Exploring Reading Eggs: towards a multimodal framework for evaluating online reading programmes

Salie, Shameez

Exploring Reading Eggs: towards a multimodal framework for evaluating online reading programmes

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

With a few notable exceptions, much of the world, including South Africa, faces a reading crisis in schools. This crisis can be understood from multiple theoretical perspectives, such as an academic literacies approach, which locates reading practices in context, or an ecosystems approach, which examines how the reading crisis unfolds at different layers of a system. These and other approaches to the reading crisis focus on the actions of various entities, from parents to corporations and governments, who seek at a range of scales from the individual to the national, and across a variety of measures, from individualised interventions to curriculum change to policy change, to address this crisis. One such response, the proliferation of online reading programmes, is poorly understood by key stakeholders, including teachers, educational technologists and parents, and is inadequately researched. Given the increasing adoption of and access to such programmes by schools and individuals, it is necessary that responsible stakeholders understand and evaluate the programmes with which their children are engaging. This study analyses how an online reading programme called Fast Phonics in Reading Eggs facilitates the learning of phonics in young children aged 5-10 (users). The study explores the construction of the learner, the activity of reading and the social context of reading through mapping how multimodal resources are employed to make meaning, structure user learning and retain user attention. It therefore aims to contribute to the growing genre of phonics orientated reading programmes. This study makes use of a qualitative research method, drawing upon Kress and Van Leeuwen's Social Semiotics metafunctional framework as a method of text analysis. The three metafunctions (representational, interactive and compositional) provide a frame in which various modes of visual and verbal text are explored. The representative metafunction focuses our attention on how knowledge is represented to create a particular world. When analysing the metafunctional representation, we better understand what is represented, but also, potentially, what is absent and how this reflects power relations in the world. The interactional metafunction focuses on how relations occur between the programme and the producer and user, which allows us to see the intent from the producers and the perceptions from the user. The compositional metafunction pays attention to how the representational and interactive metafunctions relate to one another through compositional choices in Reading Eggs. The findings of this study indicates that Reading Eggs uses a structured reading programme that incorporates text to speech functions, is informed by a learning theory and effectively employs multimodal resources to support young learners. The representational metafunction integrates text, images, and the narrator's voice, combining familiar and fantasy elements to structure reading content. The interactive metafunction fosters engagement through visual characters, rewards and instant feedback that motivates learners and reinforces behaviours. A newly discovered process within the interactive metafunction called attention, aims at gaining the user's focus by seeking and holding it. Furthermore, the identification of flow of movement in the compositional metafunction, guides a user's visual trajectory and enhances comprehension. Attention holding and seeking as well as flow of movement contribute to research by extending the Kress and Van Leeuwen's Metafunctional framework for online reading programmes.

Keywords

reading

education

Reference:

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Masters

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