Multimodal composition and assessment: a sociocultural perspective

Abstract

In this article, we examine how assessment is enacted and negotiated in a school project that involves multimodal composition. The case is a project on advertisement in which lower secondary students collaboratively composed multimodal commercials about various products and topics. The theoretical framework is based on sociocultural perspectives on learning and assessment, and video data of classroom interaction are subjected to detailed analysis. The findings document the consequences of decoupling production and assessment practices. The analysis show that written texts and multimodal texts have different statuses in the project because of how they are assessed and that this has consequences for students’ participation as learners. In addition, the analysis shows how students position themselves differently towards resources that are intended to help them in summative assessment situations. We discuss issues that teachers may reflect upon when planning and executing multimodal composition in schools.

Keywords:

• Formative assessment
• summative assessment
• multimodal composition
• interaction analysis
• sociocultural theory

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the teachers and students who have been part of this project, and given us the opportunity to learn about assessment practices in school. Your hospitality and openness have been valuable to an international research community, and to the field of teacher education. This work is funded by the Norwegian National Research Council, program FINNUT.