The instructional decisions and considerations teachers utilized with the integration of multimodal texts during a global pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic challenged the educational system in unprecedented ways. Teachers were tasked to shift modes of instruction and incorporate new multimodal curriculum with very little preparation time. Obstacles of incorporating technology into teaching were amplified by the lack of teacher preparation. Prior to the pandemic, research and theory clearly illustrated how multimodal texts support students as they employ the affordances to make meaning (Jewitt, 2008; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Although many teachers were not adequately prepared, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity or case where teachers were required to use multimodal texts and multimodal digital texts despite the existing hurdles. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the planning and teaching considerations teachers utilized as they integrated multimodal texts into their instruction during the pandemic. Three individual case studies of teachers resulted in a cross-case analysis. Through surveys, interviews, and observations, the data provided a narrative perspective of their instructional decisions, use of multimodal texts, and their affordances in classroom instruction. Four themes emerged such as professional development, multimodal knowledge, multimodal texts, and instructional considerations. When teachers receive the explicit professional development over the best practices of multimodal texts and their affordances, then their multimodal knowledge grows which will then change how the teachers make their instructional decisions and shift their instructional approaches.