Preparing World Language Teachers for Multimodal Pedagogy in the Post-Pandemic Era

Although multiliteracies have become increasingly critical skills for language learners, research on preparing pre-service language educators for multimodal pedagogy is still very limited and has primarily focused on English language teachers (Li & Jiang, 2024). Focusing on a population largely underrepresented in the literature that includes pre/in-service teachers of the most widely taught world languages (e.g., Spanish, French, German, Mandarin Chinese), this study investigated the effects of integrating a pedagogical innovation entailing three empirically grounded multimodal projects into a language teacher education course, including collaborative reading, multimodal instructional material design, and multimodal composing. Drawing upon multiple data sources (i.e., reflection, surveys, and interviews) from eleven pre-service/in-service world language teachers, the study found that these multimodal projects enriched pre-service/in-service teachers’ learning experience, expanded their repertoire of digital tools and task ideas, and effectively prepared them to accommodate diverse needs in different teaching modalities. Although pre-service/in-service teachers reported a technological choice overload in devising multimodal instructional materials, they also demonstrated openness to multimodal pedagogy in responding to the evolving landscape of language education. Pedagogical and research implications were discussed in terms of refining the ways of integrating multimodal pedagogy into language teacher education.