Search

In learning mathematics in the 21st century and after the COVID-19 pandemic, a multimodal role in the process of drawing conclusions involving mathematical symbols or signs is very much needed. This process is called multimodal semiotic reasoning. This research aims to study the literature on multimodal semiotic reasoning research articles. Until April 2023, there were 32 articles on the keyword multimodal semiotic reasoning with the subject of mathematics in the Scopus, Science Direct, and ERIC databases. Furthermore, it is identified based on a) suitability of criteria; b) the similarity of the articles in the three databases. Finally obtained 24 articles that meet the requirements for further research. A literature review on multimodal semiotic reasoning is explored based on a) kinds of mathematical reasoning involving symbols and signs using multimodal, b) multimodal used in research, c) the most researched mathematical concepts and the mathematization process that occurs, d) the role of multimodal semiotic reasoning in mathematics education. The results showed that a) the most dominant type of mathematical reasoning involving objects, symbols, and signs using multimodal was Algorithmic Reasoning (AR), b) the most multimodal source was verbal answers, c) the concept of geometry through a process of vertical-horizontal mathematization was the most researched, and 4) the biggest role of multimodal semiotic reasoning for the benefit of knowledge of mathematics education. In conclusion, multimodal semiotic reasoning has had a major impact on mathematics education and research on this multimodal semiotic reasoning will continue to thrive in the future. [Note: The publication year (2023) shown in the citation on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year is 2024.]

As highlighted in the literature, one of the main difficulties in mathematics is the management of different semiotic representations. This difficulty occurs in verticals throughout schooling and is often an obstacle to the proper learning process of mathematics. The present study aims to investigate the different facets of these difficulties with regard to mathematical tasks in secondary school. In particular, questions from Italian large-scale mathematics assessments are analyzed and interpreted through the theoretical lens of Duval's (1993) theory. Statistical analyses on a robust national sample allow a framing of the main difficulties and provide valuable information in this field.

Modern astronomy as a field of inquiry may be shaped by what we consider the "scientific" ways of knowing. However, the history of astronomy as a human endeavour dates back millennia before the "modern" notions of "science". This long history means that astronomy is, at its core, built on a rich cultural diversity and history. This offers a rich potential that, while having been examined in various studies, has yet to be explored from a contextual pedagogical perspective. This paper offers an initial exploratory theoretical perspective on how social semiotics can be used to inform a conceptual framework. This approach not only brings notions of culture into the teaching and learning of astronomy but uses culture as the starting point in a way that does justice to the cultural diversity of the discipline and the world. In doing so, this paper develops two frameworks: (i) the Conceptual Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education and (ii) the Pedagogical Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education, both of these offer a novel approach to astronomy education.

In an increasingly globalised and multilingual world, the use of different scripts in the same semiotic landscape is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon. For this reason, it is vital to conduct research focusing on multiscriptality in order to better understand the linguistic and semiotic functions of the use of multiple scripts that have become more or less officialised by the political-administrative power. This study examines the use of Latin characters in Greece and Bulgaria, the only two European Union member societies that formally adopt different scripts. Using both a qualitative and a quantitative approach, we analyse the coexistence of the national and Latin alphabets in the graphic texts of commercial signs in two urban areas: the Ladadika district in Thessaloniki, Greece and the Kapana district in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The results show that the advancement of the Latin alphabet is not homogeneous; sometimes unconventionally represents the national language; is not completely preferred to the recessive national script, but creates with it new orthographic-communicative forms; and can take place regardless of the overwhelming prestige of Global English. This paper demonstrates the importance of studying multiscriptality and the Romanisation process in the context of contemporary multilingualism.

The topic of linguistic landscapes (LLs) is very important in the area of sociolinguistics of multilingual societies. A linguistic landscape reflects the underlying ideologies regarding languages and their speakers, linguistic diversity, language statuses and perceived values. This study investigated multilingual LL of Cyprus under the conceptual framework of Geo-semiotics by implementing an in-depth qualitative and quantitative landscape analysis of visible semiotic signs in public space, trying to interpret their indexicality and deeper layers of meaning in relation to multilingualism situation in the country, the link between discourse and space, as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the Greek Cypriot population towards multilingualism and multilingual LL. We used photographic material in our data collection - 4,200 photos of all geographical areas of Cyprus, which were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively and interpreted in terms of language, arrangement of displayed text and images, LL genre, visual semiotics, placement and surroundings in line with the principles of the symbolic construction of the public space. It was found that sign readers have a positive attitude towards multilingualism and multilingual signs in Cyprus and that the LL in Cyprus is complex and unique and is related to the political economy of language and space.

Reforms within science education strive to shift early science instruction (K-2) so students have ample sense-making opportunities to construct scientific explanations. Classroom discussions play a key role in supporting these endeavors. This requires that classroom discussions are shaped in ways that foster scientific instruction and learning. In this study, we take a social semiotic perspective on Goffman's notions of frames and participation framework to explore how a first-grade teacher accessed and supported his students' scientific explanation construction within whole-class discussions. Our research questions ask how scientific explanations are framed during science discussions and how this framing influences student scientific explanations and participation in science talk. Evidence suggests that the teacher's framing resulted in miscues regarding the frame and participation framework necessary to participate in the discussion. When students encountered these miscues, their participation was thwarted and opportunities for articulating scientific sense-making were lost. Implications for this study identify the importance of semiotic resources for framing science instruction during classroom discussions and the architecture of interactional spaces.

Background: Science teaching and learning, as discursive practices, occur through the utilization of various semiotic modes. Gestures play a pivotal role as an embodied mode that acts in conjunction with speech in oral communication settings, such as classrooms. Previous research on gestures in chemistry and science education has illuminated how interactions involving different types of gestures can enhance learning opportunities for students. However, the investigation of recurrent gestures and their potential function as emblems in classroom discourse remains unexplored. Purpose: The objective of this article is to illustrate how catchments or recurrent gestures were constructed, used, and, to some extent, evolved into emblems within the interaction between an organic chemistry teacher and her students throughout an entire semester. Sample, design and methods: For the duration of an entire semester, we non-intrusively observed and recorded video footage of one class from an introductory organic chemistry course taught by an experienced university teacher. Our analysis to identify recurrent gestures involved a thorough examination of the lesson recordings. In addition, we scrutinized other semiotic modes that coincided with the recurrent gestures and assessed the metafunction of the words spoken during gesturing. Results: During our observation, we noted the occurrence of 23 catchments, with four of them recurring more than 100 times throughout the semester. These four recurrent gestures were closely tied to fundamental concepts considered crucial in the realm of organic chemistry. Remarkably, three out of these four catchments were consistently associated with visual representations. Conclusion: Recurrent gestures serve as a means to embody and impart materiality to exceedingly abstract content. By employing such gestures, the teacher managed to associate unfamiliar and abstract domains with familiar and concrete domains. This process of materialization and embodiment aids in perceiving these concepts as tangible entities that can be manipulated in accordance with their own rules.

Background: In the field of science education, adults often set up practical-based activities with the idea of stimulating children's reasoning and approaching science in a playful way. Although the potential role of objects in stimulating social practices has been considered in the literature, how teachers work on semiotic aspects of argumentation is still less explored. Purpose: In this paper, the purpose is to identify how practice-based experiences settled up by teachers shape children's argumentation in science education. Sample design and methods: We analyzed argumentation in science tasks involving a total of 39 children (6-7 years old) and their three teachers, coming from two different classrooms of cycle 1 (Harmos, grades 3-4) recruited in the French speaking-part of Switzerland. The tasks were video-recorded and then transcribed. Through the lenses of the pragma-dialectical approach, we selected the argumentative discussions emerging during the experiences and we performed a qualitative analysis of these interactions, by looking at different semiotic resources: speech, gaze direction, deictic gestures, and position of physical objects. Results: The findings show that teachers play a crucial role in sustaining children's argumentation by the integration of different semiotic resources during the activities. Conclusion: As argumentation in classroom evolves through the mobilization of various communicative tools, the present study can contribute to strengthen the interplay between different channels of interaction during science education at primary school.

Background: In learning astronomy, students need to shift between 3D and 2D representations involving complex interactions between the body and material environment. Little attention has been paid to the iconic nature of this astronomical diagramming. Purpose: This research explored the value for students of diagramming to reveal the structural relationships of astronomical phenomena. The study aimed to (1) operationalise Charles Peirce's pragmatist semiotics to analyse students' bodily and material reasoning (2) identify the iconic nature of students' diagramming through Stjernfelt's activating of Peirce's iconicity. Sample: Two students (a pair) from a class of 30 Year 7 students (12 years old) and their teacher (1) from a government secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. Design and Methods: A micro-ethnographic approach to the analysis of video/audio records and student artefacts was utilised in the context of three moments from a 1 hr lesson on astronomy. This data was analysed using Peirce's sign types of icon, index and symbol to construct a triadic account of the bodily and material nature of students' reasoning as diagramming. Results: The two students determined, by revealing structural relationships with their bodies as well as a mini-whiteboard and a torch and globe, that the Sun is higher in the sky in Summer than Winter due to the Earth's rotational axis with a tilt (of 23.5 degrees) and its elliptical orbit around the Sun. Conclusion: For students to transduct between 3D and 2D astronomical representations, they need to coordinate space-based and Earth-based perspectives through bodily and material diagramming that makes apparent key structural relationships (i.e. iconicity).

Background: With a growing new materialism paradigm and research on multimodality, there is an increasing attention on the role of material objects in science teaching and learning. However, there is currently no available framework, coding scheme, or method of inquiry to specifically analyze the use of material objects in science meaning-making. Purpose: This paper presents and discusses two analytical frameworks developed to examine teachers' and students' interaction with material objects during classroom discourse. Design and methods: The first analytical framework was theoretically informed by multimodal interaction analysis (MIA), focusing on humans' situated interaction using embodied and disembodied modes located in the material world. The second framework was informed by social semiotics multimodal analysis (SSMA), focusing on material interaction as a semiotic mode with unique affordances for sign-makers to make meaning alongside other semiotic modes (e.g. speech, gesture). Sample: Both frameworks are used to analyze two vignettes of classroom discourse generated from video data to illustrate their applications, coding procedures, and interpretative potential. Results: The MIA-informed framework highlighted the dynamic and reciprocal relations between students' experiences and the transformation of materials, while the SSMA-informed framework highlighted the subtle meanings constructed with the unique affordances of the material mode. Conclusion: The affordances and limitations of the two frameworks are discussed, along with their compatibility and complementary relations. This work contributes to the emerging field of materiality in science education research and provides a foundation for future studies on the analysis of material interaction in science meaning-making.

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to defend techno-scientific progress as fundamental to human development. Particularly, we adopt a semiotic approach to education to tackle certain tensions in current debates on the human. Transhumanism scholars share the optimistic belief that there is no limit to how the ethical use of technology can help alleviate suffering and increase our health and wisdom. From this perspective, it appears possible to acquire capacities that require rethinking the notion of human altogether. For others, this undermining of essentialist concepts of humanity entails serious risks, especially related to ethical egalitarianism. We adopte the perspective of edusemiotics, a framework that brings together semiotics, educational theory and philosophy of education. As a theoretical-practical framework, edusemiotics affords a hermeneutic and semiotic method for our approach. Peirce's logic of signs is used to analyze socio- educational interactions as environmental. We observe two lines of thought. On the one hand, technological transhumanism enhances Cartesian mind--body dualism. On the other hand, philosophical posthumanism seeks to overcome this dichotomy. The former proposal construes human transformation as an artifactualization derived from techno-scientific enhancements. The latter position proposes an integrative posthumanism, capable not only to include edusemiotic theory but also to rethink the concept of learning as mutual to that of human.

We explored the semiotic choices children in grades 1-6 made that nurtured embodied, dramatizing performances in science classes at urban public schools, serving predominantly students of color in a large US city. We studied how such choices in school and home settings (when instruction was remote during the COVID-19 pandemic) were implicated in the children's knowledge and identity construction and related to available resources and positionings. Multimodality and social semiotics, social practice theory, and positioning theory were the three theoretical anchors that guided the study, along with sociocultural and sociopolitical framings of science education. The study took place in the context of the multi-year collaboration STAGE (Science Theatre for Advancing Generative Engagement) among teachers and university educators designing and studying pedagogies of embodiment as part of students' engagement in school science. The ethnographic design of the larger research allowed us to engage over a school year with each class. The focus of this study is on classes of three teachers, who collaborated with a teaching artist, using data from video-recordings, fieldnotes, and conversations with students and teachers. The findings point to the generative nature of embodiments in terms of both the knowledge and identities that the children were constructing and the factors that shaped that generativity. These include (a) the resources available, (b) the children's own particular interests and sources of excitement, and (c) the simultaneous use of multiple semiotic tools that offer different affordances for meaning making. The findings affirm that multimodal embodied performances children design and create in school spaces (classrooms and settings for larger school gatherings, like auditoria) and at home provide opportunities to desettle expected axiological, ontological, and epistemological norms that often dominate science teaching. The power of dramatizing and of performing arts is facilitating the development of connections, solidarity, and feelings among peoples and materials.

This study explored 17 bilingual teacher candidates' (bilingual TCs) representations of their lived experience of language via linguistic portraits. Specifically, attention was paid to the semiotic elements (space, place, time, and the body) these bilingual TCs employed and the ways this assemblage of elements formed raciolinguistic chronotopes. Analysis demonstrates that raciolinguistic chronotopes enabled bilingual TCs to portray their experiences of racialization as Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States. Analysis also shows the ways these TCs often vacillate between adhering to and challenging raciolinguistic ideologies. Findings have implications for how language portraits are utilized as a teacher learning tool in teacher education programs serving bilingual TCs of Latina/o descent.

This study reports bilingual international students' communicative strategies to preempt and resolve English as a lingua franca (ELF) miscommunication in an English-medium virtual learning program offered by an international university in times of the global pandemic. Drawing upon 18 hours of Zoom recordings and supplementary ethnographic data, this study follows a spatial orientation [Canagarajah, S. 2018a. "The Unit and Focus of Analysis in Lingua Franca English Interactions: In Search of a Method." "International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism" 21 (7): 805--824. doi:10.1080/13670050.2018.1474850] to analyze international students' polysemiotic meaning-making practices for virtual communicative effectiveness. Key findings highlight the students' explicitness-raising strategic moves such as indexing and reflexive pointing, repetitive highlighting, visual contrasting mediated by the mouse cursor and screen-based resources while navigating moments of (potential) miscommunication. To remedy and preempt understanding problems, they coordinate and align polysemiotic spatial repertoires across expansive spatiotemporal scales to enhance the clarity of potentially ambiguous referents, communicative topics, and key information. This study advances current understanding of bi/multilinguals' polysemiotic translingual pragmatic ability for communicative success in lingua franca scenarios, and provides implications that help prepare international higher education for effective virtual communication, teaching, and learning in the post-pandemic digital era.

How we talk about bilingualism has an effect on how others think about bilingual individuals, and in turn, how "active bilingual learners/users of English" (ABLE) students are assessed and taught in schools. I use a transdisciplinary approach of bridging social semiotics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics to explain how code-switching is metaphor, an external perspective of bilingualism as inter-domain linguistic mapping and translanguaging is metonymy, an internal perspective of intra-domain linguistic mapping. By placing translanguaging/metonymy on the syntagmatic axis and code-switching/metaphor on the paradigmatic axis, I demonstrate through example sentences of monolingual and bilingual speech and figures, how accepting the inaccurate metaphor of bilingualism as just code-switching alone, sets in motion countless dichotomies that act to create the bilingualism-as-problem orientation for ABLE students in U.S. schools; most specifically for those at the intersection of bilingualism and disability. A transdisciplinary view of bilingualism includes both an internal perspective (translanguaging, metonymic combination of parts of the whole linguistic repertoire on the syntagmatic axis), plus an external perspective (code-switching, metaphoric alternation of linguistic features from diverse named languages on the paradigmatic axis). I conclude with implications for a more appropriate description of bilingualism and its role in education.

Extant chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard are currently able to converse with humans in natural language, demonstrating impressive linguistic responses. Or so it seems. I critically examine artificial intelligence systems such as these chatbots through examples of dialogue. When taking a systems view of AI, there is a vast and unique human culture in the environmental surroundings of the AI "system" (its "negasystem") that is not accessible to extant AI "systems." These generative AI "systems," based on large language models, are trained with trillions of signs created by humans in the form of digital text and images as part of their machine learning from which they construct their unique neural networks. However, AI "systems" do not understand well, if at all, the meanings of those signs that we associate with our human experience of the world and our culture (i.e., in the AI negasystem). Similarly, we humans do not understand well the inner workings of an AI "system" (its neural network). Teachers and students in education must be very careful and cautious when using such AI "systems." Are we dupes? Or not? Without thinking critically and checking facts independently, we can be fooled by responses of those AI "systems."

Informed by a postmodern perspective on language, culture and visual art education this article examines what a creative, visual art focus can bring to the experience of language-and-culture learning for secondary-age students of Arabic as a heritage language (HL). It builds on our previous research focussing on student interactions with works by renowned artist, Ali Omar Ermes, which sets text in the form of Arabic letter shapes and short poetic inscriptions against a painted background. Here we seek to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the process involved through an in-depth study of the thoughts, feelings and emotions experienced by three intermediate-level students as they engage with works by Ermes and then creatively transform them into 'textart' pieces of their own. Methodologically we adopt an ethnographic case study design focussing strongly on process but also incorporating principles of arts-based research. Our findings demonstrate how the approach can extend possibilities for meaning-making and affirmation of identity by connecting with personal experience, by leveraging multiple semiotic resources rhizomically and intertextually, and by making space for affective, spiritual, aesthetic and multisensory dimensions. For heritage language learners this brings a deeper engagement with learning and a strong sense of empowerment as multicompetent speakers.

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed critical discourse analysis of these policy activities indicated considerable tension between official texts' legislations on, and public élites' debate about public signage and "on the ground" sociolinguistic practices. While official texts and public debates base the dominant languages on monolingual, postcolonial and highly compartmentalized language ideologies, the sociolinguistic practices within these localities are marked by the emergence of an English-leaning trend in public signage. Nevertheless, this trend is heavily qualified by the concurrent use of identifiable language clusters, creative wordplay, multiscriptal practices, the commodification of heritage, national and supranational symbols, and an overall resistance to big commercial names as well as subversion of the official legislations and public debates. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the approach to multilingualism adopted in this study for illuminating the connections between Tunisia's dominant languages, language policy and linguistic landscapes.

Studies examining culture representation in language textbooks have rarely adopted the semiotic approach, despite its potential for presenting and (re)creating cultural meanings at their various levels (i.e. cultural, intercultural, multicultural, and transcultural) in the co-instantiations of texts, tasks, and images. To address this issue, a qualitative analysis, embarking on the Peircean semiotic theory, was applied on the text-image-task semiotic relationship. It explored its potential for constructing and reconstructing cultural meanings relative to the Iranian national English as a foreign language (EFL) textbook, Vision 1, from the perspectives of Iranian EFL students, teachers, and teacher educators. Content and thematic analyses of the interview records revealed three themes: first, the co-instantiation of the image and text was indexical, cultural awareness and connotations were almost untouched; second, the textual and visual components driving intercultural meanings and interpretations were not in accordance with the tasks; and, third, some alternative more culturally engaging images were provided by the interviewees. On the whole, the findings confirmed the previous findings that the discourse of this brand-new Iranian localized EFL textbook leaves little space to raise cultural awareness for its users. Based on the findings, a dynamic model for evaluating cultural representations in textbooks is suggested, hoping to show how EFL textbooks can be developed, implemented, and received more effectively in instructional settings.

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making repertoires that students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, bring to science classrooms. However, when it comes to emergent bi/multilingual students, science education has favored narrow definitions of what ways of communicating are seen as productive for figuring out natural phenomena, privileging English-based academic vocabulary. In this article, we investigate the myriad conceptual and semiotic resources that third-grade emergent bilingual students developed and used when explaining sound production. Additionally, we explore how students investigated the sounds produced by a string instrument and unpacked the how and whys that give rise to the pitch of the sounds they heard. Our analyses indicate that: (1) students created mechanistic explanations that identified how changes to the salient physical features of strings affected the pitch of the sounds; (2) students created and laminated multiple semiotic resources when sharing their observations and explanations, particularly sound symbolisms; and (3) students navigated both semiotic convergence and divergence as they worked toward conceptual convergence. Based on our findings, we argue that justice-oriented science learning environments must become spaces where emergent bilingual students can build on all their conceptual, semiotic, and cultural resources, without being policed, as they engage science practices.

Exploring how the information flow of social studies textbook spreads is negotiated in teacher-led interaction, the concern of this study is the conscious and critical use of teaching material in diverse student groups. The study involved a teacher and her Grade 6 students in a school with many migrant language learners. The data was gathered by observations, field notes, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Using social semiotic theory of visual design, the analysis of the textbook used in instruction shows that the layout perpetuated a Western-centric view of a divided world, along with an individualistic and anthropocentric view of environmental sustainability. The oral interaction, highlighting different text elements, largely reinforced the meaning perspectives promoted in the textbook. However, on occasion, the students were positioned to take a more analytical stance. Implications for using knowledge about information flow in textbooks to promote critical literacy practices in teaching are discussed.

Social semiotic discussions about the role played by representations in effective teaching and learning in areas such as physics have led to theoretical proposals that have a strong common thread: in order to acquire an appropriate understanding of a particular object of learning, access to the disciplinary relevance aspects in the representations used calls for the attainment of representational competence across a particular "critical constellation of systematically used semiotic resources (which are referred to as" modes, "see more on this later)." However, an affirming empirical investigation into the relationship between a particular object of learning and different representational formulations, particularly with large numbers of students, is missing in the literature, especially in the context of university-level physics education. To start to address, this research shortfall the positioning for this article is that such studies need to embrace the complexities of student thinking and application of knowledge. To achieve this, both factor and network analyses were used. Even though both approaches are grounded in different frameworks, for the task at hand, both approaches are useful for analyzing clustering dynamics within the responses of a large number of participants. Both also facilitate an exploration of how such clusters may relate to the semiotic resource formulation of a representation. The data were obtained from a questionnaire given to 1,368 students drawn from 12 universities across 7 countries. The questionnaire deals with the refraction of light in introductory-level physics and involves asking students to give their best prediction of the relative visual positioning of images and objects in different semiotically constituted situations. The results of both approaches revealed no one-to-one relationship between a particular representational formulation and a particular cluster of student responses. The factor analysis used correct answer responses to reveal clusters that brought to the fore three different complexity levels in relation to representation formulation. The network analysis used all responses (correct and incorrect) to reveal three structural patterns. What is evident from the results of both analyses is that they confirm two broad conclusions that have emerged from social semiotic explorations dealing with representations in relation to attempting to optimize teaching and learning. The first, which is linked to a facilitating-awareness perspective, is that any given disciplinary visual representation can be expected to evoke a dispersed set of knowledge structures, which is referred to as their "relevance structure." Thus, the network analysis results can be seen as presenting a unique starting point for studies aiming to identify such "relevance structure." The second broad conclusion is that disciplinary visual representation can and often does contain more "disciplinary-relevant aspects" than what may be directly visible in a given representation. These are referred to as the "appresent" aspects that need to become part of the total awareness needed by someone to constitute an intended meaning. The results of the factor analysis can then also be seen to be a way of capturing "all" the disciplinary-relevant aspects (both present and appresent). Educational implications are discussed.

This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both language-internal and language-external (contact induced). Lexical expansion in NZSL uses known sign formation mechanisms with a high proportion of (iconic) depicting constructions but also a large number of contact-induced signs including loans, calques and bimodal loan-shifts. Differences were found between planned (curriculum-related) terminology and community generated neologisms both in semantic field and prevalence of sign formation mechanisms. Variation in neologisms and non-lexical paraphrases were common, suggesting that while the semiotic repertoires of signers are diversifying, acceptance and standardisation of neologisms are uncertain. Our findings indicate that lexical expansion reflects new contexts of NZSL use (including pressure to disseminate information through interpreting and translation, and use in education) and interaction with the culture of wider society.

This article reports on the design and implementation of a didactic sequence in the frame of a design-based research study. The research aim is to test the hypothesis that affordances of dynamic geometry may support students' awareness of logical relationships between geometrical properties of constructed figures. We elaborate on the task design principles used in the study and present analysis of four Danish grade 8 students (age 13-14) working in pairs on the very first task of the sequence. The Theory of Semiotic Mediation frames the design of the study and the analysis of data, which was collected in the form of screencast, video and written products. The results show that grasping logical relationships is not immediate, on the contrary, the results indicate that students expect dependencies to be non-hierarchical in DGE and that low achieving students describing the behaviour of constructions during dragging refer to their global appearance, rather than to geometrical properties. Such results suggest that specific prompts in the task design can shift students' attention on specific elements of constructions and that explicitly asking the students to explain any unexpected observation seems to be necessary for active reflection.

Student engagement in the process of transduction concomitantly affords them with opportunities to develop and express their critical and creative thinking competences. Reconfiguring or remaking knowledge or meaning in modes other than those of the original sources of information requires affective, imaginative and cognitive activity by sign-makers. In this article, I present examples of elementary students' transduction work and discuss their semiotic meaning-making with reference to the concepts of critical and creative thinking. During the study featured in this article, Grade 4 students engaged in the process of transduction when participating in activities about elements of visual art and design and conventions of the medium comics, when exploring picturebooks and graphic novels and when composing and explaining their own multimodal texts. The students' transmodal meaning-making showed how, in the context of the research classrooms, the purposefully designed pedagogy and activities both required and nurtured students' critical and creative thinking, which simultaneously provided the students with opportunities to extend their knowledge and deepen their understandings of the concepts and curriculum content under study.

Studies that address preservice teachers' knowledge of area measurement emphasize their lack of knowledge and their tendency towards the use of formulas, without offering a body of knowledge that helps to address such difficulties. This study offers an approximation of the mathematical knowledge necessary for preservice teachers to solve area tasks. For this, the Mathematics Teacher's Specialized Knowledge model is used with emphasis on the subdomain of Knowledge of Topics and Knowledge of the Structure of Mathematics. Preservice teachers' resolutions and written justifications are analyzed using qualitative and quantitative tools. The results indicate that those resolutions that manage to mobilize mathematical knowledge are associated with the joint mobilization of different procedures, properties, and geometric principles. Results also indicate that the strategic coordination between different registers of representation allows Preservice Teachers to mobilize categories of specialized knowledge and establishing connections with other mathematical contents.

While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students' written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach to assessment of upper secondary students' production of multimodal persuasive texts in the subject of English as an additional language (EAL). The article reports from a design-based study comprising two classroom interventions where assessment of students' multimodal texts was conducted separately by peer groups and the teacher and researcher in collaboration, applying assessment criteria informed by multimodal social semiotic theory and operationalisations of communicative competence. Comparing the results of peer and teacher assessment of students' multimodal persuasive texts, agreement was found relating to representational, interactional, and compositional aspects of the texts, whereas differences in views mostly concerned nuances in interpersonal aspects. Unpacking these nuances, the article concludes that peers' and teachers' assessments of multimodal texts complement each other in ways that can prompt fruitful discussions on meaning making in the light of context and social factors and thus contribute to heightened semiotic awareness and a broader recognition of the students' communicative competence in the subject.

This article presents critical intercultural dialogue as a necessary curricular, pedagogical, and decolonial practice to engage and value Indigenous students' cultural semiotic resources in higher education. Drawing from social semiotics, critical interculturality, and decolonial theory, the article analyzes Indigenous students' structural barriers to accessing and completing their undergraduate programs. Using examples from pedagogy courses taught in English and reflections and learnings from a research project with Indigenous students, the article underscores and extends lessons to mobilize Indigenous students' learning paths, sociocultural practices, and languages, showcasing intercultural dialogue within a public university. Reflections on the tensions, constraints, and possibilities to facilitate university stakeholders' engagement at multiple levels are discussed.

University students are often asked to learn abstract concepts. Abstract concepts are hard to learn. Giving specific examples can help learning abstract concepts. These examples might limit understanding to the similarities between the abstract domain and particular examples. The primary purpose of this study was to test whether exposure to multiple examples would lead to better learning than exposure to a single example. Secondarily, we were interested in whether there was any particularly effective example. Introductory psychology students were invited to learn about the abstract concept of semiotics, through either 1) three of five distinct examples or 2) a single example presented three times. We assessed learning through definitions, transfer to a novel example, and self-report. The results showed no support for the hypothesis that exposure to multiple examples led to better learning. There was, however, one particular example that was more memorable and resulted in better learning. These results have implications about how best to teach abstract concepts.

This paper attempts to describe the signifier choice of student artists in thematic representations of digital visual arts and determine its implications for digital pedagogy. Utilising a qualitative approach to research and covering a corpus of six digital artworks of student artists, the semiotic analysis utilising Peirce's (1991) sign modes showed the student artists' preference for mostly indexical and symbolic signifiers in thematic representations of Filipinos' resiliency to the pandemic. This signifier choice of student artists was influenced by their experience, family, self, other artists, and their initiatives for finding information and drawing inspiration from online sources, as revealed in the conducted Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the participants. Moreover, the individual interviews with the participants demonstrated that the student artists' choice of signifiers served as a vehicle for expression, representation, and impression of ideas, themes, and abstractions dominating their artworks. This study calls for the integration of digital artmaking tools into pedagogy to provide opportunities for artistic expression and support diverse representation. Teachers can introduce various digital tools and platforms, create assignments that encourage creative experimentation, and foster a safe and inclusive classroom environment. Future research could explore the practical applications of digital pedagogy in visual arts education.

In an increasingly globalised society, the internationalisation of higher education has become a prime goal for many universities, which seek to promote the development of intercultural competencies and insert their actors in dynamics of academic cooperation, knowledge construction and negotiation of meanings in an environment of respect. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is the fact that university campuses are already intercultural spaces by nature, even in the absence of internationalisation initiatives; in other words, university campuses are places where diversity abounds, making it possible to experience intercultural encounters, leading to the development of intercultural competencies. This article presents the narratives of four students and their home-making experiences at a Colombian university. Through their stories, these students give us a glimpse of the intercultural challenges they face when they try to create a sense of belonging while developing, constraining or reaffirming their identities on campus. The article analyses the student narratives through the lenses of new materialism, social semiotics, intersectionality and intercultural communication to understand the complexity of building a home with others amid diversity and, sometimes, adversity.

Background: Globally, teaching practice has been at the heart of teacher education programmes. For quality teaching and learning, literacy student teachers are expected to develop metacognitive attributes and critical thinking to integrate theory and practice. Because of the dominance of autonomous models in literacy teaching and learning nationally and internationally, literature continues to report poor literacy attainment, especially for indigenous language learners. Contrasting this deficit view, this article employed languaging as a lens to describe student teachers' reflections on their interactions with Grade 3 learners using multimodal and linguistic repertoires, which they both bring from socio-cultural contexts as well as utilisation of embodied representational modes. Aim: To explore how Foundation Phase (FP) student teachers used languaging and semiotic modes to enhance literacy teaching and learning in Grade 3 classrooms. Setting: An Eastern Cape Institution of Higher Education. Methods: In this qualitative study, four purposely selected FP isiXhosa Home Language student teachers used reflective journals to articulate their individual and peer classroom literacy practices. Data were thematically analysed. Results: Findings revealed the importance of acknowledging authentic and diverse linguistic resources that learners bring from their socio-cultural backgrounds as well as the use of multimodal literacies in the classroom context. Conclusion: This study concludes that languaging allowed learners and student teachers to exploit multimodalities and linguistic repertoires that they bring from their socio-cultural backgrounds. Contribution: This study demonstrates the pedagogical literacy strategies that created live dialogical engagements between student teachers and learners. These can be useful to teacher educators as well as teachers in the Foundation Phase contexts and thus improve literacy teaching and learning, especially in indigenous languages.

In this study, the aim is to explore what genres can be found in applications used in preschool as a way to facilitate preschool teachers' informed choices and raise awareness concerning the importance of choosing digital content carefully. In particular, applications that facilitate communication beyond a verbal majority language are in focus in this study. The research questions concern what the affordances are of applications used in preschool in relation to children's agency and multilingual competencies and which kinds of genres that emerge from the applications' affordances. Analyses of the applications were based on a social semiotic approach, in combination with the notion of translanguaging, taking into account many modes of communication, as well as different languages. The results illustrate how affordances include possibilities to listen to several spoken languages, opportunities to create documentation and produce stories in many different modes, including the verbal language of choice, but also restraints such as lack of opportunities for children's agency in some applications with more closed composition. 10 genres are proposed which consist of three monolingual app-genres: talking picture books, storytelling and games, and seven app-genres that allow for several languages: talking picture books in more languages, multilingual storytelling, storytelling with recording possibilities, boardgames with recording possibilities, communication apps, draw-and-record apps and documentation apps. Conclusions highlight the importance of careful selection when choosing digital content in educational settings for younger children and that some of the app-genres proposed could be seen as facilitating digital pedagogical translanguaging.

The social semiotic analysis in this study aims to: (1) reveal what multicultural values are found in ELT textbooks for ninth-grade learners; (2) explain how the texts and the images in the analyzed textbooks present multicultural values; and (3) uncover how social semiotics dimensions can decode multicultural values. This study finds that among four multicultural values discovered in the textbooks, responsibility to the world community has the most frequent appearance while respect for human dignity and universal human rights has the least frequent appearance. Those values are presented denotatively and connotatively through texts, images, and texts-images. Based on the findings, textbook authors are recommended to include more content and add learning activities that facilitate discussions and reflections on multiculturalism. In addition, this research suggests that English teachers who use these textbooks add learning activities that enable students to discuss multicultural values since, in this study, multicultural values are mainly presented connotatively.

Character is a fundamental literary element and it is defined as the act of describing characters in literature, particularly their physical attributes as well as personal traits. In multimodal texts, the visual and textual sign systems are interlaced together to exemplify meaningful characters. In this study, two picture books were examined to determine how semiotic meaning-making systems work together to develop the literary element 'character' based on an adaptation of Painter et al.'s (2013) multimodal discourse analysis framework. The findings showed a lack of detailed characterisation elements in the textual meaning-making systems for character attribution and affiliation between characters, but the visual depiction of characters in both the picture books addressed this shortcoming effectively. The textual mode helped to confirm the identity of characters especially when the visual manifestation is metonymic or incomplete. In short, knowledge of visual meaning making systems is necessary as it will enable young readers to attain a deeper understanding of the literary element 'character' and fully comprehend multimodal texts.

In Greece, Educational Radiotelevision, a department of the Ministry of Education, combines digital archiving and digital documentary making within the framework of a national competition for Greek secondary and high schools about local history. This article analyses the factors lying behind the creativity of 27 16-year-old students who created a digital archive and a digital documentary for this competition. Data were collected in the form of the teacher/researcher's observation journal, student-participants' completed pre- and post-project questionnaires, and the drafts and final products of their digital creations. The exploratory case study conducted offers qualitative data, analysed with the use of inductive thematic analysis, and draws upon social semiotics to interpret these themes through the application of textual and multimodal analysis. Data show that student-participants' creativity is incited by their motivation to have their work recognised, and it is boosted by their chance to express their cultural memory, to contribute to its formation for future generations, and also to express their student, teenage and local identities.

This paper investigates the author's classroom practice of implementing an interpretive perspective on intercultural language teaching and learning in two online intercultural workshops on the topic of face masks designed and delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reflexively examines two critical incidents in classroom practice in terms of what these incidents reveal about the challenges faced by pre-service teachers in operationalizing an interpretive stance towards intercultural language teaching and learning in practice. Based on the epistemology of reflective practice, this self-study seeks to produce knowledge-of-practice by framing the author's practical knowledge as language teacher in relation to theories of intercultural language teaching. Classroom discourse analysis of teaching and learning sequencies provides an emic lens on the enactment of an interpretive perspective on intercultural language teaching at the micro level in terms of two basic aspects of pedagogical practice: 1) Embedding interpretation in learning design and 2) Mediating learners' interpretations in classroom interaction. The findings reveal that this author's attempts to personalise intercultural language learning and elicit meaningful reflections from students were constrained by the limited semiotic richness of the material presented and the difficulty of going beyond a superficial interactional format to provide effective scaffolding and successfully realize a dialogic stance towards knowledge building. The paper considers the implications of these challenges for pre-service teacher education and offers suggestions for supporting teachers hoping to teach interculturally.

The development of student teachers' beliefs about good teaching needs to be integral to their education programmes. This study attempts to scrutinise the contribution of a theatre education course to the conceptualisation of a group of eight student primary teachers' notion of good teaching and a teacher's ethos. The findings reveal that, within the coursework, student teachers' learning experiences are interwoven with the ethics of the beautiful, the ethics of the dialogue and the ethics of the will. This nexus of learning experiences enabled them to identify three internal goods of good teaching: the awakening of learners' positive emotions; the activation of their learning energy through play; and the strengthening of their embodied understanding by using theatre semiotics. Concerning a teacher's pedagogical dispositions in good teaching, they consider trust, respect, empathy, open-mindedness, vigilance and playfulness as pivotal for the ethos of a teacher connected to both teaching and their pupils.

An onto-semiotic analysis of the mathematical connections established by one in-service mathematics teachers and university students when solving a problem about launching a projectile using the derivative was carried out. Theoretically, this research was based on the articulation between the Extended Theory of Mathematical Connections and the Onto-semiotic Approach. The methodology was qualitative-descriptive where data was collected through interviews based on a task. Subsequently, following the joint analysis method of both theories, the mathematical activity of the participants when they solved the task was analyzed. The results show that, teacher and students established a system of connections of feature type, different representations, meanings, part-whole, procedural and implications in terms of practices, processes, objects, and semiotic functions that relate them. However, some students presented difficulties caused by some incorrect mathematical connection such as stating that the maximum height of the projectile is the time obtained with the critical number, errors in performing arithmetic calculations when evaluating the function, graphically representing the quadratic function as a straight line and use the general formula in an inappropriate way that prevents the procedural connection from being made.

Background: Several isiXhosa home language (HL) learners are excluded from meaningful mathematics learning because they are taught in English. Not only do teachers lack epistemological and pedagogical confidence in using multiple languages when teaching mathematics, but there are no mathematical registers for African languages that allow for adequate mathematical teaching and learning. There is a scarcity of research on what constitutes effective mathematics instruction for isiXhosa HL learners in South African language of learning and teaching (LoLT) Grade 1 classrooms. Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Grade 1 teachers using visual representations to enhance isiXhosa HL learners' understanding of mathematics in the English- LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. Setting: This study was conducted at four primary schools in the Western Cape's Metro East Education District. Methods: This study employs a qualitative research approach in conjunction with an adapted interactive qualitative analysis (IQA) systems method to collect in-depth data about current mathematics practices in English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. The data were analysed using John Stuart Mill's analytical comparison technique. Results: This study found that semiotics such as visual (and concrete) representations assist isiXhosa HL learners to grasp and understand mathematical concepts easily. Conclusion: This study emphasises the significance of using sufficient visual representation strategies to enhance isiXhosa HL learners' mathematical understanding in the English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. Contribution: The outcomes of this study can make a positive contribution to current mathematics practice in terms of supporting isiXhosa HL learners in English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms.

This exploratory study focuses on changes in the accomplishment of requests by an adult English as an additional language speaker/ learner interacting on WhatsApp for nine months. The analysis follows a microanalytic approach to digital interaction informed by recent developments within longitudinal conversation analysis. It unpacks the array of semiotic and interactional resources that the focal learner employs to make class-related requests to the teacher. Longitudinal comparison of four request sequences over time suggests that the differences in how the requesting posts are designed and responded to index both increased interactional competence to accomplish requests in English on WhatsApp as well as evolving socio-interactional ties between the learner and the teacher. Despite the popularity of text chats, only a handful of studies have investigated how the practices employed by additional language learners to engage in text chat interaction change over time and this work has not focused on naturally occurring interactions. The present study thereby contributes new understandings to text chat interaction with additional language speakers and to longitudinal research on interactional competence development in online settings.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the practice of intertextuality of Farah (pseudonym) a 20-year-old female university student who engaged in a variety of culturally shaped digital literacy practices. In particular, it seeks to elucidate how Farah's practice of intertextuality serves as a semiotic mediation for her exercise and enactment of agency and identity during her everyday literacy practice on Instagram. This research was framed as a case study design with a connective ethnography approach specifically suited to the online environment and digital communication where the researcher's physical presence as an observer is no longer required. Data were collected by means of digital media and technology such as WhatsApp Message Service, informal phone interviews, and online observation. The collected data comprised online snapshots of quote bots, pictures, drawings and comments that Farah produced and shared as part of her everyday digital literacy practice. The data analysis entailed examination of Farah's practice of intertextuality through the lens of sociocultural perspective on text production and interpretation. The findings revealed that Farah's use of quote bots and doodles posted on Instagram involved the act of borrowing texts from other sources as well as mixing English with Indonesian language. Farah's practice of intertextuality was pre-mediated, calculated and purposeful, allowing her to engage in digital authorship involving creativity, improvisation and consciousness as ingredients of agency. In the same vein, Farah's practice of intertextuality allowed her to author the self as a contemplative religious individual. The research concluded with an appeal to policy makers and educational practitioners to respond to the learners' changing learning landscape by re-defining the way we view learners/students, from merely a recipient of knowledge to an individual who has agency, identity and funds of knowledge that have to be acknowledged and appreciated in any process of curriculum design and its implementation on a daily basis.

This study reports on a case study about multimodal work in a primary physics classroom focusing on forces. Previous research reports that students benefit from multimodal work in science classrooms. Yet, few systematic studies have been performed to reveal how students represent their experiences and ideas of science phenomena over time within and across different semiotic modes (e.g., through action, speech, writing, and image, including multimodal ensembles). The design of the lessons was built around a number of experimental activities, starting with a puzzling phenomenon and where students for each experiment predicted, observed, described, and tried to come up with explanations. Based on social-semiotics, we combined analysis at an overall level (long timescale and large grain size) and a detailed level (short timescale and small grain size) to shed light on how the science content was represented within and between modes over the teaching and learning period, and what content was expressed in these representations. Our findings reveal how students moved from focusing on attributes such as a "heavy" regarding artifacts used in the experiments, towards the central physics processes, such as one object exerting force on another object. Furthermore, we were able to detect that such "signs of learning" were shown in students' small-group discussions and multimodal texts following a carefully orchestrated multimodal exposition by the teacher. Hence, such a careful multimodal orchestration appeared to be critical for the students' meaning-making about the science content.

This paper contributes to the contemporary focus on literacy and digital stories in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. When a group of young children create an animated story together, they might collaborate, both with their peers and with their teacher. By drawing on social semiotic multimodal perspectives as the theoretical framework, the purpose of this paper is to describe and explore how different modalities and narrative devices contribute to the development of an animated story created by six children (aged 4-5 years) and a teacher in collaboration. The study is a qualitative case study, focusing on contemporary events in a Norwegian kindergarten. The empirical material consists of video-recorded field observations of the process as well as the final product. Through an inductive exploration of the development of verbal narrative, three analytical strands are identified: (i) verbal narrative in the final product, (ii) multimodal narrative in the final product, and (iii) narrative devices applied by the children during the process. The findings demonstrate the importance of including and considering the process, the product, narrative devices and all the modalities--in particular the kineikonic mode--when creating an animated story with young children. An implication of these findings is for ECE teachers and researchers to acknowledge and integrate all the various aspects that contribute to the final product when young children create animated stories.

The theoretical reflection on the nature of school algebra and the development of algebraic thinking from the first educational levels is a relevant topic in mathematics education. In this paper, we first summarize and clarify the positions held on this topic by two theoretical frameworks: the Theory of Objectification and the Onto-semiotic Approach. We identify concordances and complementarities in the respective conceptions of algebra and of the processes of developing algebraic thinking, as a result of applying these frameworks to analyse some students' responses to a task on numerical patterns. We also analyse and compare the didactic models proposed in both theoretical frameworks for developing algebraic thinking. The analysis of the algebraic thinking and learning episodes is also used to illustrate a general discussion on the identity and boundaries of these theoretical frameworks and the possibilities of coordination and integration.

This research discusses language ideologies in Amazigh/Berber in Morocco. It analyzes Amazigh activists' views on the process of Amazigh standardization, including dialect unification, script selection and reclaiming of Amazigh identity. Drawing on findings in the study of language ideologies and discourse analysis, this paper examines interviews with activists and demonstrates a connectedness between participants' conceptions about language and their embodied actions. It also reveals ideological assemblages, in which conflicting language beliefs and practices are bound together. Through examination of the ideological divide on Amazigh language and script, the study shows how verbal and nonverbal actions iconically index aspects of Amazigh language ideologies, including linguistic purism, manifested through intricate forms of recontextualized lexical items, embodied gestures and voice features. The participants' linguistic and non-linguistic practices provide insight into particular identity dimensions and complex social relations. The indexicalities of their utterances, which will be analyzed discursively, are better understood not only through consideration of the various semiotic resources such as embodiment, but also through discussion of specific histories of political and linguistic conflicts. The study as a whole relies on an interdisciplinary method to emphasize the political nature of language standardization and demonstrate the significant role of embodiment in language ideological research.

Effective arts learning requires the development of important literacies. While investigation of discipline-specific literacies has filtered the literature, it is unclear if these literacies are acknowledged, understood, and/or taught. In this paper, we share the classroom discourse of two arts teachers in early and middle years across visual art and music--to determine how discipline-specific literacies are used and taught. Findings show that these teachers intuitively and consistently share age-appropriate arts-literacies and use semiotic metalanguage with their students to express and make meaning through arts practices. With contemporary research in the field of literacy consistently acknowledging the diverse ways we communicate and the importance of creative thinking and aesthetic-artistic reasoning, it is critical that classroom data, such as shared in this paper, is considered for future curriculum development. We conclude by recommending strategies and considerations for arts teachers when planning and implementing arts literacies to improve students' applied understanding.

This study explores how hard of hearing students decided whether the shape was a polygon and which semiotic sources were used when the students engaged in explaining geometrical concepts. It was defined how the students interacted with geometric shapes using semiotic sources and examined how such multimodal interactions with geometric figures displayed their reasoning. The study was a case study and carried out three hard of hearing students. The data was collected through interviews and analyzed with content analysis. It was detected that the students paid attention to edge, angle, and vertex of the shapes in the process of identifying polygon. It was seen that the students used gesture, speech, sign language, inscriptions which are semiotic sources and personal or mathematical definitions to express polygon concept. However, it has been determined that students have some misconceptions in the process of explaining concepts. It is suggested that the words used in the concept definition should be selected carefully by the teachers to teach the concepts correctly and the teachers use hand signs for concepts in their lesson.

We present a theoretical study that allows us to attempt framing in an embodied perspective the effectiveness of the drawing robot GGBot in the learning of geometry. The aim of the article is to set the intertwining of activity, semiotics, perception, and knowledge at the crossover of Radford's theory of objectification (TO) and Borba and Villareal's notion of humans-with-media. Such a crossover is articulated in four building blocks: (1) processes of objectification and the role of semiotic means of objectification, where we state that digital artifacts such as the GGBot change the topology of the semiotic means of objectification; (2) cognition is sensuous and learning is a process of domestication of the eye, where perception is theoretically shaped by the interaction with GGBot; (3) GGBot and humans-with-media, where we outline new thinking collectives and their modes of activity; (4) domestication of the eye triggered by transitions between domains of activity. Each building block of our theoretical discussion is empirically anchored to four episodes involving primary school students' learning geometrical figures using the GGBot. To conclude, we focus on two basic concepts of geometrical thinking that unfold in the shift between domains.