Book Chapter: Exploring Future English Teachers’ Reflection towards Multimodal Reading Tasks on Virtual Learning Platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Drawing on a narrative case study, the study reports on future English teachers’ (FETs’) reflection towards multimodal reading tasks through virtual learning platforms (i.e., Edmodo, Zoom Conference, WhatsApp Group). It investigates FETs’ learning outcomes after engaging in multimodal reading tasks through five-step learning cycles such as knowledge building, text deconstruction, joint-text construction, independent-text construction, and review and assessment. Situated in the state university in West Java, Indonesia, this case study recruited twenty five Indonesian FETs (20 females and 5 males). The data were collected from FETs’ reflective journals and graphic organizers during the second academic term (March until May 2020) and analyzed using Braun and Clark’s thematic analysis. The findings show that FETs gained some benefits from these virtual learning platforms such as the availability of myriad online sources from Edmodo, a global education network that helps connect FETs’ with resources needed to reach their full potential which they could access at their flexible and convenient time. Additionally, FETs’ autonomy, agency, engagement, confidence, skill-set, and the ability to collaborate through online discussion are the important points that they experienced during their learning reading through multimodal reading tasks. Finally, the research suggests that teacher educators should encourage FETs’ to develop their own online professional learning to leverage a range of advantages, driven by the authentic, diverse, and accessible materials encountered in these virtual multimodal learning platforms.

Keywords: five step learning cycles; multimodal reading; student teachers’ autonomy; thematic analysis; virtual learning platforms