Pixel International Conferences

When explaining concepts in the science class, a teacher makes available to students a variety of communicative resources, both verbal and nonverbal; nonverbal resources are especially useful when concepts are abstract or pertain to the microscopic world that is not immediately (visually, physically) available to students.  Although the notion of teaching as a multimodal activity is well accepted and documented in the science education literature (e.g., [1], [2]), there still remains a gap in our understanding of how these multimodal resources are integrated in teaching, affording or constraining the construction of meanings [3]. In this study, we report on an analysis of teachers’ use of multimodal resources while teaching the same scientific concept in different languages, in different sociocultural contexts, and to a group of students from a different linguistic and cultural background. Data was collected in two high school Biology classes, one in Brazil and another in Canada. The Brazilian lessons recorded were part of a grade 9 Biology class in an inner-city public school in a large Brazilian city, and the Canadian lessons were part of a grade 11 class in a suburban high school. Both teachers were female and native speakers of the specific language of instruction in each of the classes (Portuguese in Brazil, and English in Canada). Two digital camcorders were used to capture the teacher and the students in these classes. We used Transana ® software to analyze the data. Comparing the two contexts by analyzing the multimodal resources the two teachers utilized while teaching about synapses, as part of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, the affordances and constraints of making meanings available to the audience become evident. Although the scientific concepts being taught were the same, the resources used and the way in which the explanation of the concepts unfolded during classes were starkly different in the two contexts. Understanding classroom communication and how the multimodal resources used in teaching science help or hinder the construction of meaning have implications for researchers, science teaching methods instructors, and teachers. The investigation of multimodal teaching needs to move beyond acknowledging the different aspects each modality contributes to the conceptual unit to include how these different modalities are integrated, creating the conditions and means for meaning-making to occur. Only then we will be able to approach the important task of investigating how to incorporate this knowledge into teacher preparation and development programs to better equip future and practicing teachers with the pedagogical content knowledge needed to effectively communicate abstract, complex concepts to students.

Keywords: Multimodality; Gestures; Classroom Communication; Biology Teaching;

References:

[1] Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London: Continuum.
[2] First Author & Collaborator (2007).
[3] Lemke, J. L. (1998). Multiplying meaning: Visual and verbal semiotics in scientific text. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science (pp. 87– 113). London: Routledge.