Introduction

This study investigates how visualisation strategies can bridge second language learning and use in ways that promote concept formation by young learners of English in a primary school in China. Given that teaching practices are usually driven by the exam-oriented education system (Gierczyk & Diao, 2021), two groups of 8 to 10 year olds experimented with visual-based strategies through a series of online English lessons to explore their potential for motivating learners and facilitating mentoring in digital contexts (Sharples, 2016).

In the virtual English classroom in this research, designing, teaching, and analysing visual-related thematic content with students take place through scaffolded, collaborative dialogic episodes (Norris & Bullock, 2017) referred to as Learning Conversations (Swain & Watanabe, 2013; Alexander, 2017). These involve monitoring how students create drawings to demonstrate their understanding of abstract concepts and use them to language their thinking to peers and teacher-researcher. Whilst the use of drawings to support learning is not new (Ainsworth et al., 2011), the integration of visualising concepts and languaging learning to express meaning in the bilingual virtual classroom calls for experimenting with a pluriliteracies approach embedded in teacher-learner partnerships (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014). The need to explore appropriate, alternative approaches to developing student conceptual knowledge and appropriate language use in bilingual classrooms emerged. Three specific strategies will now be explored for mentoring learning and fostering learner agency.

Literature Review

Languaging

In line with the Douglas Fir Group’s (2016) emphasis on social contexts for second language acquisition, this study positions language learning as social practice in the context of schooling and communication between peers and teachers. It explores how students verbalise their understanding of the content in their own words to others or themselves which makes transparent the depth of meaning-making and appropriacy of language use. Swain (2006) uses the term languaging to define ‘the process of meaning-making and shaping knowledge and experience through language’ (p. 97). However, using language as a means to externalise cognitive processes through verbal expression requires appropriate use of the second or additional language forms and language functions. These processes involve scaffolding by teachers to encourage learning through social interaction with knowledgeable others (Vygotsky, 1978).

Visualisation

This study explores the potential of learner-led learning episodes in second language classrooms where teachers act as mentors to support learning through student demonstration of understanding. Therefore, developing learner-teacher partnerships focuses on learner-directed practices, for example, pupils sketching their understanding of scientific phenomena, e.g. evaporation and photosynthesis (Ainsworth et al., 2011). Complemented by languaging, learners are encouraged to explore alternative strategies to support independent problem-solving. Drawing on multimodality theory that incorporates multiple modes or tools for communication including linguistic and non-linguistic resources, e.g. gestures, postures, facial expressions, and visual resources (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), the study explores ways in which visuals may provide additional scaffolding for languaging learning. Students are encouraged to visualise their conceptual understanding when they encounter linguistic barriers including the use of more than one language. The study, therefore, posits that the practice of combining visualisation with languaging may encourage students to further direct their own learning. In addition, the visuals provide evidence or artefacts for teachers to monitor students’ progression and offer appropriate scaffolding and explicit feedback that students need to deepen their learning. Combining these two uses of visuals constitutes the formation of the proposed visual strategy—visual languaging.

Learning Conversations

To mediate the process of visual languaging, the use of Learning Conversations acts as a scaffolding tool to support deeper conceptual understanding through appropriate second or foreign language learning and language use. Such talk can be collaborative, explanatory, or cumulative in order to help students to produce, refine and correct their language use with increasing nuances and appropriacy (Swain & Lapkin, 2011; Alexander, 2017). According to Norris and Bullock (2017), Learning Conversations are explorative, empathic, collaborative discussions underpinned by mutual respect. Such conversations in this study prioritise individual student learning needs using more than one language and non-linguistic modes of communication (García & Li, 2014). As learners are encouraged to express their thinking freely during the Learning Conversations, teachers can gain a more holistic interpretation of student learning needs which guides adaptive changes to task design and teaching strategies.

This research focuses on how Learning Conversations might encourage students not only to elaborate their learning using specific language functions and linguistic structures but also how ongoing feedback for constructing meaning related to cognitive demands of learning tasks could be enacted (Dalton-Puffer et al., 2014). This was built on the premise that when students are asked to describe and explain their understanding, such as indicating cause and effect or defining specific terminology, this offers teachers evidence of their conceptual and linguistic understanding. Evidence suggests that teacher formative feedback on specific linguistic errors can clarify conceptual uncertainties and revise scaffolding approaches to promote learning (Black & Wiliam, 2009).

Juwah et al. (2004) also suggest that Learning Conversations focusing on relevant task-related language functions may trigger learner awareness of critical and reflective analysis of their own learning and nurture their capacity to become self-regulated learners. This resonates with the work by Dalton-Puffer (2016), who emphasises the need to make transparent the appropriate use of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) that bridge thinking and language. She refers to CDFs as ‘verbal routines that have arisen in answer to recurring demands while dealing with curricular content, knowledge and abstract thought’ (ibid., p. 29) through broadly seven communicative discourse functions—reporting, describing, classifying, explaining, defining, exploring, and evaluating. Morton (2020) also notes the potential of CDFs in achieving a deeper integration of content, language, and literacy (i.e. subject literacy). This research builds on their work to explore further the linkage of thinking, language, and visuals when students language their learning whilst being scaffolded via Learning Conversations.

Pluriliteracies

In response to globalisation and rapid digital, technological advancement in the last two decades, the ‘literacies turn’ (ACARA, 2014) charts developments beyond more traditional understanding of learning to read and write (Wolf & Gottwald, 2016) to embrace the notion of pluriliteracies across languages (García et al., 2007). More recent thinking interprets pluriliteracies as discipline-specific ways in which communication is shaped through specific linguistic genres relating to the academic discourse of disciplines. Coyle and Meyer’s (2021) pluriliteracies approach emphasises the appropriate use of cognitive language functions for languaging subject-specific content (disciplinary literacies) across languages (plurilingual) and modes (plurimodal).

According to Meyer et al. (2015), as learners experience the integrated process of using and creating plurimodal resources needed to demonstrate and communicate knowledge, they may also develop transferable competencies and life skills. This resonates with the notion of deeper learning—‘the process through which an individual becomes capable of taking what was learned in one situation and applying it to a new situation’ (National Research Council, 2012: SUM-4). In a similar vein, Coyle et al. (2018) specify deeper learning as ‘the successful internalisation of conceptual content knowledge and the automatisation of subject-specific procedures, skills, and strategies’ (p. 2). In other words, learners need to master knowledge, skills, and learning strategies across languages before independently transferring them to other problem-solving contexts.

This aligns with their pedagogic model (Fig. 1)—Pluriliteracies Teaching for Deeper Learning (PTDL) which emphasises not only learning processes in bilingual classrooms but ways of being in the classroom—teacher mentoring (e.g. through Learning Conversations) to support the development of learner knowledge, skills, resilience, and agency (Coyle & Meyer, 2017). The four dimensions in Fig. 1 include supporting knowledge construction and ways of languaging understanding, as well as learner-teacher relationships and ways in which mentoring learning can contribute to learners’ growth mindset that directs and sustains their own learning.

Fig. 1
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PTDL (Coyle & Meyer, 2017)

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The alignment of this research with the PTDL model investigates the role of visual languaging according to two hypotheses:

  1. 1.

    Visual languaging acts as a heuristic tool for learners to articulate the thematic content using cognitive discourse functions and trigger deeper discussions about learning.

  2. 2.

    Visual languaging offers teachers and learners visual and dialogic evidence to reflect on their teaching and learning to support mentoring and provide flexibility that encourages visual thinking in creative ways and fosters learner agency.

Such alignment informed the emergence of the research questions that investigate visual languaging for conceptual and language learning, mentoring, and learner agency.

  • RQ1: In what ways might visualisation serve as an intermediary learning tool (visual languaging) that bridges conceptual knowledge construction and language learning in English language classrooms?

  • RQ2: How can students develop their appropriate use of specific cognitive discourse functions through visually scaffolded languaging?

  • RQ3: What are the necessary conditions for online learning experiences which encourage interactive development of visual languaging for pluriliteracies growth in a digital learning space?

Methodology

This qualitative case study views the virtual classroom as a socially constructed ecological space where knowledge is mutually built through interpersonal interactions (Merriam, 1998; Maxwell, 2012) afforded by the connectedness of the digital era (Siemens, 2005). Using convenience sampling, a school was selected where the researcher could also act as an online teacher during this study—referred to as ‘T/R’. The participants are sixteen younger learners aged between 8 and 10 years old, learning English as an additional language in their primary school online platform in China—DingTalk (an application-based computer programme that can also be used on mobile phones). Two groups of 8 students (‘G_S_’) followed the topic Habitats and Ecosystems. Some students are beginners, whilst others have been learning English for approximately 6 months. There is one English lesson a day.

Participation was voluntary involving five online recorded English hour-long lessons, two 30–40-min follow-up Learning Conversations, and one 30-min interview per student. The lessons were designed according to the pluriliteracies model with tasks for student content and language development and the teacher as a learning mentor (see Appendix Table 11). Images were embedded in the teaching materials and drawing tasks to support content comprehension. Students were encouraged to make drawings to initiate Learning Conversations in English with some Mandarin necessary for meaning-making or the flow of communication. These drawings provided data and visible tools for analysis guided by the visual participatory method that highlights ‘participants creating art which ultimately serves both as data and may also represent data’ (Leavy, 2020, p. 242). It must be noted that the quality of their drawings was not in question.

Three data sources were used: visual artefacts and languaging (drawing analysis, notations and articulation); Learning Conversations, and semi-structured interviews. The data were scrutinised using content analysis inspired by relevant research analysing children’s visuals such as drawings (e.g. Søndergaard & Reventlow, 2019; Merriman & Guerin, 2006). Particular attention was paid to how language(s) were used to deepen conceptual understanding and evidence of developments in student conceptual understanding and their appropriate plurilingual discourse. All data were transcribed and analysed according to refined themes after systematically re-reading, scrutinising, and interpreting the data to gain a thorough understanding of the main ideas embedded in the visual, written, and oral sources (Denscombe, 2014). Details of the research tools, data sets, and analysis are outlined in Table 1.

Table 1 Data collection and analysis
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Strict ethical procedures were followed (BERA, 2018). As guided by Tracy and Hinrichs’ (2017) criteria for the trustworthiness of research findings, T/R confirmed with students her interpretation of their visual languaging and thinking reflected in student utterances in the interview and Learning Conversations. Moreover, the objective source of data—video recordings were reviewed to ascertain T/R’s understanding of the data.

Findings and Discussion

Four themes emerged from the data analysis. To demonstrate how students moved toward pluriliteracies development, selected lesson tasks with extracts of Learning Conversations and interviews further analysed are presented with commentaries.

Concept Construction

Based on the Learning Conversations, students evolving conceptual understanding emerged describing the interrelationship of habitats and ecosystems, which led to discussions about protecting the environment. For example, in lesson 1 whole class Learning Conversation, students were led into the topic of habitats through describing familiar animals and the places they inhabit. This provided space to dialogically guide them in the process of wider thinking and discussing the content as in Tables 2 and 3 Learning Conversations.

Table 2 Lesson 1 task 1 Learning Conversation extract
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Table 3 Lesson 1 task 2 Learning Conversation extract
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The conversation in Table 3 revolved around different habitats by encouraging students to talk about places where their favourite animals live, thereby expanding to other habitats and encouraging them to think about the concept of habitats. The following conversation then emerged demonstrating how students with guidance language their conceptual understanding, which triggers further thinking and meaning-making.

Data extracts (Tables 2, 3 and 4) demonstrate how a deeper understanding of the content was triggered through tasks that gradually encouraged students to talk more about habitats using their prior knowledge, followed by visual languaging to develop descriptions to further enhance their understanding, that is, encouraging students to articulate their drawings using appropriate academic language offered and scaffolded in the lessons.

Table 4 Lesson 1 task 3 Learning Conversation extract
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Visual Languaging

Student conceptual understanding was also supported by visualising and articulating their drawings during whole class Learning Conversations. Table 5 shows the visual languaging task in lesson 1 aimed at enhancing students’ conceptual understanding by drawing the habitats of their favourite animals accompanied by thought-provoking questions. The creative visualisation process triggered teacher-learner conversations and reciprocally was scaffolded by this dialogic approach.

Table 5 Lesson 1 task 4 Learning Conversation extract
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Integrating drawing with written text (e.g. words and phrases for labelling or annotating the visual content) to demonstrate and communicate conceptual understanding aligns with multimodality theory (Kress, 2009). Moreover, the visual and written modes for languaging G1S1’s thinking were signified by her unique drawing styles with creative annotations. Similar visual and verbal integration was used by G1S5 to reveal his understanding of habitats as highlighted through the visual languaging of his first drawing (Fig. 4).

The oral and visual data (Table 5 and Figs. 2, 3, and 4) suggest that visual languaging creates opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding and trigger new thinking shared in Learning Conversations. This enabled T/R to monitor not only students’ learning progression but also for students themselves to reflect on and deepen their own learning. This is the embodiment of ‘visual languaging’. In this sense, students constructed conceptual understanding through scaffolding by using CDFs, especially describing and explaining to complement their drawings.

Fig. 2
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G1S1’s first drawing

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Fig. 3
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G1S1’s second drawing

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Fig. 4
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G1S5’s first drawing

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Language Learning

Students were supported in learning and using the target language (e.g. species, organisms, diverse, specific, inhibit) necessary for appropriating their academic discourse whilst languaging the content—habitats and ecosystems. The following conversation in Table 6 demonstrates students’ guided use of English language tools provided in lesson 2 to construct definitions of concepts with academic appropriacy.

Table 6 Lesson 2 task 3 Learning Conversation extract
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Having confirmed students’ conceptual understanding through visual languaging and Learning Conversations, lesson 2 introduced the academic language needed for descriptions. By guiding students with alternatives to colloquial language, cognitive discourse functions were worked on to rephrase and express their understanding more appropriately in English.

Learner Feedback and Reflection

Students were offered opportunities to have individual Learning Conversations with T/R after lesson 2 and lesson 4 to express their thinking and reflect on their English language learning. As exemplified in Table 7, Learning Conversations with individual students clarify their conceptual understanding and appropriate language use.

Table 7 Lesson 2 individual-based Learning Conversation with G1S1
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Through a similar dialogic approach, interviews, such as the one with G1S1 (Tables 8 and 9), were also used to collect student feedback on their learning experiences including suggestions for online teaching and learning with visuals.

Table 8 G1S1’s learning reflection in the interview
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Table 9 G1S1’s feedback in the interview
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The extracts (Tables 7 and 8) focused on checking students’ conceptual and language development by asking them to review and reinforce their learning through after-class Learning Conversations and interviews. G1S1 constructed increasingly deeper understanding of the concepts during the lessons. During supplementary after-class Learning Conversations and interviews, G1S1 was provided with more explicit explanations about the relationship between different habitats and ecosystems and ways to protect them alongside opportunities to reuse and practice English used in the lessons.

Reciprocally, G1S1 also provided feedback on this online study and on the use of visual languaging. She explained how her learning was used in her own school projects, which highlighted the potential of this study for deeper learning (Table 9). As Pellegrino and Hilton (2012) and Coyle and Meyer (2021) suggest, deeper learning requires learners to internalise knowledge before they can transfer knowledge to other learning contexts.

In Table 9, the visual languaging strategy was spontaneously summarised by G1S1 as the integration of visualisation with languaging (Swain, 2006), which facilitated conceptual understanding through Learning Conversations (Norris & Bullock, 2017). Other students also reflected on their learning and set their own future learning plans as shared in the interviews. As reflected in the following interview extract, G2S6 described the digital content of geography and English integrated learning for realising her learning goals in English writing, extending knowledge about natural environments and event planning. Using digital resources highlighted her directive roles in learning.

Interview with G2S6:

T/R: What areas of learning do you want to improve in the future?

G2S6: For my own, I like the things about the nature, and when … (name of the school) have the special event about a charity group, I like doing the plants, I like learning about how to make a charity group and do you do a special event and I like learning about the nature.

T/R: So, more knowledge about nature and how to plan an event, such as a charity group is something you’d like to improve or know more about?

G2S6: Yes.

T/R: How about English learning?

G2S6: Writing, I like writing, in our … (name of the school) class, we will write a little school, one about the adventure, we can write our own story, I like writing for my own.

T/R: So, you want to improve more of your writing?

G2S6: 我妈在网上给我买了一套世界地理的课，全英文配音的nature programme, 一节40分钟，一共十几集，然后每一集都是英文，下面有中文字母，不懂的话可以看中文字幕，然后就可以学习更多英语单词， 这种方式我也比较喜欢，因为还可以看很多世界上各种关于nature的，动物啊，地方啊，比如说cave, what is the biggest cave, 会讲到很多关于地理的东西，相当一个纪录片 (My mom bought me a set of world geography lessons online which is an English dubbed programme about nature with over 10 episodes in total. Each episode is 40min dubbed in English with Chinese subtitles, then I can learn more English words. I quite like this way of learning, because I can watch the word nature including animals, places, such as caves, and what the biggest cave in the world is. It covers a lot about geography, like a documentary).

Students in the interviews offered feedback about their online learning experience including the drawing tasks, the teaching platform, and reflection on their own learning. It triggered their thinking about what they would like to learn more and how they plan to realise their learning goals with other visual and digital resources. Student feedback and reflections from the pluriliteracies perspective acted as conduits to mentoring learning with visuals online and to mediating growth mindsets in terms of directing their future learning.

By reflecting on the data presented in the five themes discussed thus far, three key findings emerged (Table 10).

Table 10 Key findings
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Evidence suggests, therefore, that Learning Conversations enabled students to articulate their drawings whilst receiving ongoing conceptual and linguistic scaffolding from T/R. As Black and Wiliam (2009) note, scaffolding learners using dialogic strategies can provide teachers with evidence for explicit formative feedback. Moreover, students’ drawings provided visual evidence that triggered student-student conversations as peer scaffolding emerged. This aligns with Swain and Lapkin’s (2011) view that the process of learners developing appropriate language and conceptual understanding when they communicate their thinking with others can be scaffolded by both teachers and peers. Students constructed conceptual knowledge by visualising and communicating their understanding of the content with peers and T/R using language(s) mediated through Learning Conversations and using their prior knowledge in new ways—visualing and verbalising self-made drawings.

Whilst encouraging student spontaneity to actively engage in making their own meaning using prior knowledge, T/R scaffolded students’ language use of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) by directly guiding them to use academic language to describe and explain their conceptual understanding in order to deepen their learning. Therefore, students’ articulations of their drawings revolved around two CDFs (Dalton-Puffer, 2016)—describing the content of their drawings and explaining the conceptual understanding that underpins their drawings through Learning Conversations. In this sense, students’ language use of CDFs was complemented by visual languaging. Therefore, the first and second research questions can be addressed as follows.

  • RQ1: In what ways might visualisation serve as an intermediary learning tool (visual languaging) that bridges knowledge construction and language learning in EFL classrooms?

figure a

In a similar vein, cognitive discourse functions as triggered by visual languaging, guided through Learning Conversations in this study, suggest three steps for teachers to scaffold their students’ language use of CDFs.

  • RQ2: How can students develop their use of specific cognitive discourse functions through visually scaffolded languaging?

figure b

Student learning was observed not only through drawings and languaging in the lessons but also through one-to-one after-lesson conversations and interviews. The interview data demonstrated how students spontaneously set learning plans to realise their learning goals, indicating their own agentic behaviours. As guided by Heemsoth and Heinze (2016), self-regulated learners knowingly set learning goals, select, and adapt strategies to monitor and guide their own progress after reflecting on their learning processes. In this sense, when students try out the approaches that they believe to be useful for their English learning and make progress accordingly, they may become more confident and committed to their own learning. Student feedback also guided the T/R to adjust strategies for mentoring learning online, such as encouraging students to integrate writing and drawing for demonstrating their conceptual understanding.

Therefore, conditions for encouraging the development of mentoring and learner agency through visual languaging for pluriliteracies development can be holistically summarised, which addresses the third research question.

  • RQ3: What are the necessary conditions for online learning experiences which encourage interactive development of visual languaging for pluriliteracies growth in a digital learning space?

figure c

In sum, this study investigated the impact of combining visual creation with languaging as a heuristic tool for appropriating students’ language use of cognitive discourse functions, developing mentoring and learner agency for communicating and constructing knowledge. It aligns with the PTDL model through the following:

  • Visualising and languaging knowledge using CDFs for the conceptualising and communicating dimensions

  • Providing visual evidence for mentoring

  • Promoting creativity and reflection for learner agency

Therefore, a pedagogic strategy (Fig. 5) emerged to depict such dynamic alignment of visual languaging with PTDL.

Fig. 5
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Visual languaging for deeper learning (the author’s own data)

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Conclusion

The concept of visual languaging is built upon opportunities created when visualisation and languaging processes become interrelated. The findings of this study suggest that visual languaging has the potential to play a critical role in enabling the co-construction of a learner-teacher owned learning space for cognitive and linguistic development, that is, by using students’ own drawings or other learner-preferred visual representations with languaging as scaffolded endeavours facilitated through Learning Conversations for pluriliteracies growth and deeper learning.

The concept of Learning Conversations in this research is key to activating and facilitating the potential of visual languaging for learning, mentoring, and learner agency. The conversations with individual students offered a space for them to express thinking freely whilst receiving personalised feedback fitting for their learning needs. Whole class Learning Conversations facilitated peer discussions and scaffolding with their collective thinking to enhance students’ conceptual understanding and the language use of CDFs. Both types of conversations provided students sufficient learning time to practice and appropriate their English language use for languaging.

Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that this study is situated in a very specific online group context. Teachers in different cultural environments may not have the possibility or the time to offer supplementary ‘additional conversations’ with individual students after class. This indicates the need for teachers to explore task design in ways that factor in time for Learning Conversations. In other words, when teachers themselves rethink in-class learning tasks so that individual-based Learning Conversations are embedded as part of regular practice, then the need to position such conversations as additional or after class will be removed. Such a challenge might also be overcome through greater home-school collaboration since teachers can design tasks where students can work more independently at home given a diversity of resources, conditions, or environments supported by parents. For example, by giving students options (dropbox, online resources links) to access learning materials for preparing in-class activities, reintroducing the learning materials in the form of problem-solving individual tasks or group work whilst scaffolding them via in-class Learning Conversations, or checking how students’ work is done at home by holding after-class Learning Conversations.

This study offers a small step forward in a very specific educational context. More empirical research focusing on classroom teaching and learning using visual languaging to activate further elements of the PTDL model is necessary. This implies the need for professional learning in terms of teacher cognition of the PTDL—what the model is, how its four interrelated dimensions facilitate learning and especially understanding the importance of mentoring learning, learner-teacher partnerships, and visual-related task design. It also underscores the necessity to rethink some pedagogic approaches or strategies in contextually sensitive ways and how these might be adopted and adapted by teachers, given the constraints of national priorities (e.g. exam-oriented education in China), sociocultural and socioeconomic conditions. To conclude, the transition of visual languaging to a more refined stage requires further work to critique, adapt, and refine the strategy for other contexts of learning. This implicates more case studies across different types of contexts with learners and teachers as co-researchers. Future studies may not only optimise visual languaging across diverse learning contexts but may also ultimately shape it into a promising channel for all learners to direct and deepen their own learning as pluriliterate life-long learners.