Content area
Abstract
The field’s work on modeling practices falls short of encouraging learners to use their lived experiences and leverage their linguistic resources while engaging in science practices. Conceptualizing modeling as a multimodal practice in which diverse language resources are welcomed and encouraged in knowledge building, this qualitative case study focused on how multimodal modeling practices could help learners, in this case, 10 preservice elementary science teachers, build knowledge as they engaged with a complex science topic by leveraging their linguistic resources. The research questions guiding this study were: How did multimodal modeling practices facilitate packing and unpacking meanings in knowledge building in science? In what ways did multimodal modeling practices play a role for learners in their switching between everyday language and scientific language in knowledge building in science? How did multimodal modeling practices influence learners’ understanding of models and modeling in knowledge building in science?
Data sources included video and audio recordings, student artifacts (drawings, reflective essays, and modeling worksheets), student interviews from a classroom implementation of a modeling curriculum in a science methods course at a research university in the southeastern part of the United States. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective to data analysis, this study combined Multimodal Interaction Analysis (MIA) and the semantics dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to examine how preservice teachers use a variety of semiotic resources for a range of meaning-making moments.
The findings of this study suggested that multimodal modeling practices (i) facilitate embodied interactions between learners, learning materials, and linguistic resources that help pack and unpack meanings, (ii) encourage the development of a shared, intermediate language that helps learners move from disembedded ways of thinking and speaking to embedded ways of thinking and speaking in science learning, and (iii) expose learners to a better understanding of what meaningful and equitable modeling practices might look like in classroom settings by showing them what models are, who can develop a model, and whose knowledge contributes to modeling practices while building knowledge in science. Implications for research and practice and suggestions for future research directions were explored.
Details
