Multimodal Texts in Disciplinary Education

Front matter

Kristina Danielsson - Staffan Selander

Multimodal Texts in Disciplinary Education

A Comprehensive Framework

Preface

The last couple of decades, society has undergone drastic changes, and digital technology has brought about new ways of storing and producing information as well as new ways of communicating. These changes have also changed our views of learning, in ways that have resulted in new challenges for educational practices. Today, technology-enhanced learning is paired with distributed, collaborative, and self-guided learning processes. Examples are mobile learning, the flipped classroom, and web-based dialogues. Such phenomena presuppose so-called 21st Century Skills, skills that entail new demands and competencies for teachers as well as for school management. Therefore, educational research has developed in ways that deal with innovations as well as questions concerning how small-scale developmental projects can be scaled up (e.g., Halverson & Kelley 2017; Lim et al. 2019).

In parallel to this development, texts have gained greater importance in society, and texts are crucial for learning in more or less all school subjects. At the same time, the meaning of “text” has changed. Today an extended text concept is used and we talk about texts as multimodal. Through this book, we want to highlight a new way of dealing with multimodal texts in parallel to presenting new ways of working with such texts in education.

To be able to read and handle texts involves a lot more than the elementary reading competency to decode letters and words. Instead, text encounters involving new genres, new content areas, or new media imply new ways of approaching and reading texts. For students navigating between different text worlds, this has become more and more important. Also, for some time now, knowledge has been gained about the fact that different subjects’ areas use language in different ways (e.g., Halliday and Martin 1993; Schleppegrell 2004). However, not only verbal language (whether spoken or written) differs between genres and subjects, but other communicative resources too, such as images, diagrams, and graphs. Thus, a variety of resources can be subject-specific and result in potential challenges for the novice in the field.

This book is intended for researchers, for teacher education, and for in-service teacher training. The motivation behind writing it has been to provide researchers and teachers with tools that can be utilized for texts in education. For this purpose we have developed a model for analyzing and working with multimodal texts. Also, vi Preface we want to highlight how a multimodal focus on texts can support students” makingmeaning from texts, at the same time as such a focus can help students build up an awareness about the importance of text design, thus cultivating their multimodal literacy.

Through this book, we want to shed light on the ways that texts can represent knowledge in different ways, and how the interaction between different text resources can be both a challenge and a support in meaning-making processes. This concerns wordings as well as other resources such as images and various graphic elements. Furthermore, through our model, we aim to demonstrate how teachers can work with texts in ways that can support students’ meaning-making through texts, and accordingly to deepen their knowledge in the content area in question. At the end of Part 1 of the book, we will discuss how our model can be used when working with students’ text production, and for assessing texts, paying attention to multimodal aspects of the text.

Factual texts, whether paper-based or digital, whether shown on the computer screen or in different forms of applications for tablets or smartphones, are used in all subject areas. Therefore, this book deals with factual texts rather than literary texts, though multimodality can be relevant for such texts, too.

A Swedish version of this book was published in 2014 (Danielsson and Selander 2014) though this version of the book has been thoroughly revised, and in particular Part II, which consists of sample analyses of texts. Most texts in that part have been altered, to include more texts from other languages and cultures than the Swedish.

Stockholm, Sweden Kristina Danielsson January 2021 Staffan Selander References

Danielsson, K. & Selander, S. (2014). Se texten! Multimodala texter i Gmnesdidaktiskt arbete. [See the text! Multimodal texts in education]. Malmö: Gleerups.

Halverson, R., & Kelly, C. (2017). Mapping leadership. The tasks that matter for improving teaching and learning in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing science. Literacy and discursive power. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Lim, F. V., Kwan, Y. M., & Poh, M. L. (2019). Spreading educational technology innovations: Cultivating communities. In D. Hung, S. S. Lee, Y. Toh, A. Jamaludin, & L. Wu (Eds) Innovations in Educational Change (pp. 65-83). Education Innovation Series. Springer.

Schleppegrell, M. (2004). The Language of Schooling. A Functional Linguistics Perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Part I Multimodal Texts and Working with Multimodal Texts in Education 4.5.2 Interaction Between Text Resources in the Text viii Contents

5 nioi Nan enero 45

Part II Sample Texts Analyses

7.1 Physics, Elementary Scheel . Rica peseceatencscenue. “OT 7.1.1 General Stru pore and Set an ih Re Siiiesheiegicee. OF

PAA Classroom FOCUS csecircererceriristiiistiiisteiiss Ta

42 Biology, Secondary Sehol srsririrrisrsriasiriissrigdratse T2

3 me 1 ane sög k and Selling 4

8.3

8.4

Contents

8.5 History, SR 3 School—A Matter of V 8.5.1 a 8.5.2 8.5.3 Figur

8.6 Religion, Eler 8.6.1 Genera 8.6.2 ni 8.6.3 Figurative a a ee ee SiGe VeIGER E E E ET pa lane EI O T

Subjects Focusi 10.1 Crafts, | 10.1.1 Gen 10.1.2 heed 10.1.3 Values 10.2 Welding, Industry Program Joi i hesninin dente dre 10.2.1 General Structure and Setting 10.2.3 aaa ad RR EENAA TT 10.2.4 Values . EEDE PEE E IENE EEE TIET TT E 10.2.5 Chavon Fans. Pee eee er ey eer eee re

11.1 Interaction Between Text Rewunnes EEEE TEE EENEN T E

About the Authors

Kristina Danielsson has a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages and is a Professor of Swedish in Education at Stockholm University, and Professor of Swedish at Linnaeus University, Sweden, where she was a founding member of the Center for Educational Linguistics and the Linnaeus University Center for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS). In recent years, her research projects deal with literacy in various school subjects, with a special focus on multimodality. On behalf of the Swedish Board of Education, she has written numerous articles for teachers” in-service training and school development concerning reading, writing, and text talk in educational contexts. Together with Kok-Sing Tang from Curtin University, she is founding coordinator of the Special Interest Group Languages and Literacies in Science Education. Recent publications are Global Developments in Literacy Research for Science Education (with Tang, Eds., 2018) and Textskapande i grundskolan. Utveckla funktionella textpraktiker (with Bergh Nestlog, 2020).

Staffan Selander has a Ph.D. in Education and is Professor Emeritus in Education at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University. A major part of his research during the last 15 years has focused on designs for and in learning, knowledge representations, and digital learning environments. He has led several international research projects and has also been engaged in smaller projects in cooperation with school communities. He is the founder of the open access journal Designs for Learning. Some of his later publications are Didaktikenefter Vygotskij— Design for lärande (2017); Games and Education—Designs in and for Learning (with Arnseth, Hanghgj, Henriksen, Misfeldt, and Ramberg, Eds., 2018), Digital Learning and Collaborative Practices—Lessons from Inclusive and Empowering Participation in Emerging Technologies (with Brooks and Dau, Eds., 2021), and Learning as Social Practice. Beyond Education as an Individual Enterprise (with Kress, Säljö & Wulf, Eds., 2021).

xi

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Teacher’s illustration of the atomic model in a secondary school chemistry classroom (from Danielsson 2016, with permission from the author) ...2.sscsseackesecseevnuse 20 Fig. 3.2 Student text (year 1) after an excursion to the sea (Sjøhelle

Fig. 4.1 Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science

Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 24-27,

Fig. 4.2 Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science

Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 28-29,

Fig. 4.3 Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science

Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 32-33,

Fig. 4.4 Food digestion, lower secondary school, Science

Matters, Lower Secondary (Fong et al. 2013, pp. 38-39,

Fig. 4.5 Enhancing proximity by use of color: BBC Focus Magazine

(Ridgway/BBC Knowledge 2013, p. 71, with permission

Fig. 5.1 | Experimental report from a science classroom in secondary

school, written by hand (Liberg et al. 2010, p. 16,

With permission from the authors) ...ciccccnasnsceavanencnn 50 Fig. 7.1 Astronomy, elementary school. PULS. Fysik och kemi

4-6 grundbok (Sjöberg and Oberg 2011, p. 90, illustrations

by Jenny Karlsson; re-printed with permission from Natur

CO E EE E pee rene been b eek NETONNETS 68 Fig. 7.2 The earth is spinning around. PULS. Fysik och kemi

4-6 grundbok (Sjöberg and Oberg 2011. 91, illustrations

by Jenny Karlsson; re-printed with permission from Natur

MUM EAT A AE E E TOS SS A TAE E E E E cs 69 xiii ga

List of Figures a mma pers’ asa i ganit Fp Biologi (Fabricius

73 80 82 ies permi a (Go re Binenn; photographs bi ‘chon for seis, ht uat 83 85 i m by 19542, All About Fines (Cheong and Huang 2014, pp. 50-51, Rey d by permission of Hodder Education, FARA blurred för EN i 85 89 iting a s Mosler ae, Upp i and Sandin 2008, pp. 72-73, v 89 Fancy Dress Day, Happy G me í (Sute pp. 34-35, with p 96 1c > Ri 2009, pp. 26-27, ; 97 pir pr by permissi for copyrigt sht reasons 3) 99 Improving pronunciation, All About ae secondary school (Koh et al. 2011, pp. 106-107, Reproduced by permission of Hodder oven eee FER SPONSRADE 100 Instruc | ) o) 104 105

| aeai N and Hallman 1999, | pp. 964 97, with pe ission from CCE) ic E E A NETT 108 Patchwork. Cambridge Primary Mashematies Learner š Book 2 (Moseley and Reese 2014, p. 72, with permission from Cambridge University Press) . poéti E E 114

List of Figures XV

115 Fig. 12.1 l m y 2020, pride withp per n from UngaFakta occanti ÅG Fig. 12.2 Example of text provided ekt ks: Egyp of the Pharaos (UngaFakta 2020, printed wih] permission from UngaFakta) 119 Fig. 13.1 Starting page E Economy G i is 122 Fig. 13.2 A budget in the oe Case (UngaFakta 2020, printed ip alp from aiai r 123 124 Fig: 125

Part I Multimodal Texts and Working with Multimodal Texts in Education

Chapter 1 A) Introduction E

Working with texts in deliberate ways is a foundation for supporting students’ subject learning, and their potential to demonstrate their knowledge in the subject. Therefore, it is central for all teachers to understand how texts work, and at the same time to be able to support their students’ competencies regarding how texts are designed and how to make meaning through texts. Thus, teachers in all school subjects have a responsibility in this regard, and teachers of the mother tongue cannot be expected to be the only ones responsible for developing students’ text competencies. Instead, teachers in all subjects need to deepen their own text competence. We hope that this book can be a support in doing so.

Since text is the foundation of this book, and since this concept is used in both everyday language and academic language, this will be our point of departure in the following.

An everyday understanding of text could perhaps be formulated as “written words on a paper or presented on a screen”. Academic definitions of text include such connotations, but research over the last decades has contributed to a more nuanced understanding of what a text is and how texts work. Therefore, the text concept has been extended in relation to “written words on paper”, now including other resources for meaning-making, such as image, speech, gesture, and so on. Each one of these resources can be seen as a text, provided that it corresponds to other aspects of text, such as consisting of a delimited message that can be understood in a specific context. Thus, in research and education today, we often deal with what is commonly termed an extended text concept.

An extended text concept implies that texts can consist of a variety of communicative resources that form a joint entity. Examples are written words! combined with various forms of illustrations, or a spoken text combined with gestures. Such lIn this book we use an extended text concept. Therefore, we try to be clear when referring to written or spoken words in texts—in opposition to e.g. tables, mathematical symbols, etc. Hence, in the following, we use concepts such as “written/spoken words”, “writing/speech”, or “spoken/written verbal text”.

© The Author(s) 2021 3 K. Danielsson and S. Selander, Multimodal Texts in Disciplinary Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63960-0 1

4 1 Introduction texts are multimodal, and they are the focus of this book. We will discuss the term multimodal more thoroughly below.

Since “text” today can involve so much more than just written words, it is important always to make clear how the text concept is used. Here we want to point out that there is no one correct definition of text. Instead, depending on the context or purpose for using the term “text” in a specific situation, the definition can vary.

In this book, we restrict ourselves mainly to analyzing and discussing paper-based or digital visual texts, including all resources integrated in these (such as images, animations, or audio clips). Also, our focus is on pedagogic texts, that is, texts intended for more or less formal learning situations such as textbooks or Internet resources produced for educational purposes. Of course, texts that have not primarily been produced for educational purposes are also used in schools. We claim that our discussions of multimodal texts, as well as our model for working with such texts, function well for any kind of text. However, there are good reasons to base an exposition like this on texts that are typically used in education. Teachers’ and students’ oral texts will only be commented on briefly, not because we are not interested in them, or because we find them unimportant, but for delimitation reasons. We will also look more closely at a couple of texts made by students, in order to discuss multimodal aspects of students’ text production.

The aim of this book is to provide the reader with an analytical framework for multimodal texts, and to suggest ways of working with multimodal texts in the classroom practice. In Sect. 4.5, Model for working with multimodal texts in education, we present a model for working “hands-on” in classroom practices. Based on a number of examples from real texts, we guide the reader through the model, suggesting ways of approaching texts to be better able to note how the texts are constructed, and what might need to be specifically focused on in the classroom. In the second part of the book, the model is implemented on a number of texts from different subject areas and intended age groups as well as from different countries. In relation to these text analyses we also discuss classroom implications.

The selection of texts in the second part of the book has been made with the intent to use the model for a variety of school subjects, and at the same time the texts have been taken from different countries. Apart from Sweden, which is where we live and work, text examples have been taken from other countries, such as Portugal, Singapore, and Chile. The text examples are taken from different subject areas and intended age groups, even though most of the texts are produced for students in upper elementary (grade 4—6) and lower secondary school. Factual texts geared to younger students are usually quite similar to those produced for grade 4—6 students, even though the amount of written verbal text is smaller, at the same time as the illustrations can be less complicated. Therefore, the examples chosen can also serve well for teachers working with students in lower grades. Correspondingly, texts for secondary school students can be seen as parallel to texts used in upper secondary school, even though texts for the later grades will be more demanding.

The majority of the texts are printed textbooks that are relatively widely used in the respective countries. For example, the Singaporean textbooks are obligatory in Singapore, and the Swedish textbooks are books that are relatively widely spread

1 Introduction 5 in Sweden, where each school decides what textbooks to use. The choice to focus on printed media is connected to the fact that printed books are still important in many schools. Also, many of the digitally produced textbooks today are still mainly based on printed versions of the texts, though in the near future we will probably see changes in this regard.

It is important to stress that the kind of close reading we perform in relation to our analyses is not done to draw attention to limitations or negative sides of the texts. Instead, our intention is to point out challenges that can arise in relation to any multimodal text, something which also justifies conscious ways of working with texts in all school subjects.

1.1 Multimodal Texts

As mentioned, an extended text concept is widely used today, and more and more researchers and teachers are embracing such a text concept, understanding that all texts are multimodal, that is, they are composed of a variety of sign systems, or semiotic resources, such as words, diagrams, graphs, photographs, or various kinds of symbols (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, also see Berge 2001, for a discussion on the text concept). It is also common to use various kinds of graphically marked text objects, such as headings or ingresses. Web pages, magazines and the daily press are filled with such resources. Particularly in educational texts, there is an abundance of graphically marked text objects for different purposes, such as text boxes and bullet lists.

Thus, a number of features make texts multimodal, not only the inclusion of images. The layout and the ways in which different parts of the text carry meaning, is also important to understand. Potentially, any part of a text can carry meaning in specific ways. Sometimes the information across different text elements is contradictory, sometimes the elements complement each other. At times verbal text (i.e. the written words) is the most important semiotic mode, sometimes the image. Each page thus offers different challenges for text interpretation, not least for students who are expected to make meaning of complex content from the text.

It is quite common that students in lower grades are encouraged to express themselves in both images and words. A number of studies, however, have revealed that it is unusual for teachers to comment on what is expressed in these images. This is true of narrative texts as well as more descriptive, factual texts. Usually the teachers regard them as some kind of ornament, focusing on aesthetic aspects of the image at a quite basic level, such as commenting on the image as, for instance, “nice”, even when the images indeed carry specific and important meanings (e.g. Peled-Elhanan 2015). The use of such general comments might be explained by the fact that many teachers experience a lack of tools for giving constructive feedback in regard to other aspects of the images, and for multimodal aspects of texts. We hope that this book

6 1 Introduction will provide such tools. Since our discussions and analyses are based on the relations between text design (e.g. Kress 2010) and content, aesthetic aspects will be disregarded in the following.

1.2 A Historic Perspective on Multimodality

During different historical eras, people have used various resources in their communication. In ancient Greece and Rome, speech was the predominant resource for communication. Rhetoric, which was the analytical and educational instrument of that time, highlighted that the speaker needed to make the right choices when addressing the listener, and to shape their speeches to suit the specific purpose. Also, according to rhetoric, the speaker could utilize a number of other resources than speech, such as more or less formalized gestures to underline certain aspects of the speech, variations in tempo and intonation, or placement in the room.

When people started to use written language in different contexts, the function was to keep account of money, to make new laws, to describe historical events, or to celebrate a certain person, for example a Roman emperor who had won a battle, or a Nordic viking who had traveled far away and gained a fortune. During the Middle Ages, a system for large-scale copying was developed to copy handwritten biblical texts. Here, verbal text was combined with different forms of illustrations. In addition, the interior of the medieval church is an example of a multimodal text, where biblical stories were illustrated on the ceiling, on the pulpit, or as carved images on the baptismal font.

The development of the letter press led to the possibility of mass distribution of texts. When a market for books and papers arose, information could be stored and spread to a great many more people than had previously been possible. This situation also challenged different kinds of power relations in society. The printed word also repositioned the collective memory, and when public schools were introduced, the printed word had a special status concerning learning. To be knowledgeable was more or less equivalent to being able to memorize printed words.

Well into the twentieth century, school textbooks in Western society were based on writing, and they were quite often expressed in a narrative style. These written texts were sometimes illustrated with fact-based images or reproductions of paintings. From the middle of the last century, however, we have seen a change in the relation between writing and image, and image has become more salient and important in pedagogic texts (e.g. Bezemer and Kress 2008).

Thanks to the breakthrough of digital media at the start of the new millennium, various kinds of educational games and applications for digital learning have come into play in education, at the same time as mobile phones and tablets can be used in more advanced ways (Arnseth et al. 2018; Devlin 2011; Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2011; Lindstrand et al. 2016; Selander 2008; Squire 2011; Steinkuehler et al. 2012).

To sum up, writing and image have been used in different ways through history, and different communicative resources have played different roles in different kinds

1.2 A Historic Perspective on Multimodality 7 of texts. Today, a plethora of media are used in text production, and texts generally contain a variety of semiotic resources. Hence, it is important to pay attention to what kind of information is given through speech, writing, or image—or to put in another way: in what medium and through what semiotic resources is content expressed? Not least from an educational perspective, it is crucial to be able to discern how information is expressed and to realize how students are given opportunities to use different media and semiotic resources, in order to learn and to show their knowledge (Insulander et al. 2017). As a consequence, the forms for assessing and testing knowledge in educational contexts need to be developed in ways that allow for more resources than the written or spoken word.

Arnseth, H.C., Hanghgj, T. Henriksen, T.D., Misfeldt, M., Ramberg, R., and Selander, S. (Eds) (2018). Games and education. Designs in and for learning. Leiden/Boston: Brill Sense.

Berge, K.-L. (2001). From utterance to text, again: theoretical reflections on the notion of ”text” based on empirical studies of writing in different contexts. In P. Coppock (Ed.) The Semiotics of Writing. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Technology of Writing (pp. 157-182). Turnhout: Brepols.

Bezemer, J. & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts. A social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication 25(2), 166-195.

Devlin, K. (2011). Mathematics Education for a New Era. Video Games as a Medium for Learning. CRC Press.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., MeDaviesyer, B., & Sørensen, B. H. (2011). Serious Games in Education. A Global Perspective. Aarhus University Press.

Insulander, E., Lindstrand, F., & Selander, S. (2017). The design of knowledge representations in different multimodal texts about the Middle Ages. Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, 9(2), 1-14.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. Routledge.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge.

Lindstrand, F., Insulander, E., & Selander, S. (2016). Mike the Knight in the neo-liberal era: A multimodal approach to children’s multi-media entertainment. Journal of Language and Politics, 15(3), 337-351.

Peled-Elhanan, N. (2015), Children’s writing as design: An examination of children’s multimodal texts. In A. Archer and E. Breuer (Eds), Multimodality in Writing. The State of Art in Theory, Methodology and Pedagogy (pp. 252-277). Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Selander, S. (2008). Designs for learning and ludic engagement. Digital Creativity, 19(3), 199-208.

Squire, K. (2011). Video Games and Learning. Teaching Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. Teacher’s College Press.

Steinkuehler, C., Squire, K., & Barab, S. (Eds). (2012). Games, Learning, and Society. Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age. Cambridge University Press.

8 1 Introduction

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Chapter 2 A) Multimodal Texts and Literacy get in a Digitized World

When working with multimodal texts in education the starting point must be the ways in which contemporary texts are constructed: they are multimodal and composed of various textual elements, something which can be challenging for the learner who is not yet familiar with a specific content area or text type. If teachers guide their students into an understanding of the ways in which texts are designed and how the information structure can be understood, they can harness their students’ content learning. Other central aspects for teachers working with texts in education include developing a greater understanding of student-created multimodal texts, and developing assessment criteria that do justice to such texts.

The digitized media landscape affects society in several ways. In school contexts, there are numerous examples of how contemporary text and media worlds affect the ways in which educational settings are designed. One such example is the flipped classrooms where teachers provide their students with video-recorded outlines or lectures, or provide other learning resources digitally for the students to prepare before actually meeting in the classroom. During lessons in the physical classroom, time and effort can then be devoted to discussions, experiments or other types of activities. The access to digital resources affects the ways in which both teachers and students use their time, individually or in groups. However, regardless of the use of paper-based (textbooks and other types of texts) or digital media, students might need guidance in how to approach the texts.

2.1 Texts in and Outside of Schools

In contrast to the situation that prevailed when the authors of this book went to school, when there were still school subjects in which texts were not used at all, or to a very little extent, or where the subject content was mainly based on practical training, or trying out different techniques (such as physical education or art), theoretical discussions have become an integrated aspect of most subjects (to our knowledge, this is the

© The Author(s) 2021 9 K. Danielsson and S. Selander, Multimodal Texts in Disciplinary Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63960-0_2

10 2 Multimodal Texts and Literacy in a Digitized World situation not only in the Scandinavian countries, where we have our main experience). However, “theory” does not necessarily have to be equivalent to “written texts”, but even so, written texts have become increasingly important in many different subjects, as is evident in the curricula in many countries. This change is also evident outside of school contexts; in increasingly more workplaces employees are expected to use writing in quite complex ways, even in contexts that we might perceive as mainly manual (e.g. Karlsson 2009; Nikolaidou 2014). Our spare time, too, is filled with various text activities, from shopping lists and the planning of leisure activities to text messaging, Facebooking or Twittering (e.g. Barton and Hamilton 1998; Davies 2012). Thus, we live today in a text-based society with partly new types of text cultures.

To encounter a new disciplinary content in school always involves new ways of communicating. A lot has been written about the ways in which texts are structured linguistically in different content areas (e.g. Schleppegrell 2004; Martin and Rose 2008). Alongside this growing awareness, researchers have stressed the importance of working with language in conjunction with content in all school subjects. Such a way of dealing with disciplinary language (see Shanahan and Shanahan 2012, for a discussion on “subject literacy” vs. “disciplinary literacy”) has been a central aspect in genre-based pedagogies, where one concern has been to find ways to support students in ways that promote their possibilities to become part of the discourse of different subject areas and the ways in which ideas are communicated within them (Christie and Derewianka 2008; Fang and Schleppegrell 2004). Regarding the use of other meaning-making resources than verbal language (written or spoken), however, there are obvious differences between disciplines too. Not only terminology or the ways in which the verbal text is structured differ between, for instance, a book spread in history and one in chemistry. Visual resources such as images, diagrams, and tables are just as important concerning textual choices. Therefore, learning a new subject and becoming part of the discourse in that subject involves dealing with many different meaning-making resources. Furthermore, it is essential to be conscious about when and how one meaning-making resource is the most efficient and appropriate to use (cf. affordance, below).