Learning Science Through Engaging With Its Representational Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 118

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This symposium explores student learning and reasoning in science through engagement with the discursive tools of this subject, as the basis for classroom practices that parallel the knowledge production practices of scientists. We explore pedagogies based on this account of the disciplinary literacies of science. The papers draw on research from Australia and Sweden that have overlapping agendas and theoretical perspectives including pragmatism, social semiotics, and socio cultural perspectives on language and learning. The papers will examine the role of language / multimodal representations in generating knowledge claims in science classrooms, the classroom epistemologies that support learning, and the relationship between learning and reasoning from this perspective.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Science Teaching and Learning

Chair

• Richard A. Duschl, The Pennsylvania State University

Papers

• A Representation Construction Pedagogy for Learning Science - Russell W. Tytler, Deakin University; Peter Hubber, Deakin University

• Organizing Purposes to Support Students’ Semiosis and Science Learning - Per-Olof Wickman, Stockholm University; Annie-Maj Johansson, Stockholm University

• Explaining Newton’s Laws of Motion: Using Student Reasoning Through Representations to Develop Conceptual Understanding - Bruce G. Waldrip, Monash University; Vaughan Prain, La Trobe University