ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that many contemporary school curricula envisage students creating multimodal texts with digital resources in all curriculum disciplines, there is widespread concern that schools have failed to prepare students for the digital literacy demands of study and work beyond school. One explanation for this problem lies with teachers’ capacity to teach the digital skills necessary for students’ success. This chapter focuses on the preparedness of preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach digital literacy in school science.
The chapter describes an intervention designed by university-based teacher educators in which PSTs constructed short digital artifacts explaining science concepts for young learners. The intervention - which drew on key concepts from systemic functional theory and emergent theories of multimodality - is described in terms of the pedagogic decisions made and exemplifies the theoretical approach with reference to a student artifact produced after the intervention. The data, together with the PST’s account of the construction process, shed light on the challenges of such tasks in terms of disciplinary knowledge and semiotic awareness. The chapter argues for a theoretically principled approach to meta-semiotic knowledge that will provide teachers with much-needed tools to deliver curricula as anticipated.
