A multimodal social semiotic approach to the community of inquiry framework: semiotic resources, presences, and professional development for online teacher education in TESOL

Online instructors have been underserved by existing research which seldom examines choices in the design, development and implementation of an online learning environment (OLE). Online TESOL instructors, in particular, whose needs include the implicit and explicit modelling of methods via the OLE, require a means for examining their OLE, for determining the effectiveness of non-linguistic features that can be used in the OLE, and for critically reflecting on their practice. These challenges have been thrown into stark relief against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 – 2021 where considerable numbers of TESOL subjects (and subjects across all higher education disciplines) were moved to delivery of their educational experiences online. 

One influential approach to examining online teaching and learning (OTL) is the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison et al., 2001) and the concomitant CoI survey instrument (Arbaugh et al., 2008). These provide a means for quantifying student perceptions of three so-called presences (teaching, social and cognitive) that contribute to the development of critical inquiry skills among students in an OLE. Since its conception, researchers, instructors, and educational designers have used this framework and its survey instrument to concentrate on spoken and written language as the main measure of presence in an online course. However, OTL affords instructors the use of multiple modes of meaning-making in addition to written and spoken language. The impact of non-linguistic semiotic resources on CoI presences are not well understood.

This thesis reports the findings of a three-year, three-stage mixed-methods study that:

1. Identifies how instructors exploit non-linguistic semiotic resources in training English language teachers online.

2. Creates a professional development intervention that models the use of non-linguistic semiotic resources to establish a CoI online.

3. Undertakes a survey of practice to measure the relative success of the intervention.

The study follows seven online TESOL instructors at three institutions in two different countries. Their students were surveyed using a modified CoI survey instrument, and instructors’ OLEs were analysed through the lens of multimodality. In response, a professional development intervention was designed and delivered to instructors, before a second survey and content analysis measured the effectiveness of the intervention.

The results of the study show that a shift in CoI presences, measured by mean responses to survey items, occurred after the delivery of the professional development intervention. However, the non-linguistic semiotic resources that instructors talk about as contributing to CoI presences in their OLE are not necessarily the same ones that students perceive as contributing to the CoI presences. Furthermore, there is potential for the aggregated results of the CoI survey to inform reflective practice undertaken by instructors. Overall, the choices instructors make regarding semiotic resource use reflect their beliefs and values in terms of TESOL pedagogy, the importance of modelling as a trainer, and the role of language teachers and, indeed, of English in a global context.