Teachers’ Perceptions about Teaching Multimodal Composition: The Case Study of Korean English Teachers at Secondary Schools

Twenty-first-century literacy is not confined to communication based on reading and writing only traditional printed texts. New kinds of literacies extend to multimedia projects and multimodal texts, which include visual, audio, and technological elements to create meanings. The purpose of this study is to explore how Korean secondary English teachers understand the 21st literacies and multimodal composition in this era of new types of communication. Framing the study are questions pertaining to what these teachers think about teaching multimodal composition in their writing classrooms. The schools of South Korea, including those in this study, prioritize high-stakes standardized tests, and teachers as well as students and parents gauge success by these test scores. As a result, teachers primarily rely on direct instruction via lectures to provide skills and knowledge to ensure that students will succeed in the high-stakes tests. So while teaching and assessment practices in the classroom still adhere to traditional approaches, ongoing technology outside school has transformed the ways in which young people – the students – generate, communicate, and negotiate meanings via diverse texts. If the primary goal of education is to teach students lifelong skills needed in society, it is the responsibility of schools and teachers to recognize social changes and promote individual learning needs.