One of the most important challenges for education today is to understand the future of learning given the digitised, communicative changes that we are facing, as well as the speed of these changes. In this chapter, designs for learning as a theoretic perspective will be presented, focussing on aspects like learning sequences and conditions of learning in non-formal, semi-formal, and formal contexts, ranging from the question of knowledge and cultures of recognition to the questions of meaning-making and identity construction. The interest is oriented towards how we can understand teaching and learning as designed activities where the medium itself is seen as an active part in the communicative flow, not as a neutral channel. At the end, some design questions will be emphasised that seem important for the reconfiguration of teaching and the development of future orientations and competences.

Against the background of a longstanding collaboration between Gunther Kress’s research group in London and my own research group in Stockholm, I reflect, in this paper, on the role of Kress’s ideas in our joint development of a social semiotic, multimodal, and design-oriented approach to learning, an approach which sees learning as performative, and as an activity in which learners create their own learning paths. I first discuss how, for Kress, this path has three elements, the affordances of the learning resources available to the learner, the learner’s ‘interest’ which turns aspects of these resources into ‘prompts’ for learning, and the learner’s active interpretation and transformation of these aspects, the results of which can then be recognized and valued as ‘signs of learning’. However, recognizing learning also needs to take account of the dimension of time, so as to make it possible to assess whether learners have gained knowledges and skills they did not have at an earlier stage. I then discuss the role of context in Kress’s thinking about learning. For Kress, context is another vital aspect of a social semiotic theory of learning. On the one hand, Kress focuses here on the specific, unique contexts in which individual learners create their own learning paths. On the other hand, he recognizes that signs will always carry social and political relations. Reflecting on the dynamic relation between individual learners and the way institutions regulate ways of learning, I discuss both the continued role of institutional learning contexts and their hidden curricula, and the way emerging technologies facilitate individual learning paths and interactive, participatory forms of learning.

This article considers ways in which toys have featured in children’s play throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst often dismissed as trivial novelties, toys can be seen as a significant aspect of material culture, both reflecting and constructing ideas of childhood. A multimodal social semiotic perspective is used to examine a selection of toys produced between 2020 and 2022 that respond to the pandemic in various ways. The toys feature representations of the virus, of accessories for enacting pandemic practices such as mask-wearing and vaccination, and of pandemic ‘heroes’. In addition to these commercially produced toys, examples of toy play collected by the Play Observatory project from 2020 to 2022 are also analysed. These real-world instances demonstrate toys and everyday objects being used to playfully make sense of, and communicate understandings of, the COVID-19 pandemic. In combination, the examples reveal discourses embedded in the multimodal design of ‘pandemic playthings’ and ways in which toy play demonstrated children’s agentive meaning-making, including awareness and understandings of the pandemic they may not have articulated verbally. In this way, toys and toy play are seen as deeply meaningful, revealing stories about children and childhood in the time of COVID-19.

Drawing on extensive research over more than two decades, this book focuses on toys and games as resources for play. It analyses their functionalities as well as their symbolic meaning potentials, exemplifying how they are used in different contexts, such as home and preschool, and how these uses are regulated by parental, pedagogic and marketing discourses. Building on the work of semioticians such as Barthes, Baudrillard and Krampen, as well as on the social semiotics of Halliday, Hodge, Kress, and others, the book introduces a framework for the multimodal semiotic analysis of physical objects, and the ways in which they are digitally translated into words, images and sounds. It also introduces a multimodal framework with a focus on designs for and in learning. It then applies these frameworks to a range of toys and games for young children including teddy bears, dolls, construction toys, war toys and digital games. Throughout it shows how the toy and games industry contributes to changing the nature of childhood and the way children learn about the world. Accessibly written, the book will not only be relevant to students and scholars of multimodality and semiotics, but also to early childhood educators and parents of young children.

Att bli lärare är en grundläggande och heltäckande bok som blivande lärare kan använda genom hela utbildningen. Den ger en aktuell bild av läraryrkets möjligheter och utmaningar men blickar också framåt.

Boken består av fem olika delar som var och en är kopplade till aktuell forskning:

DEL 1 På väg mot lärarrollen (ledarskap, bedömning och inkludering)DEL 2 Lärandeperspektivet (hur kan man organisera meningsfullt lärande?)DEL 3 Professionen (uppdrag, framväxt och kunskapsgrund)DEL 4 På väg mot framtiden (hur organiserar vi en skola för framtiden?)DEL 5 Tre internationella utblickar (Finland, Chile och Singapore)Sammantaget ger texterna hela den bredd av kunskaper som en lärare behöver tillägna sig under utbildningen. Boken är ett stöd i den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan (UVK) men fungerar också som en första introduktion till de ämnesdidaktiska frågorna. Mot bakgrund av covid-19-pandemin och en ny läroplan (Lgr22) finns i den tredje upplagan tillägg bland annat gällande datalitteracitet, normkritisk pedagogik, kunskapsområdet sexualitet, samtycke och relationer samt riktlinjer för betygssättning.

Boken kan användas som en ingång för att få översikt över ett område och som en uppslagsbok för olika centrala frågor som kan dyka upp under utbildningens gång. Till boken hör också digitala case som ger möjlighet att öva förmågan att samtala med en elev, en lärarkollega eller en förälder om olika dilemman som blivande lärare kan komma att möta i sin framtida yrkesutövning.

This article presents an example of how teacher education could be supported by way of a digital simulation program that provides practical competence in dealing with challenging teaching situations. Virtual simulations are still relatively uncommon in teacher education. A major benefit is that they allow for individualised feedback, which is generally considered an important component of learning. The aim of the study was to deepen understanding of how student teachers experience, and think about, the use of Virtual Educational Simulation (VES). The simulation in question was developed for teacher education during 2018–2019. For the empirical study, six Masterʼs-level student teachers were interviewed after running a simulated case where they encounter two virtual pupils having challenges with subject literacy. We used inductive qualitative content analysis in addressing the two research questions: How did the students experience specific topics of the VES design and the procedure, namely navigation, content, introductory elements, interaction, experience of the VES case as a real-life situation, assessment, feedback and student collaboration? What themes did the students topicalise in relation to their learning? The results indicate a positive attitude to VES in teacher training, although the students noted some limitations within the design of the program. Many of their comments about the design relate to their own development and learning as student teachers. Three themes emerged in their topicalisation of learning: the importance of relating to pupilsʼ experiences and earlier knowledge, the need to pay attention to the individual student, and the key role of interaction with the teacher. Our findings confirm the importance of reflection and interaction in simulation programs with virtual cases.