Transmediation as Supporting Disciplinary Epistemic Practices

• In Event: Transmediation in Motion: New Directions for Theory and Inquiry on Multimodality in School Spaces

Abstract

It has been decades since the concept of transmediation, or the act of translating meanings from one sign system to another (Author 2, 1995), was conceptualized and applied to educational settings (Suhor, 1984). In conceptualizing new directions for transmediation, this study highlights its potential to engage students in epistemic practices unique to each discipline using the epistemic tools of that discipline. We define epistemic practices as the ways in which members of a group propose and justify knowledge claims while accounting for critique (Ford, 2015; Kelly, 2008), and we define epistemic tools as the mediational artifacts that enable these knowledge construction practices (Kelly & Cunningham, 2019).

Bezemer and Kress (2008) asserted that when the epistemic practices of a discipline, as enacted within workplaces, are recontextualized within schools, semiotic systems also undergo changes to account for the differences across contexts. However, this assertion has been underexplored in the context of empirical studies of transmediation that compare the epistemic practices and tools of youth with those of disciplinary practitioners.

To better understand transmediation in the context of epistemic practices in engineering, this study explored the types of transmediation used by one civil engineer as he developed, supported, and communicated knowledge claims related to a range of products, as well as the types of transmediation used by seventh-grade youth as they developed, supported, and communicated knowledge claims in the context of designing a new parking lot for their school. To this end, we analyzed data from bi-monthly observations with the engineer for six months; daily video- and audio-recordings of one class of underrepresented seventh-grade students as they designed a new parking lot over the course of one month; and think-alouds with the students and the engineer as they illustrated their thinking in the process of transmediation.

This study found that both the engineer and the students engaged in transmediation in the process of justifying knowledge claims, most commonly, claims regarding the adequacy of proposed design ideas. For example, the engineer often translated standards (represented in written, tabular, and numeric formats) to drawings, such as when he made claims regarding whether clearance standards for fire trucks were met in a visual development map presenting an aerial view. The students, too, translated information presented in particular semiotic systems (such as written information in ADA standards) to other semiotic systems, such as aerial images, in the process of justifying claims regarding the adequacy of their own and others’ proposed parking lot designs.
Overall, this study highlighted the ingenuity of the youth as they engaged in complex epistemic practices via transmediation, and it demonstrates that their knowledge construction practices (as supported by their teacher) bore numerous important similarities to those of the engineer. This study suggests that, when provided with opportunities to use a variety of discipline-authentic representations as epistemic tools and to translate across semiotic systems in the process of constructing claims, youth can act as powerful producers of disciplinary knowledge.

Authors

• Amy Wilson-Lopez, Utah State University

• Angela Minichiello, Utah State University

• Theresa Green, Utah State University

• Ashley Strong, Roy High School