Multimodality and Mediation in the Policies Regulating the Official Schools of Languages: the Case of the Valencian Community

Since its recent implementation in the education curriculum as an independent language activity, mediation is currently the fifth language-related skill learnt and evaluated at the Official Schools of Languages in the Valencian Community (Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport, 2019a). Although this might be regarded as a positive change in line with new pedagogical trends (Catalayud-Díez, 2019) that foster plurilingual and pluricultural competence development (Council of Europe, 2020), the fact that mediation is approached as being purely linguistic does not correlate with the characteristics and needs of the 21st century, in particular, the call for multimodal literacies (Jewitt, 2008). The present study approaches mediation from the perspective of social semiotic multimodal analysis and its implications within the legislation regulating the Official Schools of Languages in the Valencian Community. Particularly, the fundamental goals of this study are (1) to find out how mediation is conceived in the legislation of the mentioned context, (2) whether multimodality is considered and, if so, (3) what multimodal aspects are acknowledged. As a first step, this study includes a literature review on the concept of multimodality and its relationship with mediation within the educational landscape. In addition, we performed a thematic analysis of the legal documents that regulate this official non-compulsory education context. Our findings revealed inconsistent terminology, misalignment between mediation guidelines and evaluation criteria, and both limited and incoherent references to multimodality. Therefore, a shift from the traditional way of approaching language skills towards a multimodal approach in this education context (Ciaramita, 2023) is key to conform to the linguistically diverse and technological society we live in (Alfonso-Lozano & Giralt-Lorenz, 2014).