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Instructional framing for guiding the construction of explanatory diagrams in a science classroom: A metafunction perspective.

2024, Park, Joonhyeong

This study investigates how to guide students’ drawing diagram activities as constructing explanations in science classrooms from the metafunctions in systemic functional language (SFL). Although a drawing-to-learn approach requires sufficient support, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the pedagogical considerations for guiding students on what and how to draw during their activities. Guided by the metafunctions in SFL, I analysed a case of one teacher’s teaching practices of employing drawing-diagram activities in a general science classroom. I found that the teacher translated the objects to draw from the familiar to the targeted visual meaning for the students (ideational). To provide a clearer understanding of the roles of diagrams, she had reflective discussions with the students about how other people could interpret their diagrams and what would be important to represent iteratively through sharing the diagrams using a visualiser (interpersonal). She also often provided several examples of organising diagrams at the beginning of or during the activities to brainstorm ideas for the compositions (textual). This practical knowledge framed by the metafunctions is aimed at providing a better understanding of how teachers can deploy a drawing-to-learn approach and intervene during drawing activities to facilitate students’ science learning in general science classrooms.

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Multimodal genre of science classroom discourse: Mutual contextualization between genre and representation construction

2021, Tang, Kok Sing, Park, Joonhyeong, Chang, Jina

This paper argues that meaning-making with multimodal representations in science learning is always contextualized within a genre and, conversely, what constitutes an ongoing genre also depends on a multimodal coordination of speech, gesture, diagrams, symbols, and material objects. In social semiotics, a genre is a culturally evolved way of doing things with language (including non-verbal representations). Genre provides a useful lens to understand how a community’s cultural norms and practices shape the use of language in various human activities. Despite this understanding, researchers have seldom considered the role of scientific genres (e.g., experimental account, information report, explanation) to understand how students in science classrooms make meanings as they use and construct multimodal representations. This study is based on an enactment of a drawing-to-learn approach in a primary school classroom in Australia, with data generated from classroom videos and students’ artifacts. Using multimodal discourse analysis informed by social semiotics, we analyze how the semantic variations in students’ representations correspond to the recurring genres they were enacting. We found a general pattern in the use and creation of representations across different scientific genres that support the theory of a mutual contextualization between genre and representation construction.