Att spåra tecken på lärande : Mediereception som pedagogisk form och multimodalt meningsskapande över tid

The present study is about media reception as an educational form, supporting meaning-making over time. The thesis stems from the desire to understand the complexity in a meaning-making process that takes its point of departure in media productions. The aim is to investigate the possibilities and limitations for meaning-making over time, afforded by the meeting of a group of student teachers and their texts, in a teacher education context. The following questions are posed: How is the meeting between participants and the text designed in the form of a reception? How do participants act on the resources that are offered during the receptions? Which sign systems and semiotic resources are used, and how are they used? How does meaning-making evolve over time? The theoretical point of departure is a design theory perspective, called designs for learning, proposing a performative aspect of learning. Design theory contributes by placing focus on framed sign-creating meaning-making activities, and by stressing participants’ creation and production. The design theory perspective is here enriched by a socio-cultural perspective, Bakhtin’s focus on dialogue, and Goffman’s research on interaction. With the ambition of studying meaning-making over time, a group of student teachers were followed over the two occasions for reception. Video observation was chosen as a method to study participants’ interaction at the receptions. The receptions were filmed and subsequently analysed multimodally. The video recordings resulted in a video text, which was transformed through the written text of the transcription, a text which was subsequently reshaped into a new text that is here presented in the thesis. By studying meaning-making over time, various forms of learning may be traced. Results suggest that the reception as an educational form has an impact on the meaning that is shaped in this setting. Seeing yourself and your results with the eyes of others and having the opportunity to meet the perspectives of different voices, are all elements that contribute to meaning-making. Creating a work that meets an audience, being able to find support in a design for the meeting, and during the meeting to form a new text, jointly prove to be powerful aspects of meaning-making. The thesis sheds light on an insufficiently explored area: media production and media reception in the context of teacher education. Working with media forms such as sound and moving images means that participants can avail themselves of a variety of types of texts, with different affordances, and use them as resources in their meaning-making. The study further indicates that participants exploit the various media forms and polyphony to develop knowledge about their subject matter. In other words, working with media in learning processes is something that enriches meaning-making. The study points to the need for increased openness in the perception of signs of learning, and more attentive listening to such signs. The importance of receptions for meaning-making has been clarified, where receptions have been understood as a learning process in their own right. The role that different media forms play in enriching meaning-making has been brought to the fore. Finally, a reformulated use is proposed of the theoretical model of a formal learning process