From print to digital texts: developing teacher knowledge in using augmented reality for multimodal literacies

The digital age has broadened the repertoire of pedagogical approaches and resources for engaging primary school students in multimodal literacies. With the rapid advancement of digital technologies, our everyday practices are mediated by more complex and multimodal texts, such as those created by augmented reality (AR). Such shifts in social practices necessitate changes
in how literacy is understood and taught at schools to prepare our students to navigate digitally rich environments.
In this chapter, we draw on our empirical quantitative and qualitative data to examine the teacher knowledge necessary to harness AR to extend students’ multimodal literacy practices in Australian contexts. Particularly, we use illustrative examples to present the constituents of teacher knowledge put into action when AR was effectively used to integrate language, literacy
and literature in teaching practices. These examples stemmed from our collaborative research with six teachers and their students from Foundation to Year 4 in Sydney. The chapter highlights three domains of teacher knowledge necessary for facilitating primary school students’ meaning-making practices using AR.
Shifting teachers’ practices to develop innovative literacy pedagogies in new learning environments requires knowledge not only of traditional literacy but also of changing literacies that consider the affordances of new media. In addition to the potential of using AR to enhance multimodal literacies at schools, we discuss the need for differentiated forms of teacher professional development to advance teacher leadership in innovative literacy teaching.