Meaning making in science is supported by different modes, such as spoken and written language, images and gestures, all of which have different affordances. The epistemological commitments of modes are affordances that cannot be avoided. This article investigates how the epistemological commitments of modes affect possibilities for learning. Video data was collected from a learning activity where upper secondary students drew and explained an experiment representing the greenhouse effect. The analysis uses the variation theory of learning, which assumes that students learn when they notice new aspects of objects of learning by experiencing variation against an invariant background. Such variation can be created through the representations used. Findings show that, in the learning activity, variation was created in a range of modes. Some of the variation, particularly with regards to radiation, was due to the epistemological commitments of drawing. However, these aspects of radiation went unnoticed by the students, possibly because several aspects varied simultaneously. The teacher then helped the students to become aware of certain variation. Implications for the teaching and learning of science when taking the epistemological commitment of different modes into consideration include both challenges, such as when unintended variation is created, and opportunities, such as when spontaneously occurring variation can be taken up for discussion.

Som biologilärare vill man ofta att eleverna ska få möjlighet att uppleva naturen i undervisningen. Schilhab (2021) visar att upplevelser av naturen ökar förståelse av och förmåga att minnas biologiundervisning. Sådana upplevelser kan vara svåra att erbjuda praktiskt och är oftast begränsade till närområdet. Syftet med det här projektet är att undersöka om Virtual Reality (VR) kan användas i ekologidelen av biologi 1-kursen för att förflytta eleven till biom som vi normalt sett inte kan besöka i undervisningen.

Vi undrar:

• Ökar därigenom förståelsen för biomspecifika interaktioner och evolutionära lösningar?
• Upplever elever användningen av VR som positiv och motivationshöjande?

Projektet knyter an både till naturvetenskapsprogrammets programmål om att använda modern teknik likväl som ämnes- och kursrelaterade mål inom ekologin (Gy11). Argument för att användandet av VR och immersiva 360°-videos kan ge liknande effekter som besök i naturen är att eleverna blir mer motiverade, intresserade och aktiva samt att de har större kontroll av upplevelsen jämfört med traditionella media som böcker och film (se t.ex. Ferzli et al 2019; Rosendahl & Wagner, 2024; samt Lege & Bonner, 2020).

Inför arbetet med VR svarade eleverna (N=40) på några inledande frågor och skattade sin vana av VR. Under arbetet med VR jobbade eleverna med ett frågeformulär om biom kopplat till innehållet i några av läraren utvalda VR-klipp (360°-video där eleverna med VR-glasögon kunde se sig om både uppåt, nedåt och åt sidorna). Efter arbetet med videomaterialet fyllde eleverna i en enkät där de utvärderade arbetet.

Det insamlade materialet analyseras med innehållsanalys, och preliminära resultat visar att många elever har uttryckt att de tycker det var ett motivationshöjande och lärorikt sätt att jobba.

Att som lärare ta till sig nya sätt att presentera material är relevant när de ger mervärde för inlärning. VR har stor potential i undervisning då det kan öka elevernas upplevelse av biologin.

This paper describes a lab to help students develop their understanding of rotational motion. The focus is on moment of inertia, which the students investigate by rolling cylinders down a ramp and determine in two different ways for a bicycle wheel. The most important and original part of the lab is the exploration of the gyroscopic effect, where measurements of precession and rotation frequencies are made using the variation of the detected magnetic field, enabling the calculation of the moment of inertia. The lab is received well by the students and can be done with relatively simple equipment easily accessible to them.

The meaning-making practices of science are multimodal and include representational forms such as spoken and written language, diagrams, graphs, equations, and images. Science learning proceeds through an ever-increasing grasp of such resources. This study aims at providing insight into how a combination of Interaction Analysis (IA) and social semiotic analysis can provide a deeper understanding of students’ engagement and learning with science representations. Social semiotics offers an analytical lens and categories for interpreting nuances of meaning in the visual domain. IA places a strong methodological emphasis on grounding analysis in unfolding interactions among peers, teachers, and artefacts. Investigating a teaching design where students iteratively produce multimodal drawings of the greenhouse effect, we used a multimodal analysis of the students’ drawings and an IA of transcribed video recordings of students’ interactions with each other and their teacher. The analyses show a progression towards more scientific student drawings over the course of a lesson. This progression was made possible by sustained attention to critical details in the drawings, and the drawings and interactions were instrumental in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms behind the greenhouse effect. IA provides important analytical insights into students’ interest in the situation, which is at the heart of social semiotics. Social semiotics offers insight into the nuances of students’ interpretations of the world and how they relate to the practices of disciplinary science.

In this theoretical paper we draw on two constructs that we argue are related to the appropriate interpretation of many representations in science education: frames and structures of awareness. By representations is meant, for example, images, diagrams and models. The idea of frames is taken from social semiotics and the idea of structures of awareness is taken from the variation theory of learning. Using both an everyday example and examples from science education we make the argument that students need to become explicitly aware of tacitly held structures of awareness that frame their interpretation of representations. A task for science educators would be to investigate the possibility to produce representations that could aid students in this work.

Social semiotics terms the immediate environment in which a text functions the ‘context of situation’ – an instance of the context of culture. The context of situation is defined by three parameters, FIELD, TENOR and MODE, which can be operationalized by the WHAT, the WHO and the HOW of a text functioning in a science classroom (Knain, 2015). Text and context mutually enable and constrain each other in acts of meaning. For something to be a text, it must both hang together internally and cohere externally in terms of the three contextual parameters (Halliday & Hasan, 2013). In this paper, we argue that although group work in science classes can be seen as joint text development, what is actually developed is often not a text, but a trajectory of different multimodal texts, each with its own text-context relationship. This is because the students sometimes jump between different topics, which point to different values of the context-parameters. We present an analysis of video recorded student group work where the students produce a trajectory of multimodal texts and move between different contexts of situation – as judged by the values of the contextual parameters. But there is one main thread that they continuously return to. This thread is both internally cohesive and coherent with a (developing) context of situation, and thus constitutes a text. Our analyses suggest that a factor that helps in enabling the students to return to this main thread is a drawing that they produce. A number of aspects of visual grammar are used as indications of the continuous transformation of both the text and its context of situation, including framing, foregrounding and backgrounding. We suggest that this process of multimodal text development is likely to be characteristic for learning trajectories

Representations such as writing, speech, graphs, diagrams, gestures and simulations are important tools for teaching and learning in science (Knain, 2015). Representations are also valuable tools for making student understanding visible for sharing, discussion and mentoring. In this study, our aims were to study student teachers’ conceptualization of representations as tools for student learning, the importance of representations related to their own field of science and their experiences with representations during teaching practice. We performed focus group interviews with student teachers before and after teaching practice, along with group discussions on selected representations. We also studied exam papers from a small number of student teachers focusing on representations. The data was analysed by thematic analysis using software for qualitative analysis, ATLAS.ti. Preliminary findings suggest that before teacher practice the student teachers were familiar with the concept of representations and the importance of representations as tools for learning in science. They were aware of challenges related to interpretation of representations, and that different representations and combinations of representations can support student learning in science. During teacher practice the student teachers seem to have developed a greater awareness of the nature of representations, what students need to know and that they should be able to interpret and make their own representations. However, student teachers also report on limited possibilities to focus on representations during their teacher practice. We conclude that working with representations for teachers and student teachers is related to the development of an awareness of representations as fundamental tools and forms of expression in science learning. An important task is to enable the student teachers to study their own teaching practice by building a bridge between subject, pedagogical content knowledge and teaching practice, creating a “third space” as an arena for the student teachers’ professional development as teachers.