Background

Today´s society demands communicative skills, and the act of arranging meaningful and meaning-making communicative meetings is possibly one of education´s most important responsibilities.

For pupils diagnosed with dyslexia, paradoxically though, school can sometimes be a hindrance for learning how to read and write and how to gain a functional communicative competence. Lack of teachers´ knowledge and skills could be factors raising obstacles for learning.

Every child has a right to develop communicative literacy. Using multi-modality in education is a way to reach the aim of the curriculum.  Here I see aesthetic learning processes and digital literacy as critical elements in the process of developing multiliteracy.

Learning is dependent on collaborative processes. In the process of multimodal learning the construction of meaning is made visible in the participants’ acts of concrete communication. Digital tools and aesthetics are some of the cultural tools well needed in the education. This will be important to children with language disabilities and especially for pupils diagnosed with Dyslexia.

From the view of a design orientated perspective, built on a socio-cultural theoretical framework, key words like design, settings, tools and affordances becomes important. A central idea is that learning is a process of mastering different tools. Learning is to be seen as meaning making in social contexts. The teacher and /or the child can be designers of and actors in the institutional setting.

Aim of paper

The aim of this paper is to describe how six teachers in a Swedish primary school design the everyday school-activities, using digital devices together with the children. Focus will be on how the teachers reflect on the children´s developing of digital and communicative skills. A special focus will be on how the teachers discuss the possibilities and hindrance for children with special needs.

 Research Question

How do the teachers didactically design for children’s learning with digital learning tools, and how do digital learning tools influence the development of the children’s digital and communicative competences?

How can the use of digital learning tools in education give  possibilities or become hindrance in developing communicative competences for children with language difficulties?

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