New Perspectives in Science Education

Visual representations serve a multitude of crucial functions in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and information. They may take many different forms and refer to different phenomena or processes. Making valid decisions how particular visuals should look like presupposes a thorough insight in the nature of the referent or subject of the visual representation, the complex intermediate processes and technologies that are used to produce it, the final form and context of the visual, and the purposes it needs to serve. While often oblivious to its producers and their users or consumers, these insights and practices are firmly grounded in cultural processes of meaning-making, and therefore benefit from a socio-semiotic approach. To date, relatively little academic effort went into providing an integrated cross-disciplinary overview of the critical issues of visual production and uses in scientific research and education. So there is still an urgent need to further develop visual and multimodal competencies (Bucchi and Saracino 2016; Priest 2013, Pauwels, 2006) in science education, research and communication, which include partly generic and partly disciplinary specific skills. These comprise such things as an adequate level of proficiency in perceptual processes, analytical and productional expertise, and cultural knowledge. For it is clear that the increased consumption and further democratization of visual technology does not necessarily lead to higher levels of visual and multimodal competency. This intervention presents and discusses an integrated socio-semiotic model for skilfully producing and assessing different types of visual representations and technologies. It embodies an approach which is focused on increasing our knowledge of different types of referents, of representational codes and traditions, on the strengths and limitations of distinct technologies, on particular mimetic and expressive characteristics of the visual, and on the context (purpose, audience) in which the visual product will figure.

Keywords visual representations, socio-semiotic, visual practices, visual technologies, visual semiotics, scientific visualization

References

• Priest, S. H. 2013. “Critical science literacy: What citizens and journalists need to know to make sense of science”. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 33. 138–145.
• Bucchi, M. and B. Saracino. 2016. “’Visual science literacy’: Images and public understanding of science in the digital age”. Science Communication 38(6). 812–819.
• Pauwels, L. (2006) (ed.) Visual Cultures of Science: Rethinking Representational Practices in Knowledge Building and Science Communication, Hanover and London: Dartmouth College Press - University Press of New England, 299 pp.