This paper builds on the research project [Name of the project]. It seeks to explore the learning paths of higher education students pursuing different degrees at Spanish and Brazilian universities. It considers the contemporary complexity and digital influences of the entire process of knowledge building. This presentation focuses on the learning pathways of university students who choose teaching as a profession. Itestablishes a dialogue between the Spanish and the Brazilian universities involved in the project, and places the emphasis on what, how, where, with whom and with what young undergraduates of teacher training courses learn.

Now-a days, it is fundamental to understand knowledge building the processes among young university students, especially those who choose to become teachers. To become acquainted with aspects of their learning processes that allow elucidating their multimodal learning environments, establishing dialogues, and developing narratives and learning life stories (Erstad, 2012; 2013; Erstad, Gilje, Sefton-Green Vasbo, 2009).

What forms of learning can we establish based on the broad and diverse processes in which future teachers build knowledge during their initial training? Are there dialogues between teaching processes inside and outside university? Is there a diversity of languages in academic spaces to represent their processes of knowledge building? In which contexts and aspects do technologies enable possibilities of learning? These questions elucidated the exploration of understandings that will have a direct impact on teachers knowledge and higher education institutions responsible for establishing and organizing the learning environments of young university students.

Students, who are natives of the technological era (Breneman, 2017; Seemiller  & Grace, 2017) point to motivations and interests that are different from those of previous generations. In this reality research enables creating dialogues and connections to think about the present and thus create new pedagogical understandings for the educational process in higher education.

According to (Hernández, 2000, p.106), “education is conceived (...) as a dialectical process in which the meaning and significance of the structures of knowledge are reconstructed in the historical consciousness of the individuals, that give meanings to their life situations. we consider the importance of the historical and subjective construction that is established in the trajectories of the students and have repercussions on learning”.

Our study emphasises contextual dimensions of knowledge (Phillips, 2014) an adopts ethnographic approach (Sancho-Gil & Hernández-Hernández, 2021) to meet the general objective of understanding how young university students build knowledge and learn to become. It considers their different trajectories, relating them to learning contexts and environments. It aims to broaden the knowledge involved in the educational processes undertaken in higher education based on the experiences of the students. To do so, we use multimodal languages (visual methods and multimodal narratives) that show evidence and provide real connections with learning that make sense and meaning for young students.

According to (Hernández & Sancho, 2007, p.10) “the content and process of formation should come from individuals. It is the questioning of their significant experiences that allows them not only to become authors, but also to learn from themselves and from others”. Individual should be considered as the starting point to organize formative actions at the university. Research has shown us that it is urgent to establish and validate the experiences in the learning processes (Erstad et al., 2016; Lemoine et al., 2017; Twenge, 2017). It seems necessary to clarify the experiences to be able to advance in proposals that will enable significant, contextualized learning.

In this phase of the project, we are deepening the theoretical framework and the methodological approach with 16 young undergraduate students in teacher training courses at three Brazilian universities. We are implementing individual meetings, with creative interviews, using multimodal languages as learning cartographies (Worcester, 2002; Mckinnon, 2011; Guattari, 1995) and narratives. All sessions are recorded and transcribed. Researchers take multimodal note (Sancho). All this information is the base for composing individual learning trajectories, which the foundation of the dialogue established between Brazil and Spain. We consider the cartography of learning as “a social construct of the world” (Harley, 2002, p.35). In this way, a notion “is not limited to the work of academics. Artists and activists also have been increasingly driven by the cartographic moment, often subverting cartographic conventions or the authority of cartography” (Mckinnon, 2011, p.456) Cartographies can be existential territories that imply sensitive, cognitive, affective, aesthetic territories. These involve approaches to cartographies of concrete processes of subjectivation (Guattari, 2000) regarding the attributions that are captured by means of the rhizome considered the coming-to-be (becoming), i.e., “movements in different directions instead of a single path, multiplying their own lines and establishing the plurality of connections, unforeseeable in the smooth, open space of its growth” (Semetsky, 2008, p.15). Thus, cartographies provide a subjective process, considering that “subjectivity is constituted as depending on our learning from experiences of development” (Idem, 2013, p.85) Guided by the construction of narratives, or the cartographies that were taped and transcribed, we organized the analysis according to (Bardin, 2016) which enabled us to broaden knowledge and relate it to connections between the diversity of contexts and trajectories.

The study is ongoing but has already shown us important aspects regarding the relevance of the methodological approach that promoted, in the participants, the use of multimodal narratives to think about their own learning and their different connections in the process, without being limited to the university walls, but establishing, in broad, complex processes, the deterritorialization of the construction of knowledge in a mental, social, and collective movement, as stated by Guattari (2001). It will offer broader views for university teachers and policymakers on current notions, especially among young higher education students, of knowledge and learning. Something fundamental to foster students’ engagement and professionally in education. A field with growing challenges and complexity.

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