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Understandings of what counts as literacy and of how language is best taught are in considerable flux in the present period. The proliferation of the digital is often cited as a key factor driving this sense of flux. In initial teacher education, the place of the digital in teachers' practices is complicated by students' varying engagements with the digital, and unequal access to digital resources in schools. Research on how newly qualified teachers engage in teaching practices involving the digital is limited. Additionally, recent studies point to the immense pressures placed on these teachers during their first years as qualified teachers. This case study is an in-depth investigation of the practices of two newly qualified English language and literacy teachers, at two South African high schools, analysing their practices during a period of their initial teacher education and within their first year of teaching. The study aims to ascertain the place of the digital in poetry lessons by analysing their lesson plans, lesson observations, interviews, teaching materials, Whatsapp VoiceNotes and written reflections. The theoretical foundation draws on the New Literacy Studies and recent theories from multimodal social semiotics and discourse studies. The data analysis framework consists of three lenses: recognisable activities, multimodal ensembles and assemblages-as-tensions. The analysis of recognisable activities in lesson plans and high school lessons showed that the digital is not central to the two teachers' practices. They used digital resources as ‘placed digital artefacts': teacher-created finished products that connect with one activity and are then abandoned. Analysis of multimodal ensembles revealed the ways in which the digital, the teachers' bodily movements, their use of space in the classroom, speech and writing are entangled. Teachers have to control rapid changes in modal ensembles, or ‘beats', throughout lesson time. The analysis of assemblages-as-tensions showed that these two newly qualified teachers balance many conflicting discourses and tensions in their high school practice, which render the year following initial teacher education daunting. The digital often exacerbates these tensions. However, digital resource use is suggested to be connected to complex and powerful conceptions of language and of teaching that underpin teachers' practices. In teacher education, the digital could thus become a mediator of reflective practice and teacher support during and after initial teacher education, instead of focusing on digital technologies use per se. Consequently, classroom practices involving the digital could become more powerful.

Patient-centred communication and patient education: a multimodal social semiotic approach This study explores the phenomenon of patient-centred communication within the South African health context. Patient-centred communication involves several distinct but interlinked elements, namely, taking a holistic approach to illness, 'seeing' through the patient's eyes, 'co-constructing' a shared understanding or therapeutic alliance, and sharing decision-making and responsibility where possible. While adopted by medical curricula across the world, a lack of conceptual clarity is common among students, educators, researchers and policy-makers. Furthermore, little research has been done that accounts for contextual factors and non-western settings. This study looks at how fourth year medical students operationalise the 'classroom-taught' principles of patient-centred communication during a health education encounter with patients. Drawing on a qualitative, interpretivist paradigm, the research focuses on communication in the context of language barriers, cultural value differences and socio-economic inequality. This study views students' multimodal health education artefacts as instances of 'informed flexibility' to patients' needs and challenges. The research is located within a Pharmacology curriculum activity where medical students produce personalized health promotion artefacts for rheumatic heart disease patients. Their artefacts are instances of patient-centred communication as well as instances of purposeful pedagogic recontextualisation, in that they realise both epistemic and relational dimensions of health education. Students also write a critique on the process, reflecting on the patient interview and motivating their design choices. Taking a multimodal social semiotic approach, the study draws on Bezemer and Kress' semiotic principles of recontextualisation (2008) for analysis of artefacts. Thematic analysis of students' critical reflections as well as follow-up interviews with their patients illuminate the context and assumptions underpinning students' design choices. The study is significant in several ways. It highlights the complex, multifaceted, multi-layered nature of doctor-patient communication, argues for realism in what can be taught and assessed in a classroom and suggests novel pedagogic approaches. The study also brings an African perspective to patient-centred communication, and in highlighting challenges relevant to the South African health care system, it supports contemporary calls for 'decolonisation' of health sciences curricula. The research contributes to ongoing efforts to eradicate rheumatic heart disease by giving patients a 'voice', raising awareness and supporting preventative programs. Methodologically, the study contributes to Bezemer and Kress' (2008) pursuit of articulating a semiotic methodological framework for multimodal texts.

Many English as an additional language (EAL) teachers around the world want to improve their professional practice in classrooms. In Angola, one particular approach to teacher training utilized two different video series published by the United States Department of State, to address the pedagogical concerns and methodological needs of teachers. One video is distributed around the world and the other is designed for particular local teachers. Both training videos utilize editing techniques like those in film to merge moving and still images, written and spoken text, voiceover and music. Reactions to the videos in Angola varied, but generally informal feedback from teachers after trainings implied that the video used methods that were not relevant for Angolan contexts. Although studies have investigated the impact of training materials on teacher practice (Kuter, Gazi, & Aksal, 2012; Kaskaya, 2011; Britsch, 2010; Orlova, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Taylor, 2002; Maheshwari & Raina, 1998), no studies have examined the materials themselves in order to explore this mismatch between pedagogical material and context. Thus, this study contributes to an understanding of how multimodal semiotic resources in EAL teacher training videos construct English teaching in global settings. The investigation of the videos utilizes a multimodal social semiotic lens based in the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and grounded in Halliday (1978). The study includes three steps: The first explores multimodal semiotic resources within the videos that construct 'glocal' configurations. The second examines what the configurations realize about the field of EAL teaching. The third explores how these configurations can inform principles to consider in future video production that are mindful of local contexts within current sociolinguistic dynamics of pluralism (Canagarajah, 2006) and super-diversity (Blommaert and Dong, 2010). Multimodality conceptualizes communication as being possible through multiple modes such as the written, spoken and the musical. Social semiotics can be defined as "what can be said and done with images (and other visual means of communication) and how the things people say and do with images can be interpreted" (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001: 134). Thus, the combination of multimodality and social semiotics used in the study provides a suitable framework for exploring meaning potential within the semiotic choices of resources in the videos. The analytical lens also allows for an exploration of the power-related assumptions and ideologies about EAL teaching that are constructed through the semiotic choices made in the videos. Many English as an additional language (EAL) teachers around the world want to improve their professional practice in classrooms. In Angola, one particular approach to teacher training utilized two different video series published by the United States Department of State, to address the pedagogical concerns and methodological needs of teachers. One video is distributed around the world and the other is designed for particular local teachers. Both training videos utilize editing techniques like those in film to merge moving and still images, written and spoken text, voiceover and music. Reactions to the videos in Angola varied, but generally informal feedback from teachers after trainings implied that the video used methods that were not relevant for Angolan contexts. Although studies have investigated the impact of training materials on teacher practice (Kuter, Gazi, & Aksal, 2012; Kaskaya, 2011; Britsch, 2010; Orlova, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Taylor, 2002; Maheshwari & Raina, 1998), no studies have examined the materials themselves in order to explore this mismatch between pedagogical material and context. Thus, this study contributes to an understanding of how multimodal semiotic resources in EAL teacher training videos construct English teaching in global settings. The investigation of the videos utilizes a multimodal social semiotic lens based in the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and grounded in Halliday (1978). The study includes three steps: The first explores multimodal semiotic resources within the videos that construct 'glocal' configurations. The second examines what the configurations realize about the field of EAL teaching. The third explores how these configurations can inform principles to consider in future video production that are mindful of local contexts within current sociolinguistic dynamics of pluralism (Canagarajah, 2006) and super-diversity (Blommaert and Dong, 2010). Multimodality conceptualizes communication as being possible through multiple modes such as the written, spoken and the musical. Social semiotics can be defined as "what can be said and done with images (and other visual means of communication) and how the things people say and do with images can be interpreted" (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001: 134). Thus, the combination of multimodality and social semiotics used in the study provides a suitable framework for exploring meaning potential within the semiotic choices of resources in the videos. The analytical lens also allows for an exploration of the power-related assumptions and ideologies about EAL teaching that are constructed through the semiotic choices made in the videos.

Includes bibliographical references., The focus of this study is pedagogy - the 'how' of teaching. In particular, a negotiated and multimodal pedagogical approach which I have coined scenario pedagogy is of interest. Scenario pedagogy involves embedding an entire curriculum into a topical and authentic scenario, relevant to a particular group of students in higher education. The course in question is professional communication and the target group comprises senior and post-graduate accounting and other finance and information systems students registered in the commerce faculty. They are not communication students per se but register for a one-semester professional communication course towards their respective commerce degrees. In this study I examine how these students develop their professional communication practices using a wide variety of verbal and visual semiotic resources. Their selection of hybrid discursive, generic and modal resources are foregrounded at both draft and final product stage and include their communicative processes as well as the material artefacts they deliver in class. How students instantiate their meaning making and emerging identity as professionals-to-be is highlighted against a pedagogical framework of negotiated design. This framework combines a multiliteracies cum multimodal perspective which is underpinned by the notion of transformed practice. As pivotal elements of transformation - personally, collectively and societally - education and communication play significant roles, particularly in post-Apartheid South Africa still characterised by enormous socio-economic disparities and disadvantage.