Young students’ diverse resources for meaning making in science: learning from multilingual contexts

Abstract

This manuscript elaborates the value of looking beyond the written and spoken word in science education research and practice at the early childhood level. We examine one plurilingual child's descriptions of a science activity to explore the diversity of resources that she used while expressing her understandings of a sound investigation. We demonstrate the ways in which she made her understandings evident via multiple modalities, including gesture, facial expression, and drawing, in two different classroom contexts; a whole-class discussion and a small group interaction. Foregrounding the resources she engaged serves to illustrate how different classroom structures mediated the complexities of her explanations. The findings of this research underscore our central argument regarding the value of considering the range of resources that facilitate children's expressing understandings in science education so they can be successful, especially within multilingual contexts. We draw implications for research and teaching praxis for positioning science as more than what is spoken and written, but as a complex, embodied enactment deeply embedded in multimodal, multilingual, interactions.

How Did We Engage Resettled Chin Youth in Critical STEM Literacy Practices?

“…Science teaching and learning is inherently multimodal since science practices routinely involve texts, diagrams, gestures, and materials (Grapin, 2019;Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001;Tang, Delgado, & Moje, 2014). In addition, the action of participation in the moment of learning is a multimodal accomplishment among social actors and between social actors and their environments (Norris & Jones, 2005;Siry & Gorges, 2019). Use of non-linguistic modes (e.g., bodily engagement, interactions with and composition of artifacts) is not auxiliary to language, but equally as important as use of language, in socially mediated learning.…”

Multimodal Interaction Analysis: a Powerful Tool for Examining Plurilingual Students’ Engagement in Science Practices

“…Zooming in on Calia as a case allows for demonstrating the use of MIA because her linguistic profile exemplifies the language repertoires of many of the students in our national context, a complex language environment that has allowed us to refine this methodology. This builds from prior studies we have conducted that employ this methodology (Siry and Gorges 2019;Wilmes and Siry 2020) and that show the importance of considering all modes and semiotic resources visible within interaction. A key contribution of this analysis is that it reveals meaning-making and interaction through vocal, multimodal, and sociocultural understandings, which is key to deepening our research focus on diverse systems of meaningmaking through interaction, especially with plurilingual students.…”

“…Relatedly, a recent study from our team similarly draws upon sociocultural theoretical perspectives coupled with multimodal methodologies (Siry and Gorges 2019), as the authors present the case of how a plurilingual student in an early-childhood classroom made her understandings about the phenomena of sound evident through multimodal explanations that included drawings, gestures, expressions, sounds, and words. This analysis revealed the nuances of her communication-in-situation and a wide range of resources that mediated her explanations, as well as the role of open-ended dialogic structures for mediating the processes of meaning-making.…”

Dialogic Pedagogies and Multimodal Methodologies: Working Towards Inclusive Science Education and Research

“…In a study of a kindergarten class engaging in science investigations on the topic of sound (Siry & Gorges, 2020), a case study of a plurilingual student named Katrina examined the ways in which her science understandings became evident in dialogue after she participated in inquiry-based investigations. Katrina was selected as a case because she was a recent newcomer to Luxembourg and was learning Luxembourgish, and we were interested in the different resources she drew on when positioned within open-ended structures to share her experiences and meanings from a class investigation around the topic of sound.…”

“…In comparison to the analyses of Pedro and Teo and their positioning relative to a small group of peers, analysis of Katrina focuses on two different classroom formats, whole-group presentation and informal dialogue, and reveals a contrast that arises between ways in which she is positioned in a whole-class presentation versus a conversation with a researcher in which she draws upon wider range of communicative resources (Siry & Gorges, 2020). Our studies come together to reinforce the value of open-ended structures for working with language learners, as such dialogic structures afford these language learners opportunities to engage in science practices that in turn allow for engaging diverse resources in demonstrating and developing their science explanations and understandings.…”