Research topic/aim Inspired by the question How can we as researchers and teachers bring about learning and teaching adventures? we will turn to a recent pilot study regarding possibilities and challenges in students’ production of multimodal degree theses within our teacher education in visual arts. When a group of students approached us with the question whether they could produce multimodal theses, instead of written ones, we said yes. Their idea coincided with our interest in developing approaches to knowledge production and knowledge representation that acknowledge, and take advantage of, the visual as a valid mode and of epistemological qualities in transductive and transformative processes (e.g. Kress, 2003; 2010; Huang & Archer, 2017; Selander & Kress, 2021).  

Theoretical framework Offering students the opportunity to explore forms of knowledge production and representation other than those traditionally found in an academic context, also introduce moments of risk and uncertainty (Biesta 2013). Together, we open up adventurous spaces of possibility that are more or less unexplored, e.g. regarding how students are thereby (re)positioned as active learning subjects. Performative theories about the various forms of knowledge, about the making of the student subject are also borrowed from Denzin (2003) and Dewsbury (2000) and are here put in relation to the various affordances and cultures of recognition (Selander & Kress, 2021) that students encounter.

Methodological design The data consists of five multimodal and digitally disseminated degree theses (using Research Catalogue as a platform) and conversations with the five students who produced them.  Expected conclusions/findings Preliminary findings suggest a number of positive effects, e.g. in relation to academic literacy, understanding of subject matter; while also implying some challenges in terms of workload and construing cohesion in the multimodal text. However, as a means to invite students to work from within their own desires, offering an understanding of differences (between forms of knowledge) as productive, and the courage to encounter unpredictability, we find this pilot project promising.  

Relevance to Nordic educational research The approach applied in this project appears as a possible first step towards a wider recognition of multimodal forms of knowledge representation in academia, while also indicating some issues that need further consideration. 

The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR), has funded the National Graduate School in Visual Arts and Sloyd Education, FoBoS) (Sw. Nationella forskarskolan i bildpedagogik och slöjdpedagogik). This graduate school is a collaboration between Gothenburg University, Stockholm University and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. The work with the Graduate school began in 2019 and the first PhD students for Degree of Licentiate started in January 2020. FoBoS have contributed to practice-based research and quality in higher education in the subjects Visual Art and Sloyd Education and in this way contributed to establishing the subjects on postgraduate level by producing new researchers.

There is an urgent need to do more research in Sloyd and Visual Arts Education in Sweden. The current situation in these minor school subjects is limited. Lack of research programs as well as doctoral positions means that these studies seldom can build an autonomous research environment with advisors which can support the subject’s specific inquiries, theories and methods. There is also a lack of educators in Swedish universities in subject didactics in general (The Research Council, 2023).

FoBoS has been part of the strategic investment in graduate schools that has been important for “the supply of skills and to further strengthen the field of educational science as well as the scientific basis of teacher education and the school” (The Research Council, 2023 p. 6). Secure resources for career paths for new researchers and building excellent research environments as a result of the national research schools, subject didactic research, research on learning processes, on professions and professional training. Collaborative doctoral students are important as there is still a "weak connection between research on teaching and the teachers' everyday school life, as well as insufficient conditions to use knowledge from research and proven experience in the activities" (The Research Council, 2023 p. 14).

In this Roundtable discussion we in the steering group of FoBoS share our experiences of our work with the graduate school, in particular challenges in supporting the development of research in this area. Some of these challenges relate to structural conditions and how support for research and graduate schools is organized. Other challenges are how to create possibilities for continued trajectories from licentiate studies to doctoral studies, as well as onwards towards post-doctoral positions. What does the future look like for postgraduate education in the subjects and in higher education? What are the conditions for producing more researchers, career opportunities and postdocs? Despite an increased number of PhD:s in educational science, there is a great shortage of researchers for teacher training, even in the aesthetic subjects "to meet the societal challenges that characterize schools and higher education today" (The Research Council, 2023 p. 6). We in the steering group for FoBoS are interested in discussing how to create new opportunities for more research and researchers in Sloyd and Visual Arts. We invite you in our Roundtable discussion.

References

The Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet] (2023). Forskningsöversikt 2023. Utbildningsvetenskap. Stockholm.

Practices of teaching, learning, and meaning making along with the genres that they actualize are often construed as either ‘digital’ or ‘traditional’/’analog’. Our presentation addresses this dichotomy and digitalization more broadly through the lens of the pencil – an artefact that perhaps more than any other symbolizes the virtues of schooling through its key role for handwriting, calculation and drawing. More specifically, the potentials of the digital pencil for connecting ‘analog’ genres to ‘digital’ ones in the subjects of Swedish and Visual arts in middle school are analyzed. Results from a pilot study carried out during four months in a school in the greater Stockholm area will be presented. A middle school is chosen because children at that age have experience of a number of genres of handwriting and drawing, but most of them have not used digital pencils in school. The following research questions will be addressed:

To what extent can digital pencils resemiotize specific potentials of typically analog genres into digital environments, when used by middle school learners?

And which are the limitations of the digital pencils in this respect?

This way, the analysis will provide knowledge of the semiotic potentials, affordances and actual uses of digital pencils from a genre perspective, something which is lacking in previous research, with the exception of a few recent studies (e.g. Riche et al, 2017)

The methodological framework is Multimodal Ethnography (Author 1, 2012; Flewitt,

2011) which makes use of a number of tools and techniques from ethnography (cf. Green and Bloome, 1997) in combination with detailed semiotic analyses of artefacts (multimodal texts and the pencils themselves) as designed objects and as objects in use. The digital and analog pencils will be analyzed in terms of the semiotic potentials afforded (Hodge & Kress, 1988; van Leeuwen, 2005), their potentials as resources for learning (Selander, 2022; Säljö, 2010), but also as a resource for resemioitizing genres. In the latter case, we follow Miller (1984) who states that genres are ”typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (p. 159).

Our analysis focuses on how digital pencils can be used as tools for realizing communicative actions in texts and drawings in ways that draw on how this is done in typically analog genres. All students in the class studied work with iPads, but we have provided 4 of them with digital pencils. Their teachers have then designed tasks for the learners, that prioritize genres that are traditionally analog but now move into the realm of the digital. A typical example would be the illustrated story (a type of narrative), a common multimodal text in middle school that draws on analog genres that often require drawing by hand, which, in turn, tends to lead to the use of a (analog) pencil also for the accompanying words and sentences. The methodological tools employed in the pilot study are video-recorded, ethnographically inspired, observations (regarded as visual field notes) of situated meaning-making. Written field notes will also be taken, and texts and drawings created with digital as well as analog pencils will be collected and analyzed in order to locate generic connections.

The main results point to how the digital pencils can actually be used to draw on analog genres in processes of meaning making in the classroom. However, they also show how the digital pencils have other affordances (Kress, 2010; Author 2, 2022) than just functioning as “digital ink”: they are multifunctional in the sense that they can be used as tools for an array of tasks that analog pencils cannot: moving items, framing, using lasso functions, clicking and so on. Thus, our analysis confirms the findings of Riche et al (2017) in the sense that not only can the digital pencils be used to resemiotize analog genres; they also afford new ways of creating multimodal texts and genres.

A dichotomization of the resources used for contemporary teaching, learning, and meaningmaking may result in a simplified division of such processes as either ‘digital’ or ‘analogue’. Our presentation addresses this dichotomy, and our understanding of semiotic technologies more broadly, by analyzing the potential of the digital pencil for connecting ‘analogue’ meaning-making to ‘digital’ meaning-making in the subject of Swedish in middle school and high school.  Based on data from two pilot studies, each carried out for two months, our analysis focuses on how digital pencils can be used as tools for multimodal text creation in ways that draw on how this is typically done in analogue genres. This way, the analysis will provide knowledge of the semiotic potentials, affordances and actual uses of digital pencils in school, something which is lacking in previous research, with the exception of a few recent studies (e.g. Riche et al., 2017).  Two main results stand out. First, digital pencils can actually be effectively used to draw on analogue literacy practices in the classroom. Second, digital pencils have other affordances (Lindstrand, 2022) than just functioning as “digital ink”: they are multifunctional in the sense that they can be used as tools for an array of multimodal tasks that analogue pencils cannot. Thus, the analysis concludes that not only can digital pencils be used to resemiotize analogue practices, but they also afford new ways of creating texts.

While writing has been the dominant mode in academia for a long time, multimodal social semiotics (e.g. Kress, 2003; 2010; Huang & Archer, 2017) and designs for learning (e.g. Selander & Kress, 2021) provide arguments for approaching other modes as viable resources for meaning-making and knowledge production, even in higher education. This presentation introduces a recent pilot study regarding possibilities and challenges in students’ production of multimodal degree theses within the teacher education in visual arts. The project was motivated by an interest in developing approaches to knowledge production and knowledge representation that acknowledge, and take advantage of, the visual as a valid mode and of epistemological qualities in transductive and transformative processes, while also providing possibilities for inclusion in a wide sense. The data consists of five multimodal and digitally disseminated degree theses (using Research Catalogue as a platform) and conversations with the five students who produced them. The analytical framework stem from multimodal social semiotics and designs for learning, analyzing students’ multimodal knowledge production and -representation (conceptualized as designs in learning) and the educational contexts framing their work (i.e. designs for learning). Preliminary findings suggest a number of positive effects, e.g. in relation to academic literacy, understanding of subject matter, social inclusion and identity; while also implying some challenges in terms of workload and construing cohesion in the multimodal text. In conclusion, the approach applied in this project appears as a possible first step towards a wider recognition of multimodal forms of knowledge representation in academia, while also indicating some issues that need further consideration.

Digitization has had a transformative impact on museum practices in recent years, including the work with exhibitions (cf. Arvantis & Zuanni, 2021). Digital media make it possible for more people to take part in cultural heritage, by making available objects and remains of a sensitive nature that could not otherwise be shown publicly. It opens up new forms of communication that can make it possible for groups of visitors with different needs to learn about the past (cf. Galani & Kidd, 2020). New questions can potentially be asked, when cultural heritage is made digital.  In this presentation we introduce an on-going research project on digital materialities in museum exhibitions. The aim of the project is to produce knowledge about the effects of digitization in relation to the exhibition medium and to visitors’ meaning-making. It does so by investigating how digital technologies are employed and how specific applications may contribute to learning in a selection of museums, such as Vrak – The Museum of Wrecks and The Vasa Museum. Focusing on materiality, the project seeks to understand the affordances for meaning-making of digital media in relation to the epistemological commitments of modes, media and the material expression (cf. Bezemer & Kress, 2016; Lindstrand, 2022). The presentation will include examples from a series of case studies from different museums that are part of Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums. We will share some preliminary findings. The project is funded by The Swedish National Heritage Board and will run for three years, 2023-2025. The project aims to contribute to research by bringing the fields of digital humanities and education together, by investigating how analogue and digital technologies intersect when representing cultural-historical objects, and how specific applications create conditions (and perhaps even limitations) for learning and meaning making.

This chapter introduces the notion of affordance as a means for reflecting about resources in relation to learning and Designs For Learning. Instead of taking resources for granted as stable and pre-defined components of a Learning Design Sequence, the chapter argues that there is much to gain by attending to questions regarding the material qualities of these resources: how—based on their constitution—do they lend themselves to meaning-making activities and to whom? The chapter also argues for the importance of attending to what learners themselves distinguish as resources in their meaning-making endeavours. What is recognized as a resource for a certain purpose can tell us something about how meaning-makers position themselves in the world and how they relate to the subject area in focus. A focus on what resources are used, how and for what means also compels reflections regarding the social and cultural contexts of learning as well as the agency of learners. As a methodological consequence the chapter emphasizes the importance of approaching issues regarding resources for learning by studying meaning-making in situ. The various reflections about resources and affordances presented in this chapter are illustrated and exemplified with glimpses from previous research projects in different settings.

När vi på IBIS bedriver lärarutbildning inom ämnena bild och slöjd är alla aspekter av de estetiska lärprocesserna inbegripna. Vi har en mångårig tradition av att arbeta med det vi kallar ”ett dubbelt perspektiv”, som bygger på tanken att olika kunskapsformer kan och bör kombineras i stället för att ställas emot varandra. En undersökning kan således genomföras och kommuniceras med såväl konstnär- liga/gestaltande/performativa metoder och teorier som vetenskapliga sådana. Trots detta framträder en kunskapsform fortfarande som den dominerande i kursen Självständigt arbete i bild (30 hp): textpro- duktion i form av skrivande. Den skrivna texten ges alltjämt större tyngd (i t.ex. bedömning), samtidigt som vi vet att många studenter kämpar med olika språk-, läs- och skrivproblem. Skrivandet tar därför mer tid och energi i studenternas projekt och flera av dem upplever den sista kursen som ett nödvändigt ont, medan vi vill att det ska vara utbildningens höjdpunkt. 

Inför den senaste omgången av kursen (VT 22) hade en grupp studenter ansökt om att få arbeta multi- modalt i samtliga delar av sitt undersökande arbete, vilket även innebar att de lämnade den traditionella uppsatsformen. För oss, som examinatorer, innebar detta en möjlighet att testa oss själva och påbörja ett arbete kring hur vi kan tänka och göra annorlunda: Kan självständiga arbeten kommuniceras i ett alter- nativt format till den traditionella uppsatsen? Kan det skrivna ordet t.o.m. ersättas av film, illustrationer, intervjuer? 

Studenternas processer och de material som arbetena resulterade i ingår som empiri i Anderssons pilotprojekt kallat ”Performativ pedagogik - ett prismatiskt perspektiv i skärningspunkten teori/gestalt- ning”. I projektet undersöks hur det dubbla perspektivet, som förhållningssätt i utbildningen benämns, förstås och kommuniceras genom att studera hur studenterna samtalar och iscensätter sin förståelse av detta. Projektet undersöker också hur det dubbla perspektivet, som arbetssätt ytterligare kan stärkas och utvecklas genom att synliggöra hur agens och kunskapsskapande framträder hos studenterna.Vi avser beskriva och diskutera förutsättningarna för det alternativa, multimodala självständiga arbete som fem av studenterna genomförde. Vi kommer att visa exempel från deras arbeten och lyfta några av de för- och nackdelar som framkommit hos examinatorer, handledare och studenter. Vår forskning be- finner sig i ett tidigt stadium och vi ser konferensen som ett första tillfälle att formulera oss kring detta och få respons och kommentarer. Vi menar att vårt projekt är viktigt inte minst för att kunna erbjuda ett mer inkluderande arbetssätt i estetiska lärarutbildningar. 

This chapter introduces the notion of designs in learning, which focuses on aspects regarding how learners (either individually or collectively) negotiate, make choices, and design their learning and representation of a phenomenon and of a knowledge area. Designs in learning can thus be seen as a way to approach issues regarding learners’ agency and performativity in learning contexts of various kinds. The chapter further contextualizes this aspect of learning by introducing the idea of rhizomatic webs as a metaphor for learning. A condition for being able to grasp learning as a performative act and the rhizomatic character of meaning-making is an openness in terms of what is recognized as valid representations of knowledge. We argue for the importance of recognizing a multitude of meaningful expressions in learning, introduced here as a capacity to embrace multimodal knowledge representations. The ideas presented in the chapter are exemplified with some glimpses of a collaborative process of filmmaking in a school context. In order to show how meaning-making evolves in the work to make representations in film, the chapter also introduces the notions of epistemological commitments of modes, transformation, and transduction.

In this talk I will use ‘recognition’ and ‘to recognize’ as starting points for a series of reflections on social and epistemological aspects related to learning and education that I have found important in various research projects over the years. Recognition is here approached in a double sense, relating both to what learners recognize as apt resources and approaches in their multimodal sign-making processes; and, to what teachers recognize as valid knowledge representations. Thus, recognition points to semiotic action and is here used in an attempt to cut across various aspects that appear relevant in relation to learning and meaning-making (e.g. agency, design, materiality, affordance). It is approached both as an intrinsic part of learners’ sign-making processes while transforming, transducing and representing their understandings of various phenomena, and of teachers’ meaning-making processes as they try to make sense of, address and assess, these representations in educational contexts. While this approach (like multimodal approaches to learning and meaning-making in general) opens up for a widening of what can be accounted for as ‘meaningful’, it also points to the necessity of problematizing assessment practices in educational contexts. The examples I will present span from preschool children’s drawings to filmmaking projects in upper secondary and university students’ visual representations of multimodal concepts in teacher education.

Bio:

Fredrik Lindstrand is Professor of Media Theory in Relation to Visual Arts Education at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been engaged in a number of research projects and has published extensively on topics related to multimodality and learning. His research interests focus on issues regarding multimodal communication, social semiotics, media culture, meaning-making, knowledge representations and designs for learning in different settings, and especially in relation to creative processes. He is co-founder and section editor of the peer-reviewed, open access journal Designs for Learning, and is on the advisory boards of other scientific journals. Some of his most recent publications include: Didaktik i omvandlingens tid. Text, representation, design (Education in a time of change. Text, representation, design; with Insulander, Kjällander & Åkerfeldt, eds, Liber 2017); Design för lärande—Historia. Medeltiden som exempel (Designs for learning—History. The Middle Ages as an example; with Insulander & Selander, Liber 2019); Design för lärande i förskolan (Designs for learning in preschool, with Elm Fristorp, Studentlitteratur, 2020); and A semiotic and design-oriented approach to affordance (in Björklund-Boistrup & Selander, eds, 2022).