A disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: Achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes

Abstract

Abstract:In this theoretical article we use an interpretative study with physics undergraduates to exemplify a proposed characterization of student learning in university science in terms of fluency in disciplinary discourse. Drawing on ideas from a number of different sources in the literature, we characterize what we call "disciplinary discourse" as the complex of representations, tools and activities of a discipline, describing how it can be seen as being made up of various "modes". For university science, examples of these modes are: spoken and written language, mathematics, gesture, images (including pictures, graphs and diagrams), tools (such as experimental apparatus and measurement equipment) and activities (such as ways of working-both practice and praxis, analytical routines, actions, etc.). Using physics as an illustrative example, we discuss the relationship between the ways of knowing that constitute a discipline and the modes of disciplinary discourse used to represent this knowing. The data comes from stimulated recall interviews where physics undergraduates discuss their learning experiences during lectures. These interviews are used to anecdotally illustrate our proposed characterization of learning and its associated theoretical constructs. Students describe a repetitive practice aspect to their learning, which we suggest is necessary for achieving fluency in the various modes of disciplinary discourse. Here we found instances of discourse imitation, where students are seemingly fluent in one or more modes of disciplinary discourse without having related this to a teacher-intended disciplinary way of knowing. The examples lead to the suggestion that fluency in a critical constellation of modes of disciplinary discourse may be a necessary (though not always sufficient) condition for gaining meaningful holistic access to disciplinary ways of knowing. One implication is that in order to be effective, science teachers need to know which modes are critical for an understanding of the material they wish to teach.

Unpacking physics representations: Towards an appreciation of disciplinary affordance

“…The pieces of information that are presented by different representations often overlap partly or entirely [2], for example, the magnitude of a force given by a number and given in terms of the length of an arrow that is drawn to scale. In other cases pieces of information are presented by representations with unique disciplinary affordances.…”

“…This "division of labor" between representations often makes the disciplinary affordance of constellations of representations more powerful than that of an individual representation; as McDermott [15] points out, "different representations emphasize different aspects of a concept" (p. 19). Airey and Linder [2] illustrate this using a hypothetical constellation of representations that is needed in order to experience an object of learning in a disciplinary way. Such a constellation of representations can be said to have a collective disciplinary affordance [16], and is necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) to access all facets of a particular disciplinary way of knowing.…”

“…What is meant by representations here are semiotic resources, which are the actions, materials, and artifacts that get used for communicative purposes. In this sense, every representation used in physics is intended to provide access to certain parts of disciplinary knowledge [2,3]. Thus, all representations are partial in nature [4].…”

“…This partiality has two components. The first is an inherent partiality of the meaning that any single representation can convey [2,4]. The second is a partiality that arises from the creation of powerful communicative resources in the discipline of physics that has taken place through an evolutionary rationalization of the information and meaning that any given representation is intended to convey [5].…”

“…This theoretical article is about the teaching and learning challenges that arise from students experiencing this partiality of representations, where important physics aspects are not initially discernible. These issues are educationally important because what creates a powerful communicative system for physics at the same time manifests in the difficulties students experience in terms of becoming "fluent" [2] (p. 28) in the disciplinary-specific representations [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Theoretical details from the literature, together with the concept of disciplinary affordance [11,12], are used to underpin a case that physics representations need to be "unpacked" for students.…”