Populärkultur som film, musik, tv, m.m. är en del av barns vardagskultur. Då fritidshemmet har barns intressen som central utgångspunkt undersöks i denna studie hur verksamheten kan främja meningsskapande kring barns populärkulturella intressen. Vilken populärkultur förekommer i fritidshem och vad uppstår i mötet mellan barn, vuxna och populärkultur? Fältobservationer har utförts under sex veckor, där barns och fritidshemspersonals aktivitet var i fokus och data har kodats tematiskt. Studiens resultat visar att populärkulturella aktiviteter, som t.ex. datorspel, inte behöver vara traditionellt könskodade, även om en del populärkultur är det i högsta grad. Dessutom visar resultaten att barn möter andra genom kulturen och de aktiviteter som den erbjuder, samt skapar egna aktiviteter utifrån etablerad populärkultur. Det finns dock en risk att vuxna inte bemöter elevers olika intressen och populärkulturella uttryck, p.g.a. t.ex. institutionella regler där exempelvis vissa spel, teknik eller liknande, inte är önskvärda i fritidshemmet – här är t.ex. förbudet mot mobiltelefoner och restriktioner av sociala media en faktor. En slutsats i studien blir därför att barnens intressen och populärkulturella uttryck i fritidshem i högre grad bör diskuteras, och att delandet av populärkultur som symbolbärande utgångspunkt kan ha som syfte att skapa dialog i mötet mellan barn och vuxna på fritidshem.

I detta paper undersöker vi hur populärkulturella uttryck skapas i vardagen på fritidshem. Populärkultur är i hög grad något som är en del av barns vardagliga uttryck i hur de skapar sociala relationer, samtidigt som uttrycken också erbjuder och kan skapa olika sociala arenor. Barns populärkulturella uttryck och attribut är dock inte alltid självvalda, men tolkas och omtolkas i varje social situation. Fritidshemmets centrala utgångspunkter (Skolverket, 2022) kring barns intresse och behov får i denna studie en central mening då det sociala och pedagogiska uppdraget handlar om att ta en barncentrerad utgångspunkt och främja meningsskapande och låta barnet dela med sig av sina populärkulturella intressen. Hur uttrycker och skapar barnen populärkultur i fritidshem och vad uppstår i mötet mellan olika barn och olika former av populärkultur på fritidshem? Studien är etnografiskt inspirerad där fältobservationer används för insamling av data, där barn och fritidshemspersonals görande är i fokus. Utifrån en tematisk analys har data kodats, etiketterats, kategoriserats och tematiserats (Braun & Clarke, 2006). I studien har begreppet performativitet (Butler, 1999) använts för att förstå hur eleverna skapar populärkultur på fritidshem. Performativitet har i vår studie inneburit att populärkultur är något som skapas av och igenom aktörernas olika handlingar och uttryck –där de populärkulturella uttrycken oftast handlar om att visa upp sig själv och sina intressen, tillhörighet och status. Fritidshemmets barncentrerade utgångspunkt bildar därför en viktig arena för barnens performativa uttryck och handlingar. Studiens resultat visar dock även att det finns en risk att fritidshemspersonal inte alltid möter/bemöter elevens olika intressen och populärkulturella uttryck (jmf Fast, 2007) detta då det finns institutionella regler där exempelvis vissa spel, eller mobiltelefoner, inte är önskvärda i fritidshem. En slutsats i studien blir därför att barnens intressen och populärkulturella uttryck i fritidshem i högre grad bör diskuteras, och att delandet av populärkultur är en symbolbärande utgångspunkt i syftet att skapa dialog i mötet mellan barn och vuxna på fritidshem. 

Referenser

Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.

Fast, C. (2018). Barn läser och ritar bilder och serier. Skolverket/Läslyftet.

Skolverket. (2022). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet – Lgr 22. https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=9718

I detta paper utforskar jag lärarstudenters samtal kring Peter Høegs bok De kanske lämpade (2015, Dan: De måske egende). Forskningen är bristfällig kring pedagogisk användning av skönlitteratur för undervisning inom allmändidaktik och kurser utanför språkområdet i lärarutbildning. I detta paper används en skönlitterär roman för fokussamtal i en kurs i utvecklingspsykologi och lärteori, relaterat till elever med särskilda behov. Data samlades in med hjälp av videokamera och diktafon, och två grupper á fem studenter deltog i studien. Totalt spelades tre timmar samtal in som en lokal fallstudie, och samtalen analyserades med diskursiv receptionsteori (Eriksson Barajas, 2009, 2016).

Resultaten visar att studenterna konstruerar sitt lärande genom vad jag kallar ”moments of insight” (stunder av insikt): sociala handlingar där deltagarna demonstrerar hur läsning av romanen skapar en upplevd kognitiv skiftning. På detta sätt konstruerar studenterna sig som genomgåendes en transformation igenom läserfarenheten, vilket kan göras aktuellt både i rollen som praktiserande lärare och som studenter. De diskuterade passagerna vid dessa ”stunder” är ofta sådana som relaterar till bokens mer övergripande teman som ensamhet, relationer och personlig utveckling – snarare än de mer kursrelevanta aspekterna av psykosocial skolmiljö, elever med särskilt stöd, eller liknande. Detta visar dels hur boksamtal möjliggör för lärarstudenterna att reflektera över sina egna läserfarenheter som något som utvecklar deras lärande, men dels också hur skönlitteraturens pedagogiska möjligheter kan vara svåra att ringa in och styra – om det ens är önskvärt. Dessa resultat demonstrerar vikten av att vara selektiv när det gäller valet av läsmaterial i högskolepedagogisk undervisning, att vara medveten om möjligheterna till diskussion kring olika material, och, som lärarutbildare, att vara öppen för studenters möjligheter att reflektera fritt kring olika typer av berättelser. Om vi som lärarutbildare kan vara öppna för vad studenter hittar i fiktion, så blir det lättare för studenterna att komma till nya stunder av insikt.  

Sedan 2022 ingår evolutionsundervisning och undervisning om biologisk mångfald i naturvetenskapsundervisningen för åk 4–6 (LGR22). Eftersom det är ett nytt innehåll för många lärare finns ett behov av nya undervisningsverktyg. Vi har, tillsammans med en professionell illustratör, tagit fram en serietidning som illustrerar evolutionära mönster och tre nyckelkomponenter för evolutionära processer: variation, ärftlighet och naturligt urval. Tidningen bygger på naturvetenskaplig ämnesdidaktisk forskning (Frejd, 2019), forskning om serier i undervisning (Wallner, 2017) och ämnesforskning om evolution (t.ex. Werdelin et al., 2010). Evolution är ett resultat av enkla men samtidigt komplexa processer som är svåra att förstå för både elever (Legare et al., 2013), universitetsstudenter (se, t.ex., Fiedler et al., 2017; Meir et al., 2007) och vuxna (se, t.ex. Spiegel et al., 2006). Samtidigt visar flera studier (t.ex. Emmons et. al, 2017; Frejd et. al, 2020; Jégou et al., 2022) att det finns goda förutsättningar för att barn ska förstå grunder i evolutionära processer om de får möta ämnet i ålderanpassade aktiviteter. Något som visat sig viktigt är att barn i undervisning får tillgång till material, som till exempel bilder, som de kan använda som multimodala resurser i meningsskapandet och i samtal med varandra och med lärare (Frejd, 2018; 2019; se också Jégou et al., 2022). Serier är ett multimodalt medium som kombinerar flera uttrycksformer (t.ex. text och bild. se, t.ex., Magnusson, 2005; Strömberg, 2003). Forskningsprojektets syfte är att undersöka elevers och lärares interaktion med seriematerialet, vilka evolutionära processer som kommer till uttryck och vilka aspekter av innehållet i serien som verkar främja meningsskapande om evolution, samt lärares och elevers upplevelser av att använda seriematerialet. Vid konferensen kommer vi att presentera forskningsprojektet och preliminära resultat från en innehållsanalys (David & Sutton, 2016) av ca 150 mellanstadieelevers skriftliga beskrivningar av sina upplevelser av att arbeta med materialet, materialet samlas in under vt2023.

Referenser

David, M. & Sutton, C.D. (2016). Samhällsvetenskaplig metod. Studentlitteratur.

Emmons, N., Lees, K., & Kelemen, D. (2017). Young children’s near and far transfer of the basic theory of natural selection: An analogical storybook intervention. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 55(3), 321–347. http://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21421

Fiedler, D., Tröbst, S., & Harms, U. (2017). University students’ conceptual knowledge of randomness and probability in the contexts of evolution and mathematics. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(2), 16- 38. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-07-0230

Frejd, J. (2018). “If It Lived Here, It Would Die.” Children’s Use of Materials as Semiotic Resources in Group Discussions About Evolution. Journal of research in childhood education, 32(3), 251-267. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2018.1465497

Frejd, J. (2019). Encountering evolution: Children's meaning-making processes in collaborative interactions [doktorsavhandling]. Linköping University Electronic Press.

Frejd, J., Stolpe, K., Hultén, M., & Schönborn, K. J. (2022). Making a fictitious animal: 6-7 year-old Swedish children’s meaning making about evolution during a modelling task. Journal of Biological Education, 56(3), 323-339. https://doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2020.1799843

Jégou, C., Gobert, J., Delserieys, A., & Ergazaki, M. (2022). A system to identify young children’s reasoning about variations within populations. In J.-M. Boilevin, A. Delserieys & K. Ravanis (eds.). Precursor models for teaching and learning science during early childhood (pp. 193-217). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08158-3_11

Legare, C. H., Lane, J. D., & Evans, E. M. (2013). Anthropomorphizing science: How does it affect the development of evolutionary concepts?. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 59(2), 168-197. https://doi.org/10.13110/merrpalmquar1982.59.2.0168

Magnusson, H. (2005). Berättande bilder: Svenska tecknade serier för barn. Makadam förlag.

Meir, E., Perry, J., Herron, J. C., & Kingsolver, J. (2007). College students' misconceptions about evolutionary trees. The American Biology Teacher, 69(7). https://doi.org/10.1662/0002-7685(2007)69[71:CSMAET]2.0.CO;2

Spiegel, A., Evans, M., Gram, W., & Diamond, J. (2006). Museum visitors' understanding of evolution. Museums & Social Issues, 1(1), 69-86. https://doi.org/10.1179/msi.2006.1.1.69

Strömberg, F. (2003). Vad är tecknade serier?: en begreppsanalys. Seriefrämjandet.

Wallner, L. (2017). Framing Education: Doing Comics Literacy in the Classroom [doktorsavhandling]. Institutionen för Samhälls- och Välfärdsstudier. Linköpings universitet.

Werdelin, L., Yamaguchi, N., Johnson, W. E., & O’Brien, S. J. (2010). Phylogeny and evolution of cats (Felidae). Biology and conservation of wild felids, 59-82.

This  paper  explores  how  participants  in  a  Swedish  secondary school do gender talk with comics. Swedish schools are tasked with working with gender, but this can be a challenge for many teachers, and finding materials to work with gender aspects can be difficult. Meanwhile,  literary  research  on  comics  has  shown  them to be a potential tool for problematising gender, but  little  educational  research  has  investigated  the  gender discussions that comics can promote. There-fore,  using  conversation-analytical methodology,  we  have  documented  situated  classroom  talk  through video observations, focusing on the social construction of  gender.  Five  excerpts  are shown, where  different  aspects of gender talk are displayed and discussed. Results indicate  that although  students   deconstruct and   criticise   gendered   binaries   in   characteristics and  behaviour  from  comics'  imagery,  this  critique  remains  superficial, revolving around  the  hypersex-ualised body imagery of the muscular superhero the Phantom or the outdated femininity of the girly Daisy Duck.  Although  comics  present  an opportunity  for discussions  of  norm  critique  in  the  classroom,  we  suggest  that  more social-realistic comics,  wherein  gender roles are more subtle and nuanced, be used for furthering the research on this topic and allowing students more width when it comes to deconstructing gender binaries.

Research on comics has leaped tall buildings and run faster than a speeding train in the past decade (Aman & Wallner, 2022), but there is still a lack of research focusing on teaching with comics (see, e.g., Tilley & Weiner, 2017; Wallner & Eriksson Barajas, 2020). Furthermore, research on norm-critical pedagogy with comics is also something that has been lacking attention. With comics being a popular graphic and textual literary media among children and youth, they are a valid source for learning about and discussing norms in educational practice (Wallner, 2017).

This presentation details an ongoing project where we explore classroom talk on comics and graphic novels in secondary school – primarily focusing on aspects of norms, i.e., class, gender, and ethnicity, asking how students construct norms when using comics as a literary medium. Methodologically, we utilize conversation-analytical methods with video observations (Mondada, 2001, 2006) to capture close-knit situated interaction. Data has been collected in collaboration with three different schools, with students aged 14-19, working primarily with Swedish language and literature courses, or the social sciences. Students work in dyads, groups and whole class, and lessons of 30-90 minutes have been recorded.

Using gender as an example, results so far indicate that students working with Disney comics and superhero comics deconstruct and criticize gender binaries from comics’ imagery. However, this critique remains superficial, revolving around the hypersexualized body imagery of the muscular superhero or outdated cartoon femininity (Wallner & Aman, (in press)). Although comics provide opportunity for discussions of norm critique, we suggest that more social-realistic comics, containing critical views on norms, be used for furthering the research on this topic and allowing student discussions more width. As analysis turns to work on more social-realistic comics, we are intrigued to see what students can make of these when it comes to social norms.

References

Aman, R., & Wallner, L. (Eds.). (2022). Teaching with Comics: Empirical, Analytical, and Professional Experiences. Palgrave Macmillan.

Mondada, L. (2001). Conventions for multimodal transcription. Retrieved 13 dec 2018 from https://franzoesistik.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/franzoesistik/mondada_multimodal_conventions.pdf

Mondada, L. (2006). Video recording as the reflexive preservation-configuration of phenomenal features for analysis. In H. Knoblauch, J. Raab, H.-G. Soeffner, & B. Schnettler (Eds.), Video analysis (pp. 51-67). Lang.

Tilley, C. L., & Weiner, R. G. (2017). Teaching and Learning with Comics. In F. Bramlett, R. T. Cook, & A. Meskin (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Comics (pp. 358-366). Routledge.

Wallner, L. (2017). Framing Education: Doing Comics Literacy in the Classroom [Doctoral Dissertation, Linköping University]. Linköping.

Wallner, L., & Aman, R. ((in press)). Muscular superheroes and girly ducks: Gender talk using comics in the classroom. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3866

Wallner, L., & Eriksson Barajas, K. (2020). Using Comics and Graphic Novels in K-9 Education: An Integrative Literature Review. Studies in Comics, 11(1), 37-54. https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00014_1

In this introduction, the editors outline the ideas of using comics in education, as well as make a short introduction of the different chapters included here. As comics have developed throughout the twentieth century, so have the methods of studying them and using them for educational practice. Thus, the scholarly focus of studying comics and their readers has often veered in different directions and taken different approaches, and the collection aims to gather some of these approaches—whether within the literary, social, and educational sciences. In this way, the collection demonstrates the breadth of comics research conducted across the globe, as well as the varied practices of using comics in the classroom for different purposes.

The Swedish gender-neutral pronoun (GNP) hen has been in popular use since its (re)introduction to the public in 2012. Earlier research, analysing newspapers, academic papers and blogs, shows two uses of hen: when gender is unknown and when gender is irrelevant. However, there is a lack of studies of verbal, situated, uses of hen. In this article, we analyse recordings of year-eight students using hen when discussing a Nemi comic. Drawing on discursive psychology, we explore how students negotiate the gender of two unknown characters, and co-construct hen as the proper pronoun use. Adding to previous research, the analysis shows how students make both gendering as well as not gendering into accountable, repairable actions, and how they verbally use hen as a norm-critical other-repair, specifically as an action promoting GNP use. Thus, this exploratory case study contributes knowledge on the situated use of hen, something hitherto unexplored. These results are in turn important to research on gender-neutral pronouns, and our knowledge on their situated use, as well as norm-critical work in schools.

Litteraturvetenskap innebär studiet av den diktade, skapade litteraturen - dess tillkomst, historia, utformning och mottagande. Studier av mottagandet, hur litterärt innehåll tas emot och värderas av läsare, kallas receptionsforskning eller läsarresponsforskning. Inom detta fält har dock det bokstavliga mötet mellan bok och läsare nästan inte studerats. När vi tänker på någon som läser tänker vi kanske på en person som tittar i en bok, men innebär sättet som läsaren i boken något särskilt? Det en typ av fråga som studerats i detta kapitel.

Serien är en bred populärkulturell fiktion som de allra flesta kommer i kontakt med och knyter olika upplevelser till. En del kastar sig över Katten Gustaf och Nemi i dagstidningarna, andra är trogna prenumeranter på Kalle Anka eller Fantomen och några samlar de absoluta Batman-favoriterna på bästa plats i bokhyllan. Överallt i samhället möter vi serier – och ändå finner vi dem nästan ingenstans i skolans läroplaner.

Att arbeta med serier är en multimodal praktik, en praktik som innefattar flera sinnen, där kombinationen av de olika modaliteterna är avgörande för tolkningen – om det ena förändras eller tas bort så förändras förståelsen av det andra. Som fiktion ligger serien kanske närmast till hands för svenskläraren, men även andra ämnen kan med fördel fångas i rutnätsform. Det kan gälla allt ifrån klimatförändringar och teknikens utveckling till värdegrundsfrågor om makt, genus och utanförskap. 

Den här boken ger grundläggande kunskap om serier utifrån ett skolperspektiv. Författaren redogör för forskning som gjorts om serier i skolan och beskriver hur lärare kan använda serieläsning i sin undervisning, men också hur de kan låta elever skapa egna serier för att lära och förstå.

Boken vänder sig till såväl lärarstuderande som verksamma lärare i grundskolans alla ämnen.

Donald Duck & Co have been simultaneously celebrated for vivid stories and characters, and criticized as being conveyors of cultural imperialism. This article discusses two comic albums collecting previously published comics for use in Swedish elementary school. As these collections are designed for schools, they can be expected to impart certain school values. As plot device, or as basis for character motivation, money is the single most common factor in a majority of the stories. Therefore, nine stories have been analysed, focusing primarily on 1) character portrayal through image and text, and 2) how money and materialism are constructed as moral values. The analysis shows how values of materialism and money are displayed differently, represented by different characters: Scrooge McDuck (wealth, greed), Donald Duck (sloth, wastefulness), and Huey, Dewey and Louie (goodness, hard-working). As representatives of the child reader, the nephews show a love of hard work essential to good moral character. However, wealth that comes from hard work (Scrooge’s wealth) could also be immoral if it is not spent properly (or at all). Moreover, certain characters are constructed as intrinsically poor and hopeless, which is problematic. Here, the teacher could be vital for students’ possibilities of interpreting the texts.

This article explores how teachers and pupils construct and negotiate discourses around comic books as part of interaction in the classroom from a New Literacy Studies perspective. The combination of imagery and text, the essence of comics, makes them relevant tools for exploring how literacy is constructed in social interaction in the classroom. The analysis is based on video material from two different Swedish schools, one class in Grade 3 and one class in Grade 8. Nine interactional sequences were initially found, and these have been analysed using a qualitative discursive psychological approach, investigating how assessments are utilized to perform social actions – how participants use assessments of comics as easy or difficult reading, or assessments of themselves or others as being or not being comic book readers – to make something happen in interaction. The results show that participants utilize discourses of personal, visual and textual literacy to construct a comics literacy in which image and text are both construed as important for, as well as a difficulty in, reading comics. This demonstrates constructions of comics literacy and readership, how personal experiences of reading comics are important and the importance of broadening the view of comics as school literature.

The aim of this article is to increase knowledge on the use of comics as materials in K-9 education (ages 6-15). This is examined through an integrative, systematic literature review of research. Systematic database searches, as well as manual searches of reference lists and websites, were analysed and cross-referenced, to find common areas of research and possible gaps in knowledge. 55 texts (research articles and doctoral theses) were found, with 40 first authors from 14  countries. Results show that most of these studies were done in North America, were so called ‘staged’ studies where the researcher introduces a material and observes the results, and most studies focus on students’ reading preferences comics, rather than, for example, composing comics. Several different gaps in knowledge were found: the main ones being that only three of the texts describe studies that have high ecologically validity; and there seems to be no cross-national study of comics in education

This article combines theory on comics, narrative, and discursive psychology and analyses how the gutter is co-constructed for storytelling in classroom interaction. Closure of the gutter has previously been treated as a cognitive aspect. Here, interactional video data are analysed, with participants organizing ten separate comic panels. The analysis focuses on participants’ talk about the gutter, and how this constructs social actions. The results show how participants co-construct the gutter as meaningful space, hereby organizing time, actions, and events in narratives. The paper evinces that gutters are co-constructed as too narrow or too broad, relating chronologically and logically to surrounding panels. This contributes to sociocultural perspectives on literacy and use of comics for engaging with narratives in classroom practice.

This paper analyses and discusses ongoing comics literacy events where two 3rd Grade students and their teachers are working with comic books, focusing specifically on visual representations of sound. The purpose of the paper is to explore how these representations, as multimodal aspects of comics literacy, provoke literacy experiences in the classroom. Visual representations of sound come in different shapes and sizes, but are generally written outside of speech bubbles in bold letters. Using discursive psychology –allowing the researcher to view participants’ verbal and embodied actions as performing actions in social and situated contexts– the current paper analyses how pairs of students and teachers co-construct visual aspects in comic books, translating them into verbal sound and embodied action. Results show that embodied motion, sensation, and audible sound are utilized to interactively display comic sound effects to enhance the reader’s experience of the narrative. This is done as co-construction between adult and child through re-enactment of the visuals as real-life sound and action –also connecting this to other visual aspects of adjacent panels in order to make this meaningful. The paper argues that this challenges both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of what literacy can be and how sound effects –through the shape, colour and font of the graphic text– influence and enliven the comic narratives created in the classroom.

Serietidningar i skolan gör det möjligt för elever att arbeta med handling och känsla i berättelser och visar hur lärares och elevers personliga erfarenheter med serier bidrar till klassrumsarbetet.

Interest in comics as Swedish school material has risen in the last few years and the publication of comics for children and adolescents has also increased. Meanwhile, although research around new literacies has taken an interest in combinations of image and text, there is still little research on comics as a literacy material, especially as part of school practices. With comics’ rise in popularity, and their quality as examples of new literacies, this points to the relevance of exploring how meaning making with comics is done in schools. The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge on how locally situated literacy practices are done, practices in which pupils and teachers make meaning with comics. The study combines literacy, comics and discursive psychology to investigate aspects of literacy not as individual, inner workings, but as part of participants’ social constructions, in line with New Literacy Studies. With this perspective, it is possible to investigate literary concepts such as narrative, and participants’ construction of story elements, through the way in which these aspects are utilized by participants to construct social action – what participants do with their utterances. To study this, video recordings have been made in one primary and one secondary school, in two different Swedish cities. The results of the study show constructions of a comics literacy, where participants engage with both visual and textual aspects of the material and negotiate focalization of narrative perspective and construction of narrative structure as well as narrative devices such as speech and thought bubbles. Furthermore, meaning making of comics literacy also includes the construction of discourses around comics as a specific type of story telling, either for material or literary reasons. The thesis discusses how participants construct classroom literature, and provides insight into how interaction around comics enables participants to construct and negotiate discourses around what comics literacy is and what it enables, as well as how to talk about, create, and read comics.

This article investigates teachers’ and pupils’ use of speech and thought bubbles in a classroom literacy project involving comics. Through studying video data on naturally occurring classroom interaction whereby participants in Grade 3 (ages 9–10) talk about bubbles, the aim of this article is to increase knowledge of how bubbles are constructed as devices of literacy. The analysis focuses on the action-oriented aspects of discursive psychology: emphasis, word repetition, uptake and the use of signs, symbols, and text in the comics. Results show how participants negotiate combinations of shapes, symbols and text to construct common knowledge concerning bubbles. Furthermore, teachers use pupils’ drawn bubbles, adding to them a variety of multimodal expressions, thereby illustrating how narrative focalization and character prosody are constructed in the reading of comics. The study of how bubbles are constructed contributes to a larger theme of studying classroom instruction using comics as resources for doing literacy.

Children in preschool encounter sensations in their daily activities that could be interpreted as scientific phenomena. As part of these encounters, social interaction and meaning making are important elements in making science available to the children. Children in preschool rely on multimodal communication since they have not yet developed a verbal language. Therefore, this study aims at taking a multimodal perspective to investigate meaning making in science in a preschool setting. Data was collected using observations and audio recordings from one Swedish preschool with 18 children between 1-5 years old and three preschool teachers. Data was analyzed using semantic relationships. However, these relationships were investigated not only within verbal utterances, but in gestures and embodied activities as well. The results show that the preschool teacher verbalizes children’s embodied actions and gestures. In doing so, the teacher not only offers words for children’s activities, but also makes the activities, and participants’ meaning making, explicit to all children in the group. Hence, the teacher is translating modalities. Furthermore, this study shows the importance of attending a multimodal perspective in preschool settings. If attention is only given to children’s verbal output, there is a risk of underestimating their competence in emergent science meaning making. Instead, a multimodal perspective reveals children’s competent meaning making in interaction.