Presentation Digital Literacy in Motion: Teacher and Learner Sense-Making in Singapore’s Chinese-as-a-Second-Language Classrooms more

As digital tools, multimodal communication, and AI increasingly shape the landscape of language learning, the question for educators is not simply whether technology is used, but how digital literacy is understood, enacted, and negotiated within real classroom ecologies. This presentation reports findings from Phase 1 of a multiphase mixed-methods study investigating evolving digital literacy practices in Singapore’s secondary Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) classrooms. Drawing on classroom observations, teacher interviews, student focus groups, and survey data, the analysis is guided by digital literacy pedagogical framework (Kurek & Hauck, 2014). Findings reveal an emerging yet uneven landscape of practice. Forward-thinking, pioneering teachers interpret digital literacy as encompassing multimodal composing, critical awareness, and AI-mediated meaning-making, yet their enactments are shaped by tensions between creative exploration and assessment pressures, structured scaffolding and learner autonomy. Students respond positively to multimodal tasks, but often engage superficially with AI tools and struggle to connect classroom digital practices with everyday digital engagements. Rather than a linear narrative of innovation, the results illustrate a dynamic interplay of affordances, constraints, and adaptive sense-making. Many challenges observed are systemic—rooted not in individual actors but in broader structures. The study contributes to ongoing CALL discussions on designing contextually grounded and multiliteracies-informed digital literacy pedagogies.