This study examines how students explain their conceptual understanding of protein function using visualizations. Thirteen upper secondary students, four tertiary students (studying chemical biology), and two experts were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were structured around 2D illustrations of proteins and an animated representation of water transport through a channel in the cell membrane. In the analysis of the transcripts, a score, based on the SOLO-taxonomy, was given to each student to indicate the conceptual depth achieved in their explanations. The use of scientific terms and non-conventionalized expressions in the students’ explanations were investigated based upon a semiotic approach. The results indicated that there was a positive relationship between use of scientific terms and level of education. However, there was no correlation between students’ use of scientific terms and conceptual depth. In the interviews, we found that non-conventionalized expressions were used by several participants to express conceptual understanding and played a role in making sense of the visualizations of protein function. Interestingly, also the experts made use of non-conventionalized expressions. The results of our study imply that more attention should be drawn to students’ use of scientific and non-conventionalized terms in relation to their conceptual understanding.

The theme of the paper is the relationship between gesture and argumentation structure and semantic content. An analysis is given of the relationship between speech and gesture that occurs in a video-recorded discussion among students of chemical biology and their supervisor where they are asked to describe what they experienced during a haptic laboratory exercise in protein ligand docking. The analysis focuses especially on the repeated use of speech together with gesture expressions, the repetition of gestures by the same and different speakers, sequences and transformations of gestures, the change in function of a gesture, and interactive gesturing.

The paper consists of an investigation and discussion of attempts to draw diagrams of Peirce’s notion of unlimited semiosis. A recent attempt to conceptualize unlimited semiosis in terms of Representamen-Object-Interpretant found in Daniel Chandler’s popular Semiotics: The Basics is examined and criticized for an unnecessary multiplication of objects in the process of unlimited semiosis. An alternative strategy for diagrammatic representations in terms of Representamen-Object-Interpretant utilizing the notions of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity on different levels, without new objects, is proposed and explained.

When confronted with the representations and terms of science, students make meaning using the knowledge and language they possess. They make frequent use of conventional expressions, but they also use words that seemingly have no conventional meaning, here labelled help-words. This study explores the verbal resources upper secondary students use to make meaning of molecular life science. The paper gives a description of the phenomenon of non-conventionalised expressions, help-words, based on a study of 20 upper secondary students. The results indicate that help-words are meaningful in learning situations, especially in abstract disciplines such as molecular life science.

The article contains a concise presentation of a proposal for the explanation of the basic logical and conceptual structure of meaningful human experience as expressed in language. The core of the argument is that meaningful human experience is something that can only be derived from mutual interpersonal awareness. The article contains a proposal for a terminology for the conceptual details of the structure of inter-subjective experience and an attempt to base a command of natural language within this structure. The article ends with a discussion of the main thesis of the article as it relates to other recent approaches to the study of meaning in natural language.

The relation of language to thought and mind is an ancient topic in linguistic theory. Normally language is related to thought in an individual mind. In this article, I explore the analogy between the dimensions and dynamics of individual perception as formulated by Husserl and the inter-individual perception and conceptualization found in everyday conversations.

The notions of horizon, perspective, appresentation, and apperception developed by Husserl for the phenomenology of individual perception are generalized to incorporate the mutual and cooperative calibration of consciousness evidenced in conversational discussions where speakers cooperate to construct an interpretation and evaluation of their experience. This process of local cooperative and mutual co-construction and evaluation of interpretations of experience takes place in what is referred to here as a course of development. An extended excerpt from a conversational discussion is used to demonstrate the interactive dialogic and dialectical work speakers carry out in an effort to make sense of their experience of the world and their relationship to the world and each other. Ways of talking are analysed as means of constructing restricted folk-theoretic world-views that rely on the dialogic-dialectical work of the speakers. Contributions to an on-going discussion are claimed to constitute folk theories actualized in real time in the talk where Husserl’s notions of horizon, perspective, etc. of individual consciousness are given a distributed or shared interpretation in the establishment and maintenance of inter-individual consciousness in relation to the topics and events under development in the conversation.

Molecular life science has become one of the fastest-growing fields regarding scientific and technical innovation. Images, diagrams and other forms of visualizations are playing increasingly important roles in molecular life science research, teaching and learning. This study examines how upper secondary students interpret visualizations of protein function. Thirteen upper secondary students and four tertiary students (majoring in biochemistry) were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were structured around two 2D illustrations of proteins and an animated representation of water molecules being transported through a channel in the cell membrane. In the analysis of the transcripts, a score, based on the SOLO-taxonomy, was developed to evaluate the depth of students’ conceptual understanding. Furthermore, the relative use of scientific terms, metaphors, deictic and non-conventionalized expressions in the students’ explanations was also disclosed. The results indicate that the beginner students frequently use metaphors which came from their school education or created by themselves, i.e. spontaneous metaphors. Students also make use of non-conventionalized expressions that seemingly have no meaning in relation to scientific concepts and processes. The results from this study indicated that there was no simple positive correlation between use of scientific terms and the depth of conceptual understanding. Interestingly, in the interviews, non-conventionalized expressions were used to express conceptual understanding and they play a role in the meaning-making of the students. Moreover, the results revealed that difficulties in science education may to a large degree be connected to the potential problems concerning communicating the precise and general nature of scientific terms.

The study reported in this article investigated the use of metaphors by upper secondary and tertiary students while learning a specific content area in molecular life science, protein function. Terms and expressions in science can be used in such precise and general senses that they are totally dissociated from their metaphoric origins. Beginners in a scientific field, however, lack the experience of using a term of metaphorical origin in its domain-specific precise and general sense, and may therefore be more cognitively affected than the expert by the underlying metaphor. The study shows that beginners in the field of molecular life science use spontaneous metaphors and metaphors used in teaching in a way that demonstrates that they have difficulty using the proper scientific terminology. The results of this study indicate, among other things, that difficulties in science education may, to a large degree, be connected with problems of communicating the generality and precision of scientific terms and metaphors used in science. The article ends with a suggestion as how to enable students to move from general and vague metaphoric uses of scientific terms toward a more general and precise usage.

Meaning is often viewed as originating within an individual mind and then expressed by a combination of speech and gesture. In this article I present evidence from documented spontaneous interaction that supports the claim that speech and gesture should be viewed as complementary aspects of the on-going incremental determination of dialogic inter-subjective intentionality in communicative interaction. Speech and gesture relate brain with brain to enable meaning and mind. Embodied meaning is enacted through speech and gesture in interaction. Mind is viewed as embodied but distributed and emerges in the field created by interacting brains-and-bodies. An empirical research methodology for the study of speech and gesture in relation to mind and meaning in interaction is presented.

Abstract: Speakers in conversational discussions are often confronted with the task of formulating themselves unrehearsed. Speaker and listener cooperate to construct an interpretation of their experience of the world, their part in the world, and the world of experience within them, that can be evaluated by a listener as next speaker or by the very same speaker who was primarily responsible for the production of the formulation in the first instance. This process of local cooperative and mutual co-construction and evaluation of interpretations of experience I refer to as a course of development. In a course of development an interpretation of reality (social or otherwise) is interactively and rhetorically worked up and dialectically worked through for coherence, relevance, tenability, consequences, etc. Excerpts from conversational discussions are used to demonstrate the interactive rhetorical and dialectical work speakers and listeners carry out in an effort to make sense of their experience of the world and their relationship to the world and each other. Ways of talking are analysed as means of constructing restricted world-views that do not so much rely or depend on the grammar of the particular language as on the dialogical-dialectical work of the speakers and listeners. The notions of horizon, perspective, appresentation, and apperception developed by Husserl for the phenomenology of individual perception are generalized to incorporate the mutual and cooperative calibration of consciousness evidenced in a course of development in conversational discussion. Contributions to an on-going discussion are claimed to constitute -passing theories- (a la Davidson) actualized in real time in the talk where the Husserlian notions of horizon, perspective, etc. of individual subjective consciousness are in a sense turned inside out in the establishment and maintenance of inter-subjective consciousness in relation to the topics and the events under development in the conversation.