Place-based digital composing practices in multimodal pedagogy: a designed-based approach to enhancing bilingual educators’ professional development

Whilst existing studies on multimodal pedagogy frequently focus on teaching English, bilingual educators’ professional knowledge and practice in integrating multimodal pedagogy into teaching English or other foreign languages as L2 remain underexplored. This gap is particularly pronounced in research on digital multimodal composing (DMC). Creating multimodal compositions is widely recognized as an approach to enhancing students' metasemiotic awareness. Guided by a social semiotic perspective on language teaching and learning and the New London Group’s pedagogy of multiliteracies, this study examines how a team of six Taiwanese bilingual educators engaged in professional development on using ArcGIS StoryMaps to teach foreign languages to 36 university students. In this study, we adopted a design-based approach to develop a professional development program to equip participating bilingual educators with ArcGIS StoryMaps to teach foreign languages. Drawing on qualitative data such as students’ digital compositions, teacher and student reflections, and interviews, we discuss the bilingual educators’ professional development when shifting their use of ArcGIS StoryMaps from a direct replacement of PowerPoint to a more advanced use that facilitates transformed practice. We also discuss the complexities of implementing the pedagogy of multiliteracies in the bilingual context of teaching foreign languages in higher education.