Gesticulating science: Emergent bilingual students’ use of gestures

This article examines how emergent bilingual students used gestures in science class, and the consequences of students’ gestures when their language repertoire limited their possibilities to express themselves. The study derived from observations in two science classes in Sweden. In the first class, 3rd grade students (9–10 years old) were involved in a unit concerning electricity. The second class consisted of 7th‐grade students (13–14 years old) working with acids and bases. Data were analyzed by using practical epistemological analysis (PEA). When students’ language proficiency limited their possibility to express themselves, using gestures resulted in the continuation of the science activities. Furthermore, both peers and teachers drew on the used gestures to talk about the science content. In some situations, the meaning of the gestures needed to be negotiated. Regardless, the gestures were always related to language. Both students and teachers participated in this process, but the teachers directed the communication toward the goal of the lessons: learning how to talk science. The study contributes to the field by showing the importance of paying attention to and valuing bilingual students’ use of gestures as a way to express scientific knowledge. In addition, it demonstrates how teachers might draw on students’ gestures to teach science and discusses the importance of creating multimodal learning environments. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 121–144, 2018     

Developing strategic readers: a multimodal analysis of a primary school teacher's use of speech,gesture and artefacts

Research on implementing reading strategy instruction has primarily focused on teachers' verbal communication with limited attention to other semiotic resources such as gesture and artefacts. In this paper, we construct a ‘telling case’ on the basis of how one primary teacher from the United States used speech, gesture and artefacts as a means of communication while instructing her students in reasons to predict when reading. Data sources for this case study consisted of field notes, artefacts and digital video. We analysed the teacher's use of gesture, speech and artefacts from a social semiotic multimodal perspective. Findings indicate that the teacher created meaning by interweaving multiple modes in the communicative contexts of strategy instruction using speech, deictic gestures, metaphoric gestures and artefacts. These findings are important to reading strategy instruction because much of the research and discussion of practice to date has centred on the instruction of reading strategies using teacher and student speech and not attending to the use of semiotic resources beyond speech.     

Analogy,Metaconceptual Awareness and Conceptual Change: a classroom study

This qualitative study aimed at exploring whether students’ successful use of analogy in learning curriculum complex science concepts was related: (a) to the level of their understanding of a specific analogy and (b) to their metacognitive awareness of how the analogy was to be used and of the changes produced in their own conceptual structures. In implementing a biological curriculum unit, students’ prior knowledge has been taken into account in order to examine its conceptual growth and change via a not completely introduced analogy to 15 fifth graders as they were engaged in understanding the ways in which the new concepts (on photosynthesis) were similar to a familiar source (making a cake). Qualitative data present the children's mapping processes in elaborating the analogy and their metacognitive awareness of the meaning and purpose of the analogy itself, and their personal use of the analogy in changing initial conceptions. As hypothesised, the results showed a high positive correlation among the level of conceptual understanding of the new science topic, the level of understanding of the analogy, and the level of effective use of the analogy in integrating the new information into the pre‐existing conceptual structures. Key implications on the use of analogy for conceptual change in the classroom are outlined.     

That Child Is a Yellow: New Immigrant Children's Conceptions of English Language,Literacy, and Learners' Identities in the NCLB Era

In this article, we utilize the concepts of conceptual metaphors, cultural models, and master myths to discuss the ways by which three new immigrant children, native speakers of Spanish, were developing conceptions of English language, literacy, and learner's identities. Our findings point to 3 main metaphors that were often implicit in the school environment: (a) writing as procedures, (b) English as success, and (c) learners as test scoring categories. These metaphorical conceptualizations appear to be a reflection of the discourse around No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policies that permeate American school contexts. We argue that this discourse can serve to promote reduced conceptions of literacy (and writing in particular), to essentialize learners' identities, and to preserve the hegemony of English. We suggest that a focus on meaning during literacy instruction can be helpful in providing opportunities to counteract these conceptions and to foster the development of more robust ones.     

On Discerning Critical Elements, Relationships and Shifts in Attaining Scientific Terms: The Challenge of Polysemy/Homonymy and Reference

Words with well-known meaning in colloquial language often make up an educational challenge when introduced as terms with formal scientific meaning. New connections must be established between the word, already constrained by existing meaning and reference, and the intended formal scientific meaning and reference. A two-dimensional semantic/semiotic analysing schema (acronym 2-D SAS) has been developed to clarify a given word/term in a structured mode both according to non-formal senses and referents and formal scientific meaning and referents. The schema is constructed on ideas from semantics, semiotics and history and philosophy of science. The approach is supposed to be a contribution to make a fine-gained analysis of the structure and dynamics of conceptual change. The role of referents and referent change in conceptual change is highlighted by analysing the character of the recurrent mix-up of the terms heat and temperature among students at different educational levels.     

The role of discursive resources in science talk

Tao, Oliver, and Venville’s paper addresses a debate between two hypotheses of children’s development of conceptual understandings of the Earth. The authors aim to investigate whether culture influences students’ conceptions of the Earth. However, one questionable assumption shared among conception and conceptual change studies is that researchers can identify children’s mental models, through their discourse, to explain their conceptions of scientific phenomena. In this commentary, I challenge this assumption by looking closely at various interview data and examining different dimensions of interview discourse about the Earth. Based on my findings, I suggest that instead of seeing science talk as representations of mental models, we look at children’s science talk as discursive practices mediated by the immediate social situation and the broader social milieu.     

科学教育中的“前科学概念”

前科学概念指的是与科学概念的内涵、外延不一致的个体概念,包括错误概念、相异概念、锚概念、前概念等。狭义的＂前概念＂指教学前概念,广义的＂前概念＂指前科学概念。错误概念并不是内涵完全错误的概念。＂错误概念＂、＂相异概念＂都具有否定的内涵;＂前科学概念＂是一个比较准确和相对完整的术语。前科学概念是一种值得教育者注意和利用的教育资源。     

Education,Social Capital and the Accordion Effect

The ‘accordion effect’ is an effect of language which allows us to describe one and the same thing more or less narrowly. Social capital has been conceived in terms of our access to institutional resources, but also in terms that extend to the levels of trust and related resources found in the social networks we are embedded in. The former conception is narrower, favoured for its specificity and analytical utility. The latter conception is broader, favoured for its acknowledgement of context, including the qualitative features of relations between individuals and within communities. These conceptions appear incompatible, but both have numerous adherents in educational research, and it is unclear whether either can be eliminated without some threat to the intelligibility and explanatory promise of social capital theory in an educational context. This raises hard questions about the domains, questions and methods that the social capital concept is best applied to. Should the concept prove resistant to any defensible specification, this will require a significant revision to the stock of conceptual resources available for understanding and explaining educational progress.     

Exploring the Use of Conceptual Metaphors in Solving Problems on Entropy

A growing body of research has examined the experiential grounding of scientific thought and the role of experiential intuitive knowledge in science learning. Meanwhile, research in cognitive linguistics has identified many conceptual metaphors (CMs), metaphorical mappings between abstract concepts and experiential source domains, implicit in everyday and scientific language. However, the contributions of CMs to scientific understanding and reasoning are still not clear. This study explores the roles that CMs play in scientific problem-solving through a detailed analysis of two physical chemistry PhD students solving problems on entropy. We report evidence in support of three claims: a range of CMs are used in problem-solving enabling flexible, experiential construals of abstract scientific concepts; CMs are coordinated with one another and other resources supporting the alignment of qualitative and quantitative reasoning; use of CMs grounds abstract reasoning in a “narrative” discourse incorporating conceptions of paths, agents, and movement. We conclude that CMs should be added to the set of intuitive resources others have suggested contribute to expertise in science. This proposal is consistent with two assumptions: that cognition is embodied and that internal cognitive structures and processes interact with semiotic systems. The implications of the findings for learning and instruction are discussed.     

Navigating mathematics and language tensions in language immersion classrooms

Based on analyses of videos from language immersion classrooms in Colombia and the US, we examine how teachers manage the tension between how much attention to give to mathematics and to language. Consistent with previous research that regards mathematics and language as inseparable, findings suggest that teaching episodes fall along a continuum from mathematically intense to linguistically intense, with some balanced episodes in the middle of the continuum. Balanced episodes exhibited semiotic juxtaposition where multiple semiotic resources were used simultaneously. We discuss implications that the intentional use of semiotic juxtaposition may have for language immersion mathematics learners.     

Charles Morris' conception of semiotic: Implications for rhetorical criticism

This study analyzes Charles Morris' claim that the traditional role of rhetoric falls within the province of pragmatics, where attempts are made to understand the relationship of sign to interpreter. It is argued that Morris' conception is incomplete, failing to recognize the role of syntax and semantics in appraising the meaning and force of a given rhetorical work. The article outlines the possible rhetorical stances implicit within each facet of semiotic, suggesting the importance of each to an understanding of an entire rhetorical act. My argument is not that the three categories of semiotic are identical or equivalent to three separate critical postures; rather, each type of rhetorical analysis proceeds and functions at a level analogous to its semiotic counterpart. To contemplate the meaning and force of a given rhetorical act is to be cognizant of the existence and interplay among the three dimensions of language‐syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.     

Messing about with metaphor: multimodal aspects to children's creative meaning making

Children's classroom talk and the connections between talk and text are current concerns for teachers. A deeper understanding of what child communication entails can ensure greater pedagogic support for the processes involved in text production. This article reports on a research project using multimodal discourse analysis to investigate child‐to‐child interaction in class. This research sought to uncover what multimodal analysis can reveal about the collaborative and creative meaning making, which children employ in spontaneous classroom discourse. Creativity here is understood in terms of everyday creativity in language. Instantiations of video‐recorded classroom communication between children have been closely analysed using a framework based on a functional view of interaction, specifically the work of the textual meta‐function. Attention to cohesive devices of intertextual referencing, idiom and metaphor as well as repetition and reference through a multimodal lens has revealed the ways in which all modes work in an integrated ensemble to make meaning. Examples in this article of the ways in which children ‘mess about’ with multimodal semiotic resources, employing them intertextually in metaphorical meaning making, have been taken from a Year 5 mixed primary geography lesson on the water cycle.     

多模态外语学习的意义建构认知研究

在外语学习者学习的过程中,多种模态共同产生意义。外语教学和外语学习可看作是符号设计活动,教师作为意义调解者利用各种模态的符号资源和外语学习者一起进行设计和再设计,完成意义建构。由于外语学习者的记忆系统和认知结构的影响,各种模态的不同配合使用会产生不同的认知负荷从而产生不同的学习效果。因而在外语学习的意义建构中,教学设计应遵循一定的原则。     

Scientific investigations,metaphorical gestures,and the emergence of abstract scientific concepts

Where anthropological and psychological studies have shown that gestures are a central feature of communication and cognition, little is known about the role of gesture in learning and instruction. Drawing from a large database on student learning, we show that when students engage in conversations in the presence of material objects, these objects provide a phenomenal ground against which students can enact metaphorical gestures that embody (give a body to) entities that are conceptual and abstract. In such instances, gestures are often subsequently replaced by an increasing reliance upon the verbal mode of communication. If gestures constitute a bridge between experiences in the physical world and abstract conceptual language, as we conjecture here, our study has significant implications for both learning and instruction.     

The construction of word meaning in a multicultural classroom. Mediational tools in peer collaboration during mathematics lessons

In this article, we examine the construction of word meaning by students during collaborative activities in a multicultural classroom at a Dutch primary school. The analysis is based on recordings of student talk in small groups of four or five students during mathematics lessons. Difficulties with specific terms and expressions frequently arose during group work. Students could easily ask each other about the meaning of difficult words as a part of the collaborative activities they were accustomed to. In the groups with both Dutch and minority children, the minority students addressed their Dutch classmates as language experts. Conversations about language difficulties also occurred in the groups with only minority students. The conversations about word meaning revealed four patterns: (1) ignoring a question about the meaning of a word, (2) showing the meaning using gestures, (3) explaining, or (4) discussing word meaning. In none of the cases were the language problems solved by referring to the everyday meaning of the word. Instead, the conversations focussed directly on the specialised meaning which the word had in the context of the mathematics lesson. This means that the children used the mathematical discourse as a mediational tool for constructing a mathematical meaning of the words.     

Drawing space: mathematicians’ kinetic conceptions of eigenvectors

This paper explores how mathematicians build meaning through communicative activity involving talk, gesture and diagram. In the course of describing mathematical concepts, mathematicians use these semiotic resources in ways that blur the distinction between the mathematical and physical world. We shall argue that mathematical meaning of eigenvectors depends strongly on both time and motion—hence, on physical interpretations of mathematical abstractions—which are dimensions of thinking that are typically deliberately absent from formal, written definition of the concept. We shall also show how gesture and talk contribute differently and uniquely to mathematical conceptualisation and further elaborate the claim that diagrams provide an essential mediating role between the two.     

创新活动的概念整合分析

人们在思维和交际时,大脑会根据输入的信息不断构建临时的小概念包,存储于虚拟的心理空间,完成意义和结构的重组、合成和扩展,进而生成新的概念。语言的理解和生成离不开对概念的整合。概念整合不但是新的语言表达出现的重要认知机制,它还能触发科技上的创新,将新概念转化为新产品。     

Children's conceptions of air pressure: exploring the nature of conceptual change

Children's responses to a series of air pressure activities were tracked in detail during group discussion and interview, and again in interview six months later. Results for different age cohorts have yielded insights into age‐related knowledge components framing children's conceptions of air pressure phenomena. Case studies of individuals have been constructed to explore the way conceptions change over time, and the difficulties presented by the concept of atmospheric pressure. These are used to evaluate different structural theories of conceptual change. The findings point to the complexity of children's conceptions, the stability and extension over time of productive conceptions, and the critical role of contextual features of phenomena in the conceptual change process. Although structural aspects of changes in concepts related to air pressure are identified, the difficulty of accessing the atmospheric pressure conception is argued to have more to do with presupposition based in perceptual features of air, and with difficulties associated with the application to particular phenomena.