Exploring Inquiry-Based Learning with Digital Portfolios: Preparing Teacher Candidates to Practice Multiliteracies

Literacy instruction in today’s school settings should extend beyond print-based reading and writing by teaching students to read, write, synthesize, evaluate, and communicate in multimodal ways. Therefore, teachers need deep knowledge of technology, pedagogy, and content along with an understanding of the multimodal nature of digital texts and environments. Guided by theoretical frameworks of Multiliteracies and TPACK, this research explored how a graduate-level literacy course prepared teacher candidates to practice multiliteracies through engaging them with inquiry-based learning by making digital portfolios. The purpose of the study was to explore how educational scholars can respond to and re-envision teaching and learning for the technology-saturated educational landscape of the 21st century through integration of multimodal texts and practices.