A WINDOW INTO MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS’ WORLDS: HOW TO REDESIGN CURRICULUM WITH DIGITAL MULTIMODAL COMPOSITIONS TO PROMOTE ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ WRITING EXPERIENCES?

Abstract

This design-based research explores strategies to redesign scripted language curriculum with digital and multimodal components in two elementary English Language Development (ELD) classrooms to support multilingual learners’ writing. This dissertation research also examines students’ writing experiences in this digital multimodal learning space. For many multilingual students, writing class can be a space of exclusion when instruction and curricula do not recognize, understand, and invite their rich funds of knowledge. As a result, these students are often mislabeled as “disengaged” or “struggling”. This exclusion is further reinforced by a restrictive, print-based notion of literacy and the pressure of language-focused standardized assessments, where linguistic development in English is the only focus. This conventional pedagogical approach to writing ignores students' diverse communicative repertoires. Ultimately, it creates an artificial boundary between “official” school writing and the authentic, multimodal literacies skills that students need to participate in the digitalized contemporary world. However, there is a lack of multimodal curricula and instructional frameworks that value and highlight these learners' diverse knowledge and capabilities. Similarly, while standards like the Common Core promote digital and multiliteracies skills, in practice, they are often treated as an “add-on” rather than an integrated part of academic learning, especially within writing instruction. Therefore, this research aims to explore how to redesign curricula in response to new technologies, validate multilingual learners' multimodal practices, and better support their specific learning needs. This dissertation research highlights digital multimodal composing (DMC) as a potential asset-based and fruitful writing space, where students can use their full semiotic resources, including visuals, audio, and spatial modes throughout the digital composing process. This research explores two questions: (1) what are design strategies for teachers to create a digital multimodal learning space despite the constraints of language-focused curricula and assessment pressure; and (2) How does this multimodal learning space offer multilingual students more learning opportunities? This research is grounded in sociocultural theory to understand students’ learning process, and informed by third space theory, multiliteracies and multimodality, and culturally responsive/sustainable pedagogy to guide my curriculum redesign rationale and teaching practices with multilingual learners. This study involves a semester-long close partnership with one teacher to redesign a writing curriculum and implement DMC projects with 20 4th and 5th grade multilingual students. Data sources include daily class observations, instructional co-planning sessions, interviews and informal conversations with teachers and students, and artifacts collection (e.g., redesigned curriculum materials, students’ daily composing artifacts). This research not only identifies a framework for teachers to integrate digital and multimodal resources into curricula authentically but also highlights that such a learning space supports a more differentiated and collaborative writing process. It also deepens students’ meaningful use of multimodality to mediate comprehension, which ultimately promotes multilingual students’ writing experiences cognitively and cultivates positive writers’ identities.