case study approach, this research study examined how the students (pre/in-service teachers) addressed the same linguistic topic but created three distinctive multimodal products across digital genres in a multimodal composing project. Drawing on New London Group's (2000) pedagogy of multiliteracies, we specifically examined how the students individualized choices and interpretations of a multimodal task, and how they orchestrated multimodal resources (e.g., linguistic, visual, and spatial) to represent their linguistic knowledge, construct meaning, and address potential audience in multimodal composing. The three illustrative cases show the students’ unique approaches to engaging in the digital multimodal task on "word formation" through digital storytelling, digital poster, and gamification-based presentation. This paper concludes with pedagogical implications on incorporating digital multimodal composing tasks in the teacher education curriculum.