Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, ICT has been urgently introduced in education systems in a generalised manner. In this context, it is essential for teachers to master a spectrum of basic digital competencies and manifest digital leadership in the classroom. In addition, it is necessary to consider the relationship between digital competence development and social sustainability, that is, social and cultural heritage, and to what extent they contribute to improving social cohesion and living conditions in a community. This study presents a systematic review of research on teacher digital competence and social sustainability based on the PRISMA model and a review of 22 studies indexed in SCOPUS. The review reveals that most are intended to measure the digital competence level of teachers, usually in compulsory stages of the educational system and through quantitative studies based on virtual questionnaires comprised of closed-ended questions. However, the studies tend to ignore questions related to social sustainability (access to resources, heritage culture, intergenerational transmission, employability, or gender equality). It is therefore urgent to develop research committed to a sustainable society that is oriented towards social justice.

The more-than-human turn in early childhood education has highlighted the relevance of children’s intra-actions with their environment, as well as the multiple ways in which worlds and literacies emerge in them. The rejection of representationalism as the single source of knowledge leads to the consideration of affect, embodiment, memories, sound and movement as ways of knowing. The ways in which they manifest in a school context deserve close attention to the tiny details of literacy events. Our research presents a diffractive reading of an event in a school classroom, aiming to understand human and more-than-human intra-actions in this context, the re-configurations of time, space and matter, and the ways in which children articulate entanglements with texts and bodies. We focus on the intra-actions of a seven-year old child with a photo of his favourite videogame and the ways in which affect and memory emerge. The child’s sounds and movements, the researcher, the photo and the space become entangled to re-configure time, space and matter. Our analysis provides an insight into an event often occurring in schools. We offer some clues to understand it as part of the language and literacy practices of children, and pose the necessity of reconsidering the usual concept of literacy in school.

Social sustainability embraces literacy development as a means by which children integrate their knowledge in society and become powerful and meaningful. In this context, the development of writing among young children requires the design of new teaching strategies that allow for the multimodal repertoire brought by children into the classroom. Systemic Functional Linguistics offers tools for the analysis of children’s multimodal writing, which plays an important role in their literacy development. Our research was carried out in an urban context, the participants being 12 children aged 7 to 8. Data were collected through participant observation, conversations, and the analysis of documents and products generated by the children. From them, we analysed two stories written by two girls, which showed the way in which the children created meaning by combining verbal and visual modes, and how these modes interact (intersemiosis). The performance of a literacy task in which children are able to integrate their knowledge and heritage into the classroom, may constitute an interdisciplinary tool for their participation and engagement in the school, thus leading to a more equal society. In consequence, we propose that the integration of a genre-based pedagogy in the classroom should include greater awareness in teachers of the value of pupils’ multimodal assessments.

Among the recent approaches to literacy incorporated into Literacy Studies, the concept of (im)materiality has enabled researchers to delve into the fluid and hybrid nature of contemporary literacy practices in early childhood. Our research explores the (im)materiality of literacy practices from the perspectives of space, screen mediation, artefacts and embodiment. The research focuses on the (im)material nature of the literacy practices carried out in different spaces, and its relevance in the making of meaning by children. The research method is based on an ethnographic approach. The results show the children’s embodiment of their literacy practices, and the way in which they create and interact with space and make meaning from their (im)material practices. These practices raise questions about their inclusion in current literacy development in schools.