Visioning Refugee-Background Youth’s Futures Through Digital Multimodal Composing: Teachers’ Tensions

Digital multimodal composing (DMC), the use of digital tools to make meaning with multiple modes (e.g., languages, visuals, gestures) has been shown to help showcase and value refugee-background youth’s investment in school learning, including their visions for their future. However, studies involving DMC have focused less on examining teachers’ tensions around how they might help these youth actualize these visions and ensure their investment is acted on to effect real change in participation and opportunity, especially given some youth’s significantly interrupted formal education. This qualitative case study employs the theoretical construct of investment to examine the tensions shared by four Canadian teachers regarding support for their refugee-background learners in actualizing their visions for the future, visions made visible through DMC projects. The study includes implications for educators and teacher educators who strive to address the needs of these learners.