The emergence of edusemiotics as an interdisciplinary field offers a framework for rethinking poetry teaching in contemporary classrooms, where digital media and multimodal literacies increasingly shape learning experiences. This article explores the theoretical foundations of edusemiotics and its application in poetry education, highlighting its potential to enrich meaning-making by integrating varied sign systems. Drawing on a literature review, the study situates edusemiotics within broader educational debates and critically evaluates its contributions and limitations.

Traditional approaches to literature education have long emphasised close reading and the textual analysis of canonical works, grounded in modernist epistemologies that privilege objectivity and measurable outcomes. Yet, in a digital and technologically driven society, knowledge acquisition increasingly occurs across multiple modes - textual, visual, auditory, and interactive. Within the South African context, where the CAPS curriculum underscores the importance of literature for cultural and linguistic literacy, the reduced emphasis on literature favouring STEM subjects has raised concerns among educators. Calls for novel pedagogies to reassert the relevance of literature have converged with the broader movement towards multimodal literacy. Against this backdrop, edusemiotics emerges as a timely and valuable framework, emphasising the interpretive, contextual, and semiotic processes at the heart of learning.

Poetry is uniquely positioned for an edusemiotic pedagogy due to its form, sound, and imagery density. While conventional teaching has relied on textual analysis, poetry also thrives in performance, music, visual representation, and digital adaptation. Multimodal approaches - such as integrating sound recordings, visual art, or film animation, as in the Filmverse project in South Africa - allow learners to encounter poems as layered semiotic events. Such strategies make poetry more accessible, stimulate critical thinking, and foster empathy by inviting learners to engage with multiple interpretations. Therefore, poetry becomes an object of analysis and a lived experience shaped by diverse sign systems.

Edusemiotics combines semiotics - the study of signs and meaning processes - with pedagogy. Its intellectual lineage draws from Charles Sanders Peirce's typology of signs, Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralist linguistics, and later developments in cultural semiotics by Barthes and Eco. In education, edusemiotics resonates with constructivism, critical pedagogy, and reader-response theory, but distinguishes itself by openly foregrounding signs as the medium of learning. Learning, from this perspective, is not merely the transfer of content but an active process of semiosis in which learners interpret and negotiate meaning across multiple symbolic forms. A key principle is acknowledging that classrooms are inherently multimodal environments where words, images, gestures, and spatial arrangements communicate. Edusemiotics encourages teachers to design learning experiences that harness this semiotic diversity. This means integrating auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic activities alongside textual analysis for poetry education. The interpretive act becomes collaborative and dynamic, with learners constructing meaning through interaction with diverse semiotic signals.

The article details how edusemiotics can be operationalised in poetry classrooms through specific strategies such as using recordings and oral performances to foreground rhythm, tone, and emotion; employing images, colours, and animations to visualise metaphors and symbols; encouraging learners to create multimodal responses such as drawings, collages, or digital videos; and incorporating peer assessment and self-reflection when evaluating multimodal projects. Such practices enhance comprehension and cater to varied learning styles, making poetry education more inclusive. Integrating multimodal elements aligns with the real-world communicative practices of learners, who already navigate complex networks of textual and visual signs in their daily lives.

While edusemiotically informed pedagogy enriches classroom practice, it also raises questions about assessment. Traditional written tests fail to capture the richness of multimodal engagement, and new rubrics must account for representation, interaction, and composition across modes. The article draws on recent scholarship to suggest frameworks for evaluating multimodal outputs, while also noting the difficulties of maintaining fairness and reliability. Peer and self-assessment are highlighted as complementary strategies that foster reflective learning and promote a culture of active participation.

The article positions edusemiotics in dialogue with other educational theories. Its emphasis on learner-centred interpretation echoes constructivism and reader-response criticism, while its attention to ideology and cultural context aligns with critical pedagogy. Yet, edusemiotics contributes a distinctive focus on signs as the organising principle of learning. The approach encourages educators to see classrooms as semiotic ecosystems where meaning is continuously created and negotiated.

Edusemiotics holds promise for revitalising poetry education by bridging the gap between traditional literary study and learners' multimodal realities. It promotes creativity, critical thinking, and cultural awareness, offering a holistic pedagogy that prepares students for participation in a sign-saturated world. However, the article acknowledges limitations, particularly the lack of robust empirical evidence for edusemiotic strategies and the practical implementation challenges in resource-constrained schools. Future research should empirically test edusemiotic interventions, refine assessment models, and explore professional development for teachers in multimodal and semiotic pedagogies.

The article aims to demonstrate that edusemiotics provides a comprehensive and innovative perspective for reimagining poetry teaching - positioning signs and symbols at the centre of learning challenges, text-based methods open space for multimodal exploration. Poetry classrooms informed by edusemiotics can become spaces of creative engagement where learners read poems and experience, interpret, and transform them through diverse modes of meaning-making. Though still developing, the framework offers potential to reshape literature education in intellectually rigorous, culturally relevant, and pedagogically inclusive ways.

Keywords: edusemiotics; literary teaching methodology; multimodal literacy; poetry teaching; sign semiosis