Page 35 - Tvorjenje pomena in večrazsežna – večkodna pismenost

Martina Rodela Navigating Multimodal Hypertexts: A Case Study
University of Primorska, Slovenia of Students’ Reading of a Public Rail Transport Website
martina.rodela@upr.si
© 2026 Martina Rodela
Meaning-Making, Multiliteracies
and Multimodality
Abstracts of the International
Symposium
Koper, 19–20 March 2026
In contemporary society, there is a clear trend toward sustainable development,
which has become an integral part of educational curricula from preschool to
university. As Vare and Scott (2007, in Sedmak, 2009) note, over the last three
decades, efforts to appropriately adapt educational systems and processes in
terms of sustainability or sustainable development have intensified significantly.
While experts define sustainability and sustainable development in various ways,
they share a common understanding that learning about sustainability is essen-
tial for raising awareness (Sedmak, 2009).
A modern perspective on literacy instruction is an inherent part of this shift.
According to Starc (2024), communication today occurs primarily through mul-
timodal texts, frequently in digital formats. Since public communication also
takes place in online environments, a modern reader must be proficient in nav-
igating the websites of various public services. These include, among others,
public transport route planning websites – especially since the use of pub-
lic transport is encouraged in light of sustainability and climate change (e.g.,
https://www.promet.si/en/home).
Consequently, this paper examines how young people – as a group of potentially
the most frequent users of public transport – read online multimodal texts on
a Slovenian portal for rail travel planning. The study will involve 35–40 second-
year Primary Education students from the Faculty of Education at the University
of Primorska. We will focus on their integration of verbal and non-verbal signs,
as the aforementioned portal utilizes both to create meaning. For the purpose of
analyzing the students’ responses, the study will be grounded in the theory of
visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2020; Starc, 2009).
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2020). Reading images: The grammar of visual design
(3rd ed.). Routledge.
Sedmak, S. (2009). Izobraževanje za trajnostni razvoj – opredelitev področja. In S.
Sedmak (Ed.), Daneszajutri:razmišljanjaovzgojiinizobraževanjuzatrajnostni
razvoj (pp. 21–38). Fakulteta za management.
Starc, S. (2009). Časopisna oglaševalska besedila, reklame: struktura in večkodnost.
Annales.
Starc, S. (2024). Pouk slovenščine in besedilna/večkodna pismenost: razmislek ob
prenavljanju učnih načrtov za slovenščino. Jezik in slovstvo, 69(3), 79–93.
Vare, P., & Scott, W. (Eds.) (2007). Learning for a change: Exploring the relationship
between education and sustainable development. Journal of Education for
Sustainable Development, 2(1), 191–198.
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-565-8.32 35