A critical discourse analysis of how teachers construct student skills in multiliteracies informed primary science after professional development

This study examines how ten in-service primary teachers described the skills they sought to cultivate after a five-week professional development cycle on multiliteracies-based science teaching. Using Critical Discourse Analysis of ten post-implementation interviews lasting approximately 40 min each, it analyses how teachers constructed student participation, assessment, multimodal work, civic engagement and classroom constraints. The analysis identifies two orientations to competence: a monomodal–cognitive orientation privileging correct answers, written work, curriculum coverage and individual accountability, and a multimodal–civic orientation valuing collaboration, dialogue, multimodal representation, ethical reasoning and science-related civic participation. Teachers valued the latter but described it as harder to sustain and assess under time, resource and accountability pressures. AI-related accounts sharpened the same assessment problem because polished outputs did not necessarily reveal student reasoning or authorship. By showing how teachers discursively rank forms of competence after professional development, the study extends multiliteracies research beyond activity design to the legitimacy of evidence. It argues that teacher education should integrate task design with process-oriented criteria for assessing multimodal, collaborative and civic participation.