Unpacking the complexities of learning processes in science education often requires more than just one analytical framework. Despite the need for such analytical and, by extension, methodological diversity, the science education research literature reveals a scarcity of studies integrating multiple analytical perspectives, thereby possibly overlooking crucial aspects of meaning-making and learning. Addressing this gap, we present a methodological innovation by analysing data through the dual lens of two research traditions and their respective analytical frameworks. Specifically, we integrate perspectives of the social semiotic theory of multimodality and embodied cognition to unpack additional layers of complexity within the learning processes in a case study on Newton’s laws in a primary physics classroom in Sweden. By choosing and contrasting different analytical lenses, we uncover the subtle yet profound ways in which students’ interactions with Newtonian physics are intertwined with their embodied experiences. Exploring students’ physical enactment and phenomenological experiences alongside the various functions of language (in a multimodal sense) within a social semiotic framework can deepen our understanding of the challenges students face in learning force concepts in physics. Ultimately, our dual analysis demonstrates the value of synthesising disparate theoretical perspectives and paves the way for richer research methodologies. Such syntheses have important disciplinary implications for science education research and can lay the ground for fostering collaborations among various disciplinary traditions. We argue that this interdisciplinary approach is crucial for making meaningful progress in our field and beyond.

En erfaren bildlärare behöver inte bara hantera didaktiska utmaningar och vara tydlig pedagogiskt utan hen behöver även ha en djupare förståelse för de centrala målen kopplat till bildämnet och en känsla för hur olika konstnärliga idéer relaterar till bildskapande, tekniker och olika material. En central del av detta är förmågan att kunna analysera bilder och förstå olika sätt att representera idéer visuellt. I den här artikeln tittar vi på en bilderbok och fokuserar på hur illustratören har byggt upp sina illustrationer genom olika visuella symboler och tecken. Genom att undersöka bilderna i boken ger vi exempel på hur bildlärare och bildlärarstudenter framgent kan hjälpa elever att utveckla mer analytiska färdigheter och kritiskt tänkande i sin bildundervisning.

Making meaning about disciplinary knowledge involves both disciplinary content and relevant semiotic resources (e.g., text structures) for communicating the content, as two sides of a coin. The purpose of this study is to contribute to research in science education with a model for visualising how the two sides of the coin are elaborated in classroom interaction, aiming to support students’ disciplinary knowledge development. The model was developed based on data from a series of lessons in a primary science classroom where the teacher and her students negotiated and made meaning about action and reaction forces. We show how the model can be used to deepen the understanding of how the meaning making through classroom interaction forms a pathway, visualising different levels of disciplinary literacy and hence the model's usefulness for both research and for designing teaching practices.

One central issue for research in classrooms is to provide insights concerning characteristics of classroominteraction that can help teachers improve their teaching. In the present study, we analyse spokeninteraction in one elementary physics classroom by the use of two different frameworks, targeting similar aspects of communication, namely how discourse patterns shape the relations between participants. The two frameworks utilized are on the one hand an analysis of the communicative approach according to Mortimer and Scott, combined with an analysis of discourse patterns such as initiation-response-evaluation(IRE), and on the other hand analysis related to the interpersonal meta-function in Halliday’s systemicfunctional grammar (SFG). The aim was to highlight possibilities and limitations of the differentframeworks. Our analyses reveal that the two analytical frameworks have partly the same, partly different affordances concerning what they can reveal about classroom interaction. The analysis of the communicative approach has the potential of elucidating discursive patterns and power relations at a general level, while the analysis based on SFG can provide more details about, e.g., the power relations in terms ofhow the participants actually structure their utterances. The results are also discussed regarding implications for education. 

This study reports on a case study about multimodal work in a primary physics classroom focusing on forces. Previous research reports that students benefit from multimodal work in science classrooms. Yet, few systematic studies have been performed to reveal how students represent their experiences and ideas of science phenomena over time within and across different semiotic modes (e.g., through action, speech, writing, and image, including multimodal ensembles). The design of the lessons was built around a number of experimental activities, starting with a puzzling phenomenon and where students for each experiment predicted, observed, described, and tried to come up with explanations. Based on social-semiotics, we combined analysis at an overall level (long timescale and large grain size) and a detailed level (short timescale and small grain size) to shed light on how the science content was represented within and between modes over the teaching and learning period, and what content was expressed in these representations. Our findings reveal how students moved from focusing on attributes such as a “heavy” regarding artifacts used in the experiments, towards the central physics processes, such as one object exerting force on another object. Furthermore, we were able to detect that such “signs of learning” were shown in students’ small-group discussions and multimodal texts following a carefully orchestrated multimodal exposition by the teacher. Hence, such a careful multimodal orchestration appeared to be critical for the students’ meaning-making about the science content.

I naturvetenskapliga klassrum används olika former av representationer av ett ofta abstrakt och svårfångat ämnesinnehåll, som till exempel kraft och skuggbildning. Det är också vanligt att eleverna genomför undersökningar av fenomen som de sedan ska beskriva och förklara, i samtal eller genom skrift och bild. I det här projektet undersökte vi hur elever och lärare i mellanstadieklassrum arbetade med att representera dels fenomenen ljus och skugga, dels kraft och motkraft i fysikundervisningen.

This paper examines the affordances of physical objects (e.g. apparatus, models, manipulatives) as they were used by teachers and students to make meaning in coordination with their speech and gestures. Despite the pervasive use of physical objects as material and tactile resources in hands-on investigations or demonstrations, there have been few attempts to analyze their role and function in meaning-making, in the same way, that researchers have previously done for other modes of representation such as speech, written text, diagram and gesture. Using social semiotics as a theoretical framework, we conceptualise physical objects as a semiotic mode with a particular affordance for making meaning that involves embodied actions and manipulation of tools. Based on a multimodal discourse analysis of numerous classroom situations, we illustrate how physical objects as a mode have four unique affordances for meaning-making in science classrooms. These affordances are: (a) enacting material interaction, (b) providing evidential meaning, (c) orientating three-dimensional spatial meaning and (d) sensitising experiential meaning. The implication of why we should use physical objects to support or value-add science meaning-making is then discussed.

The aim of this book project was to bring together international educators, researchers and practitioners on the use of Thermal Cameras in Science Education. The outcome was a collection of chapters describing the physics behind thermal cameras, empirical studies on their use in educational settings, and examples of their practical use for teaching.

Studying thermal phenomena involves exploring physical processes beyond what we can see. Central concepts in thermal science, such as energy, heat and temperature are not visible to the naked eye. These concepts permeate physics, chemistry, and biology as scientific areas of study, but also teaching of the corresponding subjects at multiple levels of education. As witnessed in the educational research literature through decades, learning thermal concepts continues to be a significant obstacle in science teaching across the world.

Worksheets are common in science classrooms with an aim to support pupils meaning-making, e.g., for guiding them in performing hands-on activities and documenting their experiences of such activities. Yet, there have been few systematic studies of pupils disciplinary representations in worksheets. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, we have analyzed fifth grade pupils (age 10-11) multimodal texts in worksheets (n = 25) when they were working with shadow formation as part of their regular classroom activities. In the worksheets they were asked to first explain in writing why or why not a shadow was formed and then explain shadow formation through a drawing. At an overall level, we found that a majority of the pupils managed to express in writing why a shadow is formed, though it appeared to be more challenging for them to explain why a shadow is not formed. In their drawings, quite a few pupils managed to include several key aspects of shadow formation, at least when combining image with writing. For all tasks, the explanatory parts of the pupils responses were often implicit. Based on our results, we suggest that pupils may benefit from teaching practices that integrate a parallel focus on form and content as a way to raise their awareness of, for instance, the affordances of different resources and how explanations can be structured. Such practices may support pupils to be able to consider and choose appropriate resources in their disciplinary texts.