This dissertation project began with the development of a Design-Focused Approach (DFA) to First-Year Composition (FYC) curriculum largely informed by multimodal pedagogical theory. In the DFA to FYC curriculum, I highlighted the importance of multiliteracy and the demand for multiple modalities for students to effectively communicate in various…

Social work programs are facing the need to gain further clarity about how to leverage instructional strategies specific to the course modality (i.e., traditional, hybrid, online hybrid, and fully online). At its heart, this challenge is an analogical transfer problem: practice instructors must adapt what they do in one modality to new modalities…

Recently, the option to use large language models as a middleware connecting various AI tools and other large language models led to the development of so-called large multimodal foundation models, which have the power to process spoken text, music, images and videos. In this overview, we explain a new set of opportunities and challenges that…

This article is based on multimodal perspectives and contributes to research on how children deal with a multimodal illustration of scientific concepts used in emergent science (i.e., early years science) education. It presents a study of a group of 14 preschoolers observed when dealing with the concept of stability, as illustrated in a…

Embodied cognition--the idea that mental states and processes should be understood in relation to one's bodily constitution and interactions with the world--remains a controversial topic within cognitive science. Recently, however, increasing interest in predictive processing theories among proponents and critics of embodiment alike has raised…

The advent of advanced technology has opened new horizons for studying collaborative learning, although ambiguity remains in the classification and rationale for combining modalities in multimodal collaboration analytics (MMCA). Addressing this gap is crucial for the progression of collaborative learning practices and research. This review…

Purpose: This study examined learning via perception, learning via production, and semantic depth as contributors to word learning in preschool-aged children. There is broad evidence that semantic depth is an important contributor to word learning, especially when semantic cues are repeated and spaced out over time. Perceptual learning and…

Teachers are grappling with increased pressure and expectations to facilitate transformative education experiences, the kinds of experiences that cultivate dispositions and skillsets essential for young peoples' preparedness to imagine and create sustainable futures. As expectations for teachers grow, so too do initiatives intended to assist their…

Calls for research in multimodality and multiliteracies have provided the field of writing studies with theories and outcomes suggesting that more research is necessary in FYC students' multimodal composing processes and literacy practices. Much of the research in New Literacies Studies (NLS) focuses on students' final products. This dissertation…

In this article we report on Foundation Phase teachers' experiences when implementing curriculum adaptation in rural inclusive schools of South Africa. We argue that, in spite of inclusive education policies being in place and several pre- and in-service training have been undertaken, teachers still experience challenges to meet the learning needs…

Over recent decades much research has analyzed the relevance of 9- to 20-month-old infants' early imitation skills (object- and language-based imitation) for language development. Yet there have been few systematic comparisons of the joint relevance of these imitative behaviors later on in development. This correlational study investigated whether…

This scoping review aims to provide an overview of how multimodal learning analytics has been applied in K-8 research and offers methodological insights and recommendations to bridge the gap between theory and practice. We identified 14 peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2011 and 2023 through searches in relevant databases and…

The current study explores the connection and affordances of talk and gesture in collaborative science problem-solving activities using an emerging analytical approach. A total of 15 three to five-member groups of middle school students participated in a set of clinical collaborative science problem-solving activities. Six groups (three low- and…

Early number skills represent critical milestones in children's cognitive development and are shaped over years of interacting with quantities and numerals in various contexts. Several connectionist computational models have attempted to emulate how certain number concepts may be learned, represented, and processed in the brain. However, these…

This study aims to explore the meanings communicated by young children with visual cultural semiotic resources available in the science classroom. It is a case study in an Early Childhood Education classroom of 23 children (3-4 years old) and their teacher, all engaged in a long-term science project about snails. We focus on the analysis of two…