Exploring pre-service EFL teachers' multimodal literacy practices: implications for teacher education

Abstract

This document reports a research study conducted in a distance education undergraduate TEFL program from a private university in Colombia. Throughout a pedagogical implementation in a writing course, a group of pre-service EFL teachers engaged in a multimodal composition experience. Following the procedures of a qualitative case study, data was gathered through the participants’ artifacts, a questionnaire, and interviews in order to inquire about the literacy practices the pre-service EFL teachers engaged in when composing multimodal texts, and gain insights about their views towards multimodal literacy teaching from this experience. Findings showed that the pre-service EFL teachers engaged in culturally situated literacy practices as they used available meaning-making resources to create new meanings. Also, the pre-service EFL teachers recognized the potential and the affordances of multimodal texts in literacy teaching and acknowledged that the teaching of multimodal literacy requires collaboration and teamwork.