GoPro Cameras for Capturing Early Multimodal Composing Processes: An Exploration of Data Creation on Children’s Emergent Composing Processes in Early Educational School Settings

This article examines the methodological potential of using GoPro point-of-view (POV) cameras to capture early composing processes, addressing a persistent gap in how young children’s multimodal meaning-making can be systematically documented in classroom research. Existing studies have typically relied on written artefacts or fixed-position observations, approaches that struggle to register the fragmented, fleeting and embodied nature of young children’s composing activities. In contrast, GoPro recordings provide fine-grained access to micro-actions, shifts in attention and material engagements that constitute these processes, revealing details that conventional methods rarely make visible. Drawing on a Multimodal Interaction Analysis (MIA) framework (Norris, 2004; Rowe, 2019), the article analyses a single composing episode to demonstrate how first-person data can be identified, segmented, and interpreted. The vignettes illustrate how composing unfolds for one child and show how the combined use of POV technology and MIA advances current methodological practice. The findings indicate that this approach generates rich empirical material that captures emergent, embodied and multimodal aspects of composing that often remain unnoticed in classroom settings where alphabetic literacy is foregrounded. The article argues that integrating POV recordings with MIA offers a powerful means of documenting the complexity of early composing. By making previously overlooked meaning-making practices accessible for analysis, the study highlights the value of this methodological approach and its potential to inform future research and pedagogical development.