Moving from the Logic of the Page to the Logic of the Screen: A Review Research on Multimodal Pedagogy in EFL Classroom Contexts

摘要

Due to the global proliferation of information technologies and communication channels, today's students are increasingly engaged with multimodal, multimedia along with printed-based literacy practices and are significantly exposed to new information and mass communication on daily basis. As a result, there has been a significant increase in research publications on multimodal-based teaching practices and the impacts of such instructional practices on students' learning. This study attempts to synthesize and critically analyze the existing empirical research on multimodal pedagogy in EFL classroom contexts. The descriptive statistics characterizing the studies reviewed (e.g., the research designs, participant characteristics, settings) were presented along with the qualitative content analysis results containing the emerging themes which sequentially arranged according to its prevalence. The research articles reviewed in this study were based on the following inclusive criteria: (1) peer-reviewed studies, (2) studies concerned with multimodal pedagogy in EFL contexts, and (3) published within the last 6 years. The search for these articles was conducted electronically using search engine databases (e.g., ERIC, Google Scholars) and some reputable journal websites (e.g., tanfonline.com, link.springer.com). Across the corpus of 40 studies, findings revealed that the most preferred study design for multimodal research was case studies conducted in school settings involving both teachers and students as participants. This analytical review also revealed five prevalent themes of findings informing the possibilities and complexities of pedagogical benefits and constraints of multimodal pedagogy. The results of this study could hopefully provide insights on what has been done thus far and showcase implications for research and practice.