Influence of Positive Student-Teacher Interaction on the Meaning-Making Process in Virtual Learning: A Study in the Primary English Class

Introduction

While discovering which key factors make a difference in the process of learning a foreign language continues to be the aim of many scholars, the emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the need for English Language Teaching programs to respond to the demand of distance education. In addition to adjusting to the digital environment and exploring how to transform online spaces into online learning spaces, in this chapter the authors discuss how the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies contributes to establish positive student-teacher relationships as a determining factor to enhance the learning experience both in class and in remote learning. How teachers relate and interact with students has a significant effect on students’ progress and attitude towards the foreign language. This is still more relevant in the online space where fostering teaching presence is crucial to promote learning and to give a human feel to the information being presented (Richardson and Swam, 2003; Russel and Murphy-Judy, 2021). In this way, the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies offers a new perspective of viewing not only the teacher but also students and, as a result, the learning process. The teacher acts as a guide allowing students to be the principal constructor of their learning and promoting a trustful and positive relationship.

From a sociocultural perspective, the idea that language learning is not only a linguistic and cognitive activity but also a lived, participatory social practice within specific cultural contexts is an accepted principle of current second language acquisition studies such as Cognitive Linguistics, Functional Linguistics, the Dynamic System Theory and the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies. According to De Bot et al. (2007, p.7), what these theories have in common is that “they recognize the crucial role of the interaction of a multitude of variables at different levels: in communication, in constructing meaning, in learning a language and among the languages in the multilingual mind.” This view is in fact regarded as an ecological approach that acknowledges that language learning, in this case, EFL, and the development of knowledge can be seen as an emergent, dynamic, open-ended and intersubjectively negotiated process (Kern, 2000; Reyes-Torres and Portalés-Raga, 2020). As the New London Group (1996) and Cope and Kalantzis (2015) highlight, learning is an active process of meaning-making. This idea is especially relevant under the current COVID-19 critical situation since in many cases EFL learners can only improve their command of the foreign language by practicing it and making sense of it in a digital context. However, being exposed to multiple pieces of information does not guarantee their learning or even basic comprehension unless all pieces can be ordered and processed coherently in a meaningful way. For this reason, a particular emphasis must be placed, first, on the role of the student as an active learner; second, on the role of the teacher as a guide and a facilitator of meaning, and third, on the social interaction established between students and teachers. Furthermore, because of COVID-19, this interaction must be done through online platforms and it is essential to give consideration to how to humanize online classes as a key element in virtual learning.