About this Research Topic

Background

In recent years there has been a growing scholarly interest in using multimodality to transcend the language-centered focus of pedagogic research. Kress (2010) defines 'mode' as a cultural channel through which communication is conducted. Jewitt (2011) elaborates on how modes—e.g., gaze, gesture, space, movement, posture, color, and image, along with speech and writing—intimately unite to form multimodal texts and events. As classroom-based research has shown, all of these modes contribute to in-presence instruction.

Face-to-face teaching and learning is conceptualized as a dynamic multimodal event whereby learners are actively involved in the co-construction of meaning across culturally diverse in/formal educational sites and disciplinary domains, from pre-school to higher education contexts. Despite the attention given to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person pedagogy arguably remains a key cultural touchstone for how embodied education takes place. It therefore needs to be re-evaluated so that it remains innovative and effective.

The goal of this Research Topic is to explore ways in which authors seek to answer any of the following four areas of concern:

• How can multimodal encounters in face-to-face teaching and learning contexts be re-evaluated, and how can pedagogical interventions address modes other than language which are often still overlooked in pre-service teacher training?
• As multimodality is ever-growing in theory and practice, which multimodal pedagogical approaches adopted in face-to-face teaching and learning contexts need to be re-discovered?
• In teaching/learning contexts in which face-to-face learning continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, in what ways have multimodal teaching and learning practices changed in response to the pandemic, and how are these changes still embodied now?
• What multimodal practices of online pedagogies have been adapted to post-pandemic face-to-face teaching, and how do their affordances inscribe their effects on the embodied classroom?

The Research Topic welcomes contributions from all schools of multimodality, including but not limited to the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) (e.g., Larsson & Stolpe, 2023), conversation analytic (e.g., Fasel Lauzon & Berger,2015), ethnographic, gestural studies (e.g., McNeill, 2005), multimodal interaction analysis (e.g., Norris, 2013), social semiotic (e.g., Kress et al, 2001, 2005), and systemic-functional (e.g., Amundrud, 2022; Lim, 2021) traditions. To help foster the consideration of shared problems from contrasting disciplinary perspectives, following Bateman (2022), the Topic welcomes both contributions that focus on a specific perspective of multimodality as well as those that bridge multiple schools (Mittelberg & Hinnell, 2022; Azaoui, 2022).

We welcome the submission of articles of the following types:

• Original Research, which should include a detailed study reporting original research
• Review
• Brief Research Report, together with an original multimodal production. These productions may include (but are not limited to) videos, original music clips, and any other form of multimodal text.

All submissions should represent an original contribution to knowledge.

Matters of form:

• More information about the abovementioned article types, including their respective maximum word count, can be found here.
• The maximum word count for abstract submissions is 1,000 words.
• Video and audio files can be uploaded as supplementary material during the submission procedure and will be displayed along with the published article. More information about the submission of supplementary material can be found here.

Keywords: multimodality, teacher-learner interaction, in-person teaching and learning, creating pedagogical multimodal resources, multimodality in teacher education

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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